Compare the two soliloquies of Act 2 scene 2, and act 3 scene 1. What do these speeches reveal about Hamlet's state of mind?

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Compare the two soliloquies of Act 2 scene 2, and act 3 scene 1. What do these speeches reveal about Hamlet’s state of mind?

In these two substantial speeches, the character of Hamlet Junior is revealed, and portrays a lot about the made-believe character’s state of mind. Shakespeare, who has shown Hamlet to be aberrant, in a sense that he makes absurd remarks which no other character seems to understand, but in actual fact has a lot of meaning in them.

At the beginning of the first soliloquy, Hamlet’s self hatred is exposed and Shakespeare emphasis’s his isolation. He starts by saying, “ Now I am alone” which is a cleaver use of language by Shakespeare, because it is a sort of pun. One meaning being that he is saying it literally and telling the audience he is talking to them, or he could in fact be referring to his close friends and family, trying to say that he is alone in society and doesn’t have nobody he can rely on, or trust. This is because the only people in his life he thought he could trust have let him down. Gertrude, Ophelia and most importantly Claudius sit on top of his list.

Hamlet’s self-hatred is shown when he says, “o what a…slave am I!” He feels like he has betrayed his father for not believing him. Shakespeare shows the audience that he has low self-esteem for not taking his much promised revenge to the spirit of Hamlet Senior. This is because he asks the ‘players’ to act out the death of his beloved father, and wait to see the reaction of Claudius. For this reason he starts to question his devotion to his father and goes on to say, “Am I a coward? At this point he has no self-belief and has very negative thoughts of himself. This is merely due to him not taking action against Claudius.

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All this self-hatred and negative thoughts makes the character of Hamlet seem melancholy. Shakespeare shows Hamlet’s anger towards himself, just simply as his anger for the king switched onto himself. Hamlet goes on to say, “who calls me villain…plucks off my beard…I should take it” (lines 567-572). This is basically the character saying that, he should accept all the insults thrown at him, because he deserves it for being a “coward”. This makes the audience feel sorrow towards him and pity him. Shakespeare here has made Hamlet in the space of a few lines switch from sorrow to anger ...

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