Themes And Motifs In Shakespeare's Hamlet

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An interior decorator threads a specific color and pattern through a household to create a common flow between every room. This creates familiarities in different rooms, thus maintaining the focus of the house decor. Similarly, an author uses themes and motifs in their writings to sustain certain ideas despite enduring a constantly changing plot. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” embodies the motif of decay that assists in defining the state that Denmark is in and how it is progressively getting worse. “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” is spoken by Marcellus in the beginning of the play and serves as the catalyst of the decay motif, also a metaphor for corruption (Shakespeare I.iv.100). It engenders how the characteristics of the characters, …show more content…
When Claudius demands to know what he has done with the body, Hamlet says that he is, “At Supper/.../Not where he eats, but where he is eaten” (Shakspeare IV.iii.20-22). He continues to explain how worms are eating him, which are a staple of decay. Worms are known for eating the remnants of dead things, and in this case, they are eating Polonius. He continues to say that, “A man may fish with the worm that hath eat/ Of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that/ Worm”, which entails when Claudius is dead, people will eat the remnants of his body (Shakespeare IV.iii.30-32). Here decay is not only relating to poor Polonius, but also to that of Claudius. Soon after this Ophelia is found dead and her grave is being prepared. Hamlet and Horatio walk up to the gravediggers and Hamlet asks, “How long will a man lie i’ th’ earth ere he rot?” (Shakespeare V.i.168). This shows that he is curious about decay, possibly wondering if his dad is rotting yet, or how long it will be for Claudius to rot after he kills him. After this, the grave digger hands Hamlet a skull to feed his curiosity, which ended up being the skull of Yorick, the jester to the late King Hamlet, of which Hamlet grew fond of. The reminiscing of memories fuels his statement, “Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alex-/ Ander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth/ We make loam;
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