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 crustAll my smooth body."A graphic description, with consideration given to the fact that only moments before the ghosthad instructed Hamlet not to pity it! Perhaps the most immediately obviously corrupt character in Hamlet is Polonius. His corruptionhas occurred long before the play begins; the progression is in the extent to which it is revealed tous. From this courteous, almost comically long-winded member of the court, emerges apersonality that is first dominating (as he instructs Laertes "These few precepts in thy memorylook thou character,"), then clearly abusive (towards Ophelia: "Affection? Pooh! You speak likea green girl,/Unsifted in such perilous circumstance,/Do you believe his tenders, as you callthem?" and soon "I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth,/have you so slander andmoment leisure/As to give works or talk with the Lord Hamlet./Look to't, I charge you. Comeyour ways."), then meddling and subversive, as he sets spies on his own son, and finallyirredeemably and ultimately fatally corrupt and subversive, as he schemes and plots aroundHamlet. His death -- physical corruption -- is a precusor, signifying to the audience the ultimatefate of all those characters exhibiting signs of corruption. [snip] Hamlet is finally separating his positive aspects which we have seen throughout the place -- "Owhat a king is this," says Horatio of Hamlet, "the observed of all observers" -- from thecircumstance and treachery against which they have struggled, and into which they have beenentangled. Hamlet himself cannot not rule. He, too, has become corrupted, not in mind, but inhistory, by becoming the focus of the ancient revenger's dilemma. Not taking revenge will reducehim and make him unfit for rule by his own standards... and taking revenge will do the same. Anyaction is morally ...
