SOURCE: Jardine, Lisa. “‘No Offence i' th' World:’ Hamlet and Unlawful Marriage.” In Uses of History: Marxist, Postmodernism and the Renaissance, edited by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme, and Margaret Iversen, pp. 123-39. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991.

In the following essay, Jardine offers a feminist/new historicist reassessment of Gertrude's guilt in marrying her murdered husband's brother in Hamlet.

HAM.

Madam, how like you this play? 

QUEEN.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 

HAM.

O, but she'll keep her word. 

KING.

Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't? 

HAM.

No, no, they do but jest—poison in jest. No offence i' th' world.(1) 

This piece is part of the groundwork for a larger project on the relationship between cultural history and textual studies.² It is therefore both exploratory and incomplete—characteristics which will, I hope, make the work available for use by others besides myself...