Quote Analysis

After Hamlet exits, Claudius speaks alone (or to England via letter), ordering Hamlet's execution. He describes Hamlet as a fever in his blood that England must cure by killing him.

Claudius personifies Hamlet as a 'hectic'—an archaic term for a wasting fever—turning the prince into a disease inside his own body. The metaphor is self-serving: it makes Hamlet the pathogen and Claudius the victim, reversing the moral reality that Claudius is the one who poisoned his brother. By addressing England as a doctor ('thou must cure me'), he tries to make the murder sound like therapy rather than tyranny.

Support a thesis that Claudius's soliloquies reveal his need to see himself as acted-upon rather than acting—he consistently casts his violence as self-defense, using medical and religious metaphors to dodge full responsibility for his choices.