Note to Hamlet, 4.5.81: "the people muddied"


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to
Hamlet,
Act 4, Scene 5, line 81
the people muddied: the people confused and stirred up. —This combination of ideas is extended in the following line, "Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers . . . ." The people don't know anything for sure, but they are whispering and thinking that, as Marcellus has already said, "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1.4.90).