RALPH: Ok, then, Hamlet says that, when his father first died, Gertrude was "like Niobe, all tears" - Sarah, who was Niobe?

SARAH: According to Greek myth, Niobe was a princess punished for her arrogant pride. She boasted to the goddess Leto about having produced seven sons and seven daughters, while Leto herself had only one son and one daughter. Leto's children, enraged by this insult to their mother, killed all of Niobe's children with poisoned arrows. Niobe's grief turned her to stone, and her tears became water that flowed constantly out of the stone. Thus Niobe became the epitome, the classic symbol, of tearful grief.

RALPH: So, when Hamlet compares Gertrude to Niobe, he's praising her initial grief for the dead King, but unlike Niobe, Gertrude's grief doesn't last very long.