the lady doth protest too much

Meaning

Phrase

• It is suspected that, because someone is insisting too much about something, the opposite of what he or she is saying must be true; a hit dog will holler.

Origin

• An allusion to Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the line is spoken by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet's mother. In the play, "protest" is used to mean "insist that what one is saying is true" (in this case, the Player Queen's protestations of love), not "insist that what another is saying is false."