i.136) "The canker galls the infants of the spring/Too oft before their buttons be disclos'd" (I.iii.39-40) About drinking-- "in the general censure take corruption" (I.iv.24-35) "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (I.iv.90) "Though to a radiant angel link'd/Will sate itself in a celestial bed/and prey on garbage" (I.v.55-7) "Taint not thy mind" (I.v.85) "For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a good kissing carrion" (II.ii.181-2) "Pestilent congregation of vapours" (II.ii.302-3) "my imaginations are as foul/as Vulcan's stithy" (III.ii.83-4) "Tis now the very witching time of night/when churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out/contagion to this world" (III.ii. 388-90) "A mildew'd ear/blasting his wholesome brother" (III.iv.64-5). "Nay, but to live/In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,/Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love/Over the nasty sty!" (III.iv.91-4) "Lay not that flattering unction to your soul/That not your trespass but my madness speaks/It will but skin and film the ulcerous place/Whiles rank corruption, mining all within,/ Infects unseen" (III.iv.144-49). "diseases desperate grown/By desperate appliance are reliev'd,/ Or not at all" (IV.iii.8-10) "For like the hectic in my blood he rages,/And thou must cure me" (IV.iii.63-4) "To my sick soul..."(IV.v.17) "It warms the very sickness in my heart,/That I shall live and tell him to his teeth,/'Thus didst thou.'" (IV.vii.52-4) "Is't not perfect conscience,/To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd,/To let this canker of our nature come/ In further evil?" (V.ii.67-70). After establishing that this pattern of imagery exists, it's important to explain its meaning. Simply put, Shakespeare uses imagery to support the notion of corruption spreading throughout the Danish court. Its source is Cl...
