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Images Of Disease And Decay In Hamlet

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1. Shakespeare addresses images of disease and decay. Identify two such images and analyze their contributions to the work so far.

“Fie on 't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature.”

Hamlet observes in Act I scene ii in his soliloquy that things have gotten out of control. His father is dead, and Claudius is now King and his mother married Claudius so soon after his father’s death. Hamlet sees that Claudius and Gertrude are like a garden that has not been watched after and now it is overgrown with weeds and it smells. The line foreshadows that someone (Maybe Hamlet) will need to mow down those weeds.

“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.”

Marcellus perceives the dishonest
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