Hamlet
Prompt #20 · Hamlet
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
Images of disease, rot, and decay pervade the play's language, from the 'unweeded garden' to 'something rotten in the state of Denmark' to Hamlet's description of the world as 'an unweeded garden / That grows to seed.' Analyze how Shakespeare uses this pattern of imagery to develop the theme of moral and political corruption. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world! / Fie on’t! Oh fie! ’tis an unweeded garden / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely.”
Act I, Scene 2
Argument
Early in the play, Hamlet's metaphor of the 'unweeded garden' establishes the central disease imagery, depicting Denmark as a neglected space where 'rank and gross' corruption has taken root, setting the thematic foundation for moral decay that pervades the entire work.
Quote 2
“Not where he eats, but where he is eaten. A certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service,—two dishes, but to one table. That's the end.”
Act IV, Scene 3
Argument
Hamlet's grotesque imagery of 'politic worms' and maggots transforms physical decay into a metaphor for political corruption, using the leveling power of death and rot to expose how Denmark's moral disease consumes both 'fat king and lean beggar' alike.
Quote 3
“But like the owner of a foul disease, / To keep it from divulging, let it feed / Even on the pith of life.”
Act IV, Scene 1
Argument
Claudius's self-aware metaphor of his guilt as a 'foul disease' that feeds 'on the pith of life' reveals how corruption operates as an internal rot that must be concealed, linking the play's disease imagery directly to political hypocrisy and hidden moral sickness.
Quote 4
“O, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven; / It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,— / A brother’s murder!”
Act III, Scene 3
Argument
Claudius's confession that his 'offence is rank, it smells to heaven' directly employs disease imagery to characterize his guilt as a physical stench, connecting the play's pattern of rot and decay to the source of Denmark's corruption—the king's fratricide that poisons the entire state.
Quote 5
“O Hamlet, speak no more. / Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul, / And there I see such black and grained spots / As will not leave their tinct.”
Act III, Scene 4
Argument
Gertrude's vision of 'black and grained spots' that 'will not leave their tinct' in her soul transforms moral corruption into indelible internal staining, showing how the play's disease imagery operates not just politically but as a spiritual contamination that cannot be cleansed.