King Hamlet Research Paper

Throughout Hamlet we see the extensive effect that the murder of the old king has on Denmark. The cause of king Hamlet’s death, poison, foreshadows the subsequent spread of moral corruption and evil that takes place throughout Denmark. Therefore, the body of king Hamlet acts as a metaphor for the state; when his physical body was infected, so was the body of the country.
Early on in the play we learn that the previous king, King Hamlet, was murdered by his own brother Claudius, in his efforts to take the crown. The ghost of King Hamlet describes his gruesome death to his son Hamlet when he says, “With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, and in the porches of my ears did pour the leprous distilment; whose effect holds such an enmity with blood
However, people would question Claudius’s motive for killing Hamlet so instead he sets up a duel between Laertes and Hamlet. Laertes is seeking revenge on Hamlet for killing his father. In this duel, Laertes is armed with a poison sword and in case Hamlet leaves the fight untouched by the sword, Claudius has a cup of poison for Hamlet to drink afterward. During this fight, Hamlet gets touched by the poisoned sword but manages to take the sword from Laertes and cut him with it. In celebration, the queen reaches for the drink and although Claudius tells her not to drink it, he does nothing to stop her when she does and says to himself, “It is the poisoned cup; it is too late.” (5.2. 276) Claudius was not only willing to let a pawn in his plan to kill Hamlet, Laertes, die to avert any suspicion, he chose to watch his wife die from drinking poison instead of just telling her what it was even if it meant revealing the sickening truth about
Hamlet’s good nature is especially clear when we see that Hamlet’s first attempt on Claudius’s life is when he is behind a curtain, a position that allows Hamlet to not directly look his victim. However, because it was behind a curtain Hamlet did not realize it was in fact Polonius and not Claudius. Although Hamlet’s intention was to try to stop the contagion, by accidentally killing Polonius instead, Hamlet is now an active part of the “unweeded garden” and has now created a chain of events in which more lives will be lost. The death of Polonius led Ophelia to take her own life and Laertes to duel Hamlet which ultimately leads to his death as well. The next time we see Hamlet murder, we begin to see a change in his attitude. He alters the letter Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were carrying to read that it should kill them. Although this not a direct act of aggression, we can still see that Hamlet is beginning to embrace the “unweeded garden” and once he does this he is able to direct the path of destruction. Finally, after the duel, once Hamlet has seen the extent to which Claudius would let sin and death spread all over Denmark and to an extent how much it grew within Hamlet himself, he was able to lead the toxicity to take out its own source. Hamlet fittingly killed Claudius by