translation studies. retrospective and prospective views

uses images of decay: he compares himself with a whore, a drab and a
scullion:
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion! (II, 2, 579-583)
For Claudius,”the people are muddied,/Thick and unwholesome in
their thoughts and whispers.” (IV, 4, 81-82)
All these images present the state of things in Denmark as
comparable to a tumour poisoning the whole body, while showing “no
cause without/why the man dies.” (IV, 4, 28-29) By marrying Gertrude, his
brother’s wife, Claudius violated the natural order and, by this violation,
his state is “rotten” and evil is established. Although he was legally elected
monarch, Claudius is a usurper and he tries to take over the body politic of
Denmark. This unlawful take-over is symbolically suggested by the
incestuous taking over of Queen Gertrude’s body. The lustful seduction of
the Danish queen’s body stands for the rape of the body politic of
Denmark. Hamlet uses the word “Denmark” ambiguously to refer to the
body politic, to Claudius or to the murdered king, and this shows the
inseparable link between the king and his state.
The Queen herself is associated with the idea of decay. The Ghost
compares Gertrude’s sin to preying on garbage. Hamlet compares
Gertrude’s second marriage to a “nasty sty” (III, 4, 95) and urges her not to
“spread the compost on the weeds to make them ranker” (III, 4, 153-154).
He describes her sin as a blister on the “fair forehead of an innocent
love.”(III, 4, 43) The emotions are so strong that the metaphor overflows
into verbs and adjectives, all suggesting not only decay, but also disease:
heaven’s face, he tells her, is “thought-sick” (III, 4, 51). She has married
Claudius, so her sense must be not only “sickly” but also “apoplex’d” (III,
4, 73, 80).
The smell of sin and corruption is blended with the parfume of
flowers continually associated with Ophelia (the flowers she distributes in
her madness, the flowers she wears at her death, the flowers the Queen
drops in her grave) and together they give the scent of death that ponders
over the whole play.
As they suggest violence, the images of war also point, indirectly, to
death. Some of them are suggested by the old Hamlet’s and Fortinbras’s
campaigns. Others simply underline the martial qualities of the hero. But
their main dramatic function is to emphasise that Hamlet and Claudius are
engaged in a struggle to death. This is clear when Hamlet speaks of himself
36