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Hamlet`s First Soliloquy
These notes will help any A level student encountering the play for the first time. This soliloquy reveals Hamlet`s internal world to the audience and sets the tone for the play to come.
Date : 27/09/2021
Oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt! Hamlet in Act 1 scene 2
Hamlet begins with a denigration of the material, physical world. This prepares the way, for a Hamlet that will be ready to accept the walkings of a ghost. The lexical field of precipitation, melt , thaw dew signalling perhaps the onset of tears and grief. The repeated apostrophizing highlights his desperation, frustration and sense of confinement both in the body and within Denmark, unable to return to Wittenberg. His purposelessness here also sets up the conflict to come: this is a usurped heir with nothing to do and ripe for someone else s purpose: his dead father s revenge. The adjectives flat and unprofitable perhaps resonating with his marginalised position now within court, with only the prospect his uncle choses to bestow on him.
His mind then turns to his mother and uncle, the metaphors indicating that what they personally do has an impact on the country in general: unweeded garden , grows to seed , rank...nature imply that Hamlet views their un ion as unnatural and that it will, in turn, impact the kingdom, causing everything to spoil. Hamlet s obsession with time: But two months...not two...within a month and exactly how long it has taken for his mother to remarry betrays his disjointed disconnect with the world around him - Hamlet does not accept time moving on he wishes to return to the past and how things were. His juxtaposing then of brothers Hyperion...satyr illustrates his disgust - the fact he uses mythological figures to establish the contrast illustrates his inability to accept reality: his father is deemed better than he was, a Titan, a god of light and wisdom whereas Claudius, is hardly human at all, but all appetite and craving. Old Hamlet s love is one of protector: beteem and deals in charges from heaven whereas Claudius is depicted as comically hideous, bestial and naked: hence very much of the animal kingdom.
Gertrude is also linked with appetite and a lexical field of feeding which she has easily swapped to Claudius when her first source, Old Hamlet ceased. Twice Hamlet claims that he doesn t wish to think these things: Must I remember and Let me not think on t and yet his obsession does not relent, and he returns to his favoured theme: time: A little month...ere those shoes were old...Would have mourn d longer...most wicked speed. It seems that Hamlet uses this theme of time to justify his disgust at their un ion and yet, reading between the lines there is more to his repulsion: a deep seated suspicion of women: Frailty thy name is woman! With a lexical field of tears: salt , flushing eyes unrighteous tears he emphasises his mother s tears as an act: Like Niobe, all tears. The Greek myth emphasising just the loss but rather the pride that caused the loss, and in this way, Hamlet seems to link his mother to female pride and feminine vanity.
The way Shakespeare uses caesura at points capitalises on Hamlet s emotion here: why she, even she, and married and She married: O, most wicked speed the breaks dramatising to the audience the hero s emotional turmoil, unable at times to finish sentences and unable to put on the act of being all tears , instead he is not only without position in the kingdom but unable to express himself and so without adequate voice, for I must hold my tongue!
Indeed, Hamlet makes a further mythological comparison but this time between himself and Hercules, highlighting his sense of impotence and powerlessness to enter any sort of quest. Towards the end of the soliloquy the increased sibilance creates a bitter, energised tone: speed to post...dexterity to incestuous sheets the rising phonological effect here delivers Hamlet s real objection to their marriage, his view that the un ion a betrayal of one brother to another that it is akin to incest. His assertion It is not, nor it cannot come to good rises like a prophecy over the dark opening of the play.
Hamlet begins with a denigration of the material, physical world. This prepares the way, for a Hamlet that will be ready to accept the walkings of a ghost. The lexical field of precipitation, melt , thaw dew signalling perhaps the onset of tears and grief. The repeated apostrophizing highlights his desperation, frustration and sense of confinement both in the body and within Denmark, unable to return to Wittenberg. His purposelessness here also sets up the conflict to come: this is a usurped heir with nothing to do and ripe for someone else s purpose: his dead father s revenge. The adjectives flat and unprofitable perhaps resonating with his marginalised position now within court, with only the prospect his uncle choses to bestow on him.
His mind then turns to his mother and uncle, the metaphors indicating that what they personally do has an impact on the country in general: unweeded garden , grows to seed , rank...nature imply that Hamlet views their un ion as unnatural and that it will, in turn, impact the kingdom, causing everything to spoil. Hamlet s obsession with time: But two months...not two...within a month and exactly how long it has taken for his mother to remarry betrays his disjointed disconnect with the world around him - Hamlet does not accept time moving on he wishes to return to the past and how things were. His juxtaposing then of brothers Hyperion...satyr illustrates his disgust - the fact he uses mythological figures to establish the contrast illustrates his inability to accept reality: his father is deemed better than he was, a Titan, a god of light and wisdom whereas Claudius, is hardly human at all, but all appetite and craving. Old Hamlet s love is one of protector: beteem and deals in charges from heaven whereas Claudius is depicted as comically hideous, bestial and naked: hence very much of the animal kingdom.
Gertrude is also linked with appetite and a lexical field of feeding which she has easily swapped to Claudius when her first source, Old Hamlet ceased. Twice Hamlet claims that he doesn t wish to think these things: Must I remember and Let me not think on t and yet his obsession does not relent, and he returns to his favoured theme: time: A little month...ere those shoes were old...Would have mourn d longer...most wicked speed. It seems that Hamlet uses this theme of time to justify his disgust at their un ion and yet, reading between the lines there is more to his repulsion: a deep seated suspicion of women: Frailty thy name is woman! With a lexical field of tears: salt , flushing eyes unrighteous tears he emphasises his mother s tears as an act: Like Niobe, all tears. The Greek myth emphasising just the loss but rather the pride that caused the loss, and in this way, Hamlet seems to link his mother to female pride and feminine vanity.
The way Shakespeare uses caesura at points capitalises on Hamlet s emotion here: why she, even she, and married and She married: O, most wicked speed the breaks dramatising to the audience the hero s emotional turmoil, unable at times to finish sentences and unable to put on the act of being all tears , instead he is not only without position in the kingdom but unable to express himself and so without adequate voice, for I must hold my tongue!
Indeed, Hamlet makes a further mythological comparison but this time between himself and Hercules, highlighting his sense of impotence and powerlessness to enter any sort of quest. Towards the end of the soliloquy the increased sibilance creates a bitter, energised tone: speed to post...dexterity to incestuous sheets the rising phonological effect here delivers Hamlet s real objection to their marriage, his view that the un ion a betrayal of one brother to another that it is akin to incest. His assertion It is not, nor it cannot come to good rises like a prophecy over the dark opening of the play.
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