莎士比亞名著《哈姆雷特》的主人翁向來以他的憂鬱形象廣受人知。近年學者的研究仍側重哈姆雷特如何看待人生善與惡的觀點，鮮少有人觸及《哈姆雷特》這齣劇所呈現的兩個面向:西歐中世紀以降關於臨終接引的傳統基督宗教思想與英國都鐸王朝時期醫界對於傳染病病媒源途徑的爭議論述。本文分析《哈姆雷特》的傳染病意象，說明莎翁如何用「病媒源」形塑哈姆雷特的父王冤魂，刻劃都鐸王朝時代傳染病橫行下死亡對個人、家庭、乃至國家社稷所帶來的恐懼與省思。

Among the multi-referential roles of Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Hamlet—Hamlet as a frustrated actor, a misunderstood prince, a villain, a melancholic, a hysteric, and many others—I would dwell upon Shakespeare’s treatment of Hamlet as an infectious disease, for, as I hope to show, the imagery of contamination in the play provides a suggestive introduction to the idea of contagion as the crucial cause of death in Shakespeare’s day. Yet, the Shakespeare scholarship in the past decades does not seem to take the play’s medieval traditions of Ars Moriendi (the art of dying well) and of memento mori very seriously, if it is aware of it at all. Explained away perhaps as a universal concern of good and evil in all life or a manifestation of a pre-modern religiosity, Hamlet’s death anxiety can be interpreted as doomsday metaphor and therefore be easily dismissed. My paper gives an analysis of the death of Hamlet in terms of memento mori and Shakespeare’s idea of epidemic disease. In staging contagion of “a foul disease”, as I see it, the play suggests that a singular virus, effectively transmitted, can contaminate and radically discompose the vitality of a wholesome land.