Options in a Corrupt Society

The first part of the Shakespeare's play, according to H.D.F.Kitto, brings Hamlet into the presence of an unimagined evil, and he is "shattered" by it. When Hamlet is denied leave from Denmark, he is allowed no escape from what becomes a prison for him -"a prison full of evil" in Kitto's terms. He further gains a sense of the pervasive corruption which characterizes his rotten Denmark from its king on down and results in the perversion of marriage, love, and friendship. Even before the action of the play begins, the corruption has already spread from Claudius to those closest to him. Polonius, the counselor is as devious as the king he serves and Gertrude has also been corrupted by Claudius - "won to his shameful lust."

What is in question is the children of Polonius and Gertrude. According to Kitto, the options that exist for the next generation of characters are either to be corrupted by the evil that runs the state or destroyed by it or both. If you look at the younger characters (Laertes, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet) it seems fair to say that they are both corrupted... and destroyed. At the end of the play, only Horatio has managed to endure the infection of the state, and only Horatio remains standing.

For H.D.F. Kitto, along with the destruction of the youth of Elsinore comes the destruction of love itself.

We have met, so far in the play, only one thing that is not foul with corruption: Hamlet's and Ophelia's love. Gertrude's sin has destroyed Hamlet's trust in purity; the nastiness of Polonius, leading to the 'repulsion', has made his feeling of insecurity complete... Ophelia's tragedy is that she is innocently obedient to a disastrous father; Hamlet's, in respect of Ophelia, is that Love has become confused with foulness, and that he knows not what he can trust.
     He falls to such perusal of my face
     As he would draw it: 
Hamlet is taking farewell, not of Ophelia, but of love and innocence and goodness.
     He seemed to find his way without his eyes,
     For out o' doors he went without their help.
'Out o' doors' -- into what? Into what Shakespeare is going to show us, time after time: into deliberate and bitter obscenity. Corruptio optimi pessima: the rottenness in Denmark has corrupted Love itself.  - - H.D.F. Kitto, Form and Meaning in Drama, Barnes and Noble, New York, 1956. pp.272.