1.90), yet another image of disease.
Still in the opening scenes of the play, even men outside of the country can sense the rotting inside. Scornfully, Claudius says Fortinbras thinks "by our late dear brother's death, our state to be disjoint and out of frame" (I.2.19-20), referring not only to the state's political confusion, but its sick state of health as well. He continues, and notes that the dying king of Norway is "impotent and bedrid, and scarcely hears of his nephew's [Fortinbras] purpose" (I.2.29-30) to attack Denmark. The universal illness besets all men regardless of their nationality; in particular, this idea of one not knowing about the hidden actions of another is reminiscent of the other plots in the play.
The newly crowned villain, Claudius, later remarks "Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliance are relieved, or not at all" (IV.3.8), directly before the scene of Hamlet revealing the location of Polonius' dead body. Here, the evil king considers his plan to send the mentally ill Hamlet away to England, ridding himself of . Later in this scene, Claudius compares Hamlet to "the hectic in my blood and thou must cure me" (IV.3.65), portraying the psychologically ailing prince as a personal sickness, a fever raging in his body. .
Hamlet, later, in his first soliloquy, deplores of the world "things rank and gross in nature possess it merely" (I.2.136). After the death of his father, and quick "two months nay" remarriage of his mother, every aspect of the world seems to be diseased, and is an "unweeded garden that grows to seed" (I.2.136). In this outpouring of emotional distress and confusion, Hamlet wishes he could evaporate "into a dew", and that God had not "fixed his canon against self-slaughter." He further notes of the world as being "stale and flat", further examples of the pale images Shakespeare conveys. Later, Hamlet adds how "some vicious mole of nature" (I.4.24) can destroy the reputation of a nation or individual.