Hamlet & Royal Corruption: Going Viral
By: Vani S.
Tags: English Literature, Academia, Literature, Hamlet, Shakespeare

An analysis of Hamlet’s implications for incest, kinship, and tragedy

The progressive impurity of the royal bloodline can be traced via a single drop of “cursed hebenon.” In its most superficial function, this vial almost instantaneously murders King Hamlet of Denmark. However, it is the maturing properties of this poison that sustain and feed the familial state of corruption.

Claudius, while treacherous and self-interested, arguably serves only as a red herring to the institutional crisis occurring between the corrupt family’s internal instinct to survive and its ethical imperative to self-purify. On the other hand, his shallow significance to this conflict may serve as a vessel to the true antagonist of the play: the vial of poison, or the symbolic perpetrator of Hamlet and his kinship’s moral decay.

Shakespeare incorporates the keyword “poison,” a historical derivative of the Latin word potionem, whose Indo-European word can be translated into English as a “virus.” Therefore, the poison used in Hamlet similarly operates as an autonomous, self-circulating agent of disruption within the royal family, rather than a mere device for Claudius’ isolated crime. Mimicking the behavior of a true virus, Shakespeare’s “poison” redirects the natural conduct of its carrier, or the royal family, and thus, both taints the purity of and fuels the sustenance of the bloodline. As a result, this paradoxical, contagion-like force of poison redefines the surviving household by revealing its incompatibility with Hamlet’s reactionary pursuit of familial reconciliation and purification.

To identify the confrontation between Hamlet’s quest for familial restoration and the corrupt family’s survival, we must first detail the viral function of “poison” that incites this clash. For instance, the King’s experience with the poisoning is rather nontraditional as he does not orally ingest the substance, claiming that “in the porches of my ears did pour The leperous distilment…holds such an enmity with blood of man that swift as quicksilver it courses through the natural gates and alleys of the body,” and which “curd[les]… thin and wholesome blood” (I.v.62–67). By indicating that the “leperous distilment” travels through the King’s ear rather than his digestive tract, the poison does not aim to disable its victim’s system for sustenance, but instead, “curdles” blood, or corrupts the composition of the very substance, blood, that facilitates life and sustenance — therefore, indicating a corrupted yet continuing existence of the individual and their bloodline. Similarly, because this “quicksilver” or curdled, poisoned blood now occupies the recipient’s “natural gates and alleys,” or the most fundamental nature of the individual, not only are the King and his bloodline tainted by the impurity of the substance, but further inhabit the corrupt directives that are native to it (such as incestuous activity, as outlined in the following paragraph).

The synonymous corruption of the purity of the individual with that of their bloodline is exemplified when the Ghost laments both his own murder and Gertrude and Claudius’ incestuous marriage in the same breath, presenting Gertrude, an “incestuous… adulterate beast,” but as a victim to Claudius’ “wicked wit and gifts,” causing her to suffer “a falling off,” and attributing both events to the delivery of the “juice of cursed hebenon in a vial.” Shakespeare parallels the corruption of the King’s physical purity with the corruption of his bloodline’s ethical purity, translating his physical poisoning into a larger cancellation of “life, crown, queen at once.”

This contagious attribute of impurity, as a result, becomes the defining characteristic of the tainted royal family. However, not only does impurity identify the corrupt family, but it further evolves into the very fuel and sustenance required for its survival. This redefined role of impurity is two-fold — first, through Hamlet’s tainted familial obligation to avenge his deceased father, and second, through the incestuous salvaging of the marital institution within an impure family. In both scenarios, members of the family must engage in impure activity, further corrupting the institution, in order to adapt to the irreversible effects of the “poison” or progressive moral decay that predisposes the family to its own corruption.

To further explain, Shakespeare’s use of “poison,” or moral corruption, acts as a binding agent between the remaining members of the family. Claudius and Gertrude’s incestuous marriage represents a product of Claudius’s treacherous poisoning, which had dismantled the necessary familial institutions of marriage and parenthood by killing King Hamlet. Hamlet asserts that “Father and mother is man and wife, man and wife is one flesh…,” establishing the standard that Gertrude must fulfill her conditional familial role as a mother by fulfilling the role of a wife in conjunction. While the Ghost asserts that Gertrude was simply duped by the “witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts…his shameful lust,” Gertrude adds that she is willingly submitting to the authority that validates her role as mother, asserting that “I will obey you.” As a result, Gertrude and Claudius’s incestuous union is presented as a reactive symptom of this poison, rather than the poisonous act itself. By maintaining the criteria for a functional family within its impure and endogamous restrictions, Claudius and Gertrude’s marriage does not invalidate the familial institution, but subtly signifies its persistence in an impure state.

This distinction, therefore, further implies the persistence of existing familial roles within the institution, whereas “poison” serves to redefine these roles — particularly for Hamlet, who is tasked with the familial obligation to avenge his father through the impure means of murdering Claudius. For example, Hamlet declares that he is prepared “with wings as swift” to “sweep to my revenge,” asserting the priority of his allegiance to his father following his death. In addition, the Ghost further emphasizes this obligation as he instructs Hamlet to “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.” Therefore, Hamlet’s familial role, or his obligation to avenge his father, is exclusively defined by the moral consequence of the poisoning.

However, Hamlet must engage in poisonous action himself to fulfill his familial role, as a result, dismantling his quest for the purification for either himself or his kinship. For instance, King Hamlet warns Hamlet, “But howsoever thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive,” emphasizing Hamlet’s purity within an act of vengeful and impure murder. In addition, Hamlet grieves that Claudius “killed my father… before my father could repent,” and he urges Gertrude to “Confess yourself to heaven. Repent what’s past. Avoid what is to come.” Although, Hamlet recognizes that in order to enact revenge on Claudius, it is impossible “To take him in the purging of his soul When he is fit and seasoned for his passage,” and that he must instead murder him “When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, Or in th’ incestuous pleasure of his bed.” This murderous act, therefore, mimics the impure actions through which Claudius had murdered King Hamlet, and thus threatens Hamlet’s personal pursuit of purification in the name of a familial revenge.

As a result, Shakespeare employs the dynamic symbol of poison to convey Hamlet’s two core transgressions that ultimately define the true tragedy of the play: his failure in affirming familial allegiance to his father alongside the miscarriage of his quest for purification. However, as the play concludes, Shakespeare finalizes each death by redefining poison as a direct mechanism of murder, and nothing more; Claudius states, “I’ll have prepared him A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, If he by chance escape your venomed stuck,” as a result, liberating both Hamlet and Gertrude from the self-destructive, contagious inheritance of moral corruption into a conclusive destruction of both their tangible lives and tainted bloodline.