Hamlet
Prompt #23 · Hamlet
Prompt Type: Symbol/Motif
The poisoned cup intended for Hamlet but drunk by Gertrude, and the poisoned sword that wounds both Hamlet and Laertes, represent Claudius's final treacherous plot. Analyze how Shakespeare uses these paired symbols to demonstrate how schemes of revenge and murder ultimately destroy their architects. Explain how it contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole.
Quote 1
Act V, Scene 2
Argument
The poisoned cup symbol reaches its fatal culmination as Gertrude's anaphoric repetition of 'the drink' emphasizes how Claudius's treacherous plot literally poisons his own wife, demonstrating the architect's destruction through his own device.
Quote 2
Act V, Scene 2
Argument
The poisoned sword symbol destroys Laertes, its co-architect, as the metaphor of being caught in his 'own springe' (trap) explicitly articulates the play's central irony that revenge schemes ensnare their creators.
Quote 3
“When in your motion you are hot and dry, / As make your bouts more violent to that end, / And that he calls for drink, I’ll have prepar’d him / A chalice for the nonce; whereon but sipping, / If he by chance escape your venom’d stuck, / Our purpose may hold there.”
Act IV, Scene 7
Argument
Both symbols appear together in Claudius's plotting stage, where he designs the dual-layered trap of 'venom'd stuck' and 'chalice,' establishing the paired instruments that will ultimately rebound upon him and his conspirator.
Quote 4
“Our wills and fates do so contrary run / That our devices still are overthrown. / Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.”
Act III, Scene 2
Argument
This quote from the Mousetrap play itself articulates the central irony of the poisoned symbols: 'our devices still are overthrown' foreshadows how Claudius's carefully planned instruments—the poisoned cup and sword—will become the agents of his own destruction, demonstrating that human schemes cannot control their ultimate consequences.
Quote 5
Act IV, Scene 7
Argument
Claudius's declaration that 'Revenge should have no bounds' establishes the architect's philosophy of unlimited treachery that leads him to create the dual-poisoned trap, yet this very boundlessness ensures the symbols will rebound upon him—his refusal to limit his schemes guarantees their self-destructive nature.