Importance of Imagery in Hamlet Essay -- GCSE English Literature Course

Importance of Imagery in Hamlet In 'Hamlet', imagery performs three important functions. Firstly, it helps to individualize the major characters of the drama. Secondly, it announces and elaborates major themes. And thirdly, reiterated images establish the distinctive atmosphere of the tragedy and keep the underlying mood of a scene, or of a succession of scenes, before the audience's mind. The crucial dramatic event on which the plot of 'Hamlet' hinges - the murder of King Hamlet by his brother Claudius - takes place in the pre-history of the tragedy, but it is vividly recalled for Hamlet (and for the audience) by the ghost in 1.5. The old king describes in vivid detail how the poison attacked his body as he slept, and how that healthy organism was destroyed from within, not having a chance to defend itself. The leperous distilment, whose effect Holds such an emnity with blood of man, That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body, And with a sudden vigour it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood; so did it mine, And a most instant tetter barked about Most lazar-like with vile and loathsome crust All my smooth body. At two further points in the play's action physical poisoning visually recurs - the poisoning of Old Hamlet is re-enacted in 3.2 by Lucianus and the Player King; and in the final scene of the drama all of the major characters, including the arch-poisoner Claudius himself, meet their deaths by poison. Poisoning also becomes a distinctive recurring pattern in the play's imagery. The individual occurrence in the palace garden is expanded into a symbol for the central problem of the... ...in his hands and philosophises on life and death. Images of animal lust and sensual appetite highlight Hamlet's feeling of revulsion at the adulterous, incestuous relationship between his mother and his uncle. The carnal nature of their relationship is emphasised through a pattern of animal images. In his opening soliloquy the grieving Prince declares his disgust that even an animal lacking reasoning power would have mourned longer for its mate than Gertrude did for her dead husband. O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason Would have mourn'd longer And the pair are imaged by him as pigs in their lovemaking Nay, but to live In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love Over the nasty sty Finally, the bloat king is variously described by Hamlet as a 'satyr', 'beast', 'paddock', 'bat', 'gib'