reechy

The famous Walsingham ballad is also echoed by Ophelia in Hamlet, (26) and "reechy" is Hamlet's term for the kisses Iris uncle gives his mother; (27) it might even be possible to hear in Younker Harmans' description of Sidney as "Sir Philip Sidney, Scholers, souldiers pride" an echo of Ophelia's description of Hamlet as having "The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword."28 Another Shakespeare play is also evoked when Younker Harmans says,

He covers the Reechy Painting and the Old Church window, Hamlet and the living dead, masochistic damnation in Othello, Macbeth and the angels of doom, and the promised end of King Lear.

Obscurity = veiled, refers to some tangential or unlikely source [Bora-chio: "like Pharaoh's soldiers in the reechy painting, like god Bel's priests in the old church window"]

The same "reechy" (rancid) kisses Hamlet fantasizes about come up in Updike's detailed description of the moment when the desire between Gertrude and Claudius erupts.