Gertrude's Bed
After learning about his uncle's murder of his father, Hamlet obsesses over his mother's sexuality, as she has married his uncle at the beginning of the play. He on multiple occasions describes the bed they share together, painting a portrait of "incestuous sheets" that have been "stewed in corruption" (1.2-3.4). Hamlet uses sensorial imagery in his descriptions of the bed in order to cast it as disgusting, unnatural, and repulsive – just like Gertrude and Claudius's marriage.
Life as Violent
In his famous "To be or not to be" speech, Hamlet portrays life as insufferable, comparing it to being attacked by an assailant, being drowned by a sea, and being whipped and abused by time itself. This imagery of violence, suffering, and bodily harm represents Hamlet's psychological state to which other characters are not privy; Hamlet uses these metaphors to underscore how psychological conflict generates real and unimaginable pain.
Alas, Poor Yorick
One image in particular has been lifted from the play and used, even to this day, to represent the art of theater altogether: that of Hamlet holding up Yorick's skull and contemplating the nature of mortality. In the play, Hamlet thinks about the inevitability of death, using corporeal imagery to convey the bleak realization that everyone eventually decays in the ground. Beyond the play itself, however, this image has, in popular culture, become associated with theatrical performance more generally, a testament to the play's enduring themes and questions about humanity.
Ophelia's Death
It is Gertrude who reports Ophelia's death, describing how she fell into a brook and drowned. The description of Ophelia's body is notably passive, as Gertrude describes her clothing (rather than her body) as that which floated to the surface and eventually pulled Ophelia underwater. This imagery of Ophelia as a "mermaid" buffeted about by her dress further emphasizes her lack of autonomy throughout the play, as even in her death she is at the mercy of the garments she wears (4.7).
