After Claudius and Gertrude announce their marriage to the kingdom, Hamlet grieves deeply over his father's death.

Jenny Neal

AP Literature and Composition

Period 7

January 14, 2002

Essay #5 on a Soliloquy

After Claudius and Gertrude announce their marriage to the kingdom, Hamlet grieves deeply over his father’s death. He is most bothered by the fact that his mother is remarrying so quickly, even going so far as to privately contemplate suicide. The diction and imagery of the first soliloquy provide insight into Hamlet’s feelings, showing his true character. This soliloquy sparks an interest in the reader and provides a glimpse into Hamlet’s thoughts while informing the audience of the history of his family’s tribulations.

In the soliloquy that begins “O that this too too sullied flesh would melt….”,(I:ii) Hamlet is alone with his thoughts, depressed to the point of talk of suicide. Hamlet tries desperately to make sense of the events that have recently taken place, but remains confused and pessimistic. He feels restricted by the physical world that he calls unbearable, wanting his "too too solid flesh"(I:ii) to "...melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew"(I:ii). He appears to be trying to get away, to become innocent once again. There was a time when he didn’t have many responsibilities to deal with, and that’s what he wants to go back to. However, he has obligations to fulfill. Since Hamlet has been raised and living as a noble person, not fulfilling his tasks is an impossible act, as is having his "flesh…melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew”(I:ii). The journey of a solid turning into dew relates similarly to how difficult it is for Hamlet to live in the world, needing to be free to deal with himself only. There is an underlying feeling of anger that runs through each word he speaks.

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Hamlet is not only feeling powerless that he cannot do anything to change the fact that his father is gone, but he is mad that it happened in the first place. He is feeling the loss of his father and feels angry that his father had to come across the bad luck to die so soon in life. To make matters more complex, an apparition of his father shows up and wants him to seek revenge on Claudius. The only way that Hamlet can consider getting out of his father's expectations, is suicide. However, Hamlet's god has "fixed his canon against self-slaughter" (I:ii), and therefore, it would be shameful for Hamlet to take his own life. Like it said in the “canon,” committing suicide was the worst form of sin against God, and he certainly didn’t want to offend God, out of all people. Not only was Hamlet heated because of his father’s death, but also he got saddened watching his mother marry his uncle Claudius, allowing him to take the throne as the new King.

His anger mixes with confusion when he tries to understand how a woman who had such a relationship with his father as she did could possibly run to another man’s arms so quickly, especially when it’s a relative. Confused Hamlet describes the time passed as “two months,” (I:ii) then “not two,” (I:ii) and repeats “within a month.” (I:ii) His descriptions emphasize that the time period is what’s bothering him, but at the same time it adds to the confusion because he keeps contradicting himself. Hamlet can’t be taken seriously if he can’t remember or exaggerates something. He describes his father, Old Hamlet, as “… so loving to my mother that he might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly.”(I:ii) The beautiful love that Hamlet witnessed between his mother and father was something that he can’t understand just forgetting about. He not only feels completely betrayed by her marriage to Claudius, but he feels that she betrayed everything that she had with Old Hamlet, acting so quickly to substitute him. Hamlet can’t imagine the mother he thought he knew doing anything like that.

After he feels that Gertrude has betrayed Old Hamlet, Hamlet talks about his huge respect for his father. To Hamlet, his father was “So excellent a King…”(I:ii) that he is comparable to Claudius as a "Hyperion to a satyr,"(I:ii) or a sun god to a beast. His respect is obvious in those lines, as it is in the entire soliloquy because that is what brought about the soliloquy in the first place. If Hamlet didn’t think as highly of his father as he does, he wouldn’t be spending so much time and energy thinking about what happened. He certainly wouldn’t be getting so upset about it if he didn’t care, going so far as to compare Claudius to a wild beast. In the end, after thinking about everything, Hamlet decides that he must remain silent. Nothing can undo or redo the situation to make it better, so the best solution is just to bite his tongue and not tell his mother anything. He will have a hard time holding it in, and he might end up with a broken heart, but it’s something he must do.

Only after feeling an array of emotions does Hamlet begin to think that something isn’t right, but he doesn’t know what it is. His speech illustrates his confused state of mind by jumping about from thought to thought, although it’s constantly bringing up the remarriage. Since soliloquies are written as very personal, Hamlet was being serious and is obviously in a state of some mental distress, and very confused. It allows the reader to see into Hamlet’s mind and learn more about his character while possibilities of a conflict arise.

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