Hamlet Book Notes Summary

Act 1, Scene 2

Disease 1: 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.

Act 1, Scene 4

Disease 2: Like incestuous marriage, murder between brothers is foul and unnatural. King Hamlet's ghost describes the sulfurous, tormenting flames of Hell and the murder - foul, strange, and unnatural - perpetrated against him. The poison, which Claudius poured in King Hamlet's ear, curdled his blood and scaled his skin with a consuming rash. The ghost tells Hamlet that only a rotting, fat weed would be unmoved by his tale of treacherous murder.

Act 2, Scene 2

Disease 3: Hamlet tells Polonius that the dead meat of a dog breeds maggots in the sunlight. In his rambling insanity, Hamlet stresses the rottenness and corruption of relationships and life.

Act 3, Scene 2

Disease 4: The player Lucianus describes his murderous potion as the rank mixture of midnight's infected weeds. Just as vile as their rancid poisons, both Lucianus and Claudius are inwardly rotten because they kill for their own ambition. Hamlet must remind himself of the world's rottenness to psyche himself up for a cruel confrontation with Gertrude. It is the witching hour of night when churchyards open up to the dead and hell breathes contagion to the world. Mad enough to drink hot blood, Hamlet is ready to undertake his cruel business.

Act 3, Scene 3

Disease 5: Claudius perceives his soul's rottenness. His offense is rank and his sin reeks to heaven. Tainted by his brother's decaying blood, Claudius is trapped by his sin and cannot purge his rank soul.

Act 3, Scene 4

Disease 6: Hamlet describes Gertrude's relationship with Claudius as a sticky, sweaty, hot, corrupt, greasy case of incest. To Hamlet, the incestuous lovers are rotten and lusty pigs who make love in a sty.

Act 4, Scene 3

Disease 7: Hamlet is a disease to Claudius. He is a desperate affliction, which must be remedied immediately. Polonius' decaying corpse is missing. Hamlet jests that the missing corpse is supper for worms and maggots.

Act 5, Scene 1

Disease 8: The graveyard is all rottenness. The diggers unearth skulls from decomposed bodies. Hamlet marvels how the once lively bodies have decayed; their organs, personalities, and functions have all rotted away.