Theme of Disease Depicted in Shakespeare's Hamlet

Hamlet and the Disease In Denmark

Throughout the play Hamlet, Shakespeare displays many underlying themes by way of imagery. Denmark is rotting from the inside out. Hamlet is plagued by his mother's incestuous marriage. To the Prince, the union of his mother and his uncle is foul and unnatural. The entire world is corrupt to young Hamlet. Throughout the story, disease plagues Denmark and the people in it, shown by imagery that Shakespeare delivers consistently throughout.

In the opening scene, Horatio makes an interesting statement: "As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, Disasters in the sun, and the moist star upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse (1.1.117-120)." He compared the ghost as a possible sign of disaster or catastrophe in Denmark, as to what happened before the death of Julius Caesar. From the start of the play, Denmark was already tainted and wrought with disease that would eventually continue over the course of the play.

In Hamlet's first soliloquy, he states that the world is "an unweeded garden,

That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature possess it merely (1.2.135-137)." Like a spreading weed in a garden, the world is being spread with disease, all starting with the incestuous marriage of Gertrude and Claudius.

At the end of act one scene four, as the ghost and Hamlet exit, officer Marcellus states "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark (1.4.90)." They are starting to realize that things aren't right with the world they live in, and that more is on the way.

The final scene of act one has the ghost telling Hamlet how he died, and how it was from poison poured into his ear, which spread throughout his body causing a scab to form ...

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..., until the last of the disease is killed off. Horatio is the only survivor, and lives to tell the story of Hamlet.

To summarize, the theme of disease reoccurs and repeats itself many times throughout the play. Shakespeare used similar types of imagery and words, such as "rank" and "sick" throughout Hamlet that keeps reminding the reader of what's going on. From the beginning rotten state of Denmark, to the later infection of poison of most all of the main characters, the disease theme affected everyone in the story.

Work Cited

Macrone, Michael. "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Brush Up Your

Shakespeare. Cader Company, 1990. eNotes.com. 2007. 7 May, 2011

Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction,

Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010.

1162-63. Print.