5.3.1
Imagery of Corruption & Decay
Imagery of Corruption & Decay in Hamlet
Imagery of Corruption & Decay in Hamlet
The imagery of corruption recurs throughout the play.
Different meanings of corruption
Different meanings of corruption
- The term can refer to moral corruption (e.g. Claudius’ murder of his brother), sexual corruption (e.g. what Hamlet sees as his mother’s incestuous lust) or physical corruption (e.g. the process of rot and decay which Hamlet confronts in the graveyard scene).
"Too sullied flesh"
"Too sullied flesh"
- Hamlet’s first soliloquy opens with the wish that his “too sullied flesh” will dissolve away.
- He sees his own body as corrupted or tainted (“sullied”) by the incestuous marriage of his mother and uncle.
- This imagery links to the metaphor of the “unweeded garden / That grows to seed” and becomes overgrown with “things rank and gross”.
Hamlet links love & corruption
Hamlet links love & corruption
- For Hamlet, afflicted by “melancholy”, all living things become corrupt.
- This includes the love between man and woman: Hamlet chides his mother in A3S4 that she has set a “blister” on “the fair forehead of an innocent love”, the imagery suggesting the spread of a sore from a sexually transmitted disease.
Metaphor: sickness of Denmark
Metaphor: sickness of Denmark
- This imagery of corruption and decay is also used to suggest that the whole state of Denmark is sick.
- Laertes tells Ophelia that “the sanity and health of the whole state” depends upon Hamlet and, throughout Act One, various characters voice ideas about a sickness taking hold in the Danish state (e.g. Marcellus’ fear that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”).
1Introduction
2Plot Summary
2.1Act 1: Key Events & Ideas
2.2Act 2: Key Events & Ideas
2.3Act 3: Key Events & Ideas
2.4Act 4: Key Events & Ideas
2.5Act 5: Key Events & Ideas
3Character Profiles
3.1Hamlet
3.3Gertrude
3.4Ophelia
4Key Themes
4.1Regicide in Hamlet
4.2Madness in Hamlet
4.3Guilt & Punishment in Hamlet
4.4Settings in Hamlet
5Writing Techniques
6Context
6.1Social & Historical Context
6.2Literary Context
6.3Performance & Textual History
7Critical Debates
7.118-19th Century Responses to Hamlet
7.220th Century Responses to Hamlet
7.3Feminist Readings of Hamlet
7.4Marxist/Political Readings of Hamlet
Jump to other topics
1Introduction
2Plot Summary
2.1Act 1: Key Events & Ideas
2.2Act 2: Key Events & Ideas
2.3Act 3: Key Events & Ideas
2.4Act 4: Key Events & Ideas
2.5Act 5: Key Events & Ideas
3Character Profiles
3.1Hamlet
3.3Gertrude
3.4Ophelia
4Key Themes
4.1Regicide in Hamlet
4.2Madness in Hamlet
4.3Guilt & Punishment in Hamlet
4.4Settings in Hamlet
5Writing Techniques
6Context
6.1Social & Historical Context
6.2Literary Context
6.3Performance & Textual History
7Critical Debates
7.118-19th Century Responses to Hamlet
7.220th Century Responses to Hamlet
7.3Feminist Readings of Hamlet
7.4Marxist/Political Readings of Hamlet
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