Chase Biddle English Hamlet
Compare how Shakespeare uses language in
Two of Hamlet’s soliloquies to dramatise Hamlet’s feelings
‘Hamlet’ is a play written by William Shakespeare in 1601, which depicts a tragedy and romance. I am going to compare the language used from two soliloquies and explain how it dramatises Hamlet’s feelings.
Hamlet’s depression is provoked by his Father’s sudden death and his Mother, Gertrude, marrying his uncle only a month after this dramatic loss. His depression was later spurred on when Ophelia was denying his letters and refused to speak to him. Rumours were then spread that Hamlet was mentally unstable. This was not true, however: he acted as if it was.
Hamlet speaks his feelings of depression in soliloquies. A soliloquy is a speech made by actors to themselves. Shakespeare writes many soliloquies that Hamlet speaks for they dramatise his feelings and what he wants to do about them. He feels suicidal, which is shown by a line in the first soliloquy in Act One, Scene Two that says “O that this too too solid flesh would melt”. The “O” in this quote shows that he is pleading for God to kill him or to let him kill himself and put a sudden end to his emotional pain. “Solid flesh” refers to cold, solid and dead bodies. When he says “melt” he implies that he feels like ice and could melt into dew and death.
Soliloquy 1 shows Hamlet’s tones as very emotional. He pleads desperately for God’s help and asks him to let him kill himself. He classes his life as “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable’. This leads us to think that he has nothing left to live for because he does the same thing each day which is boring. “An unweeded garden” refers to his lift as full of useless people and things that he needs to get rid of. He seems deeply affected by his Mother’s rush into the marriage to his Father’s brother. He idealised his Father and when he died he was heartbroken. When e compares his Father to his step-Father he says “a Hyperion to a Satyr”. This clearly states how he feels about the drastic difference between them both: classing his Father as the Sun-God (Hyperion) and his step-Father as half-man, half-goat, a lecherous creature and a disgusting animal that should be treated no more than what he really is. Hamlet remembers his Mother and Father’s powerful love for each other and although he is outraged at his Mother’s remarriage so quickly after his Father’s death, he vows to keep his silence. However, he thinks of his Mother as fragile and a woman that is desperate and unable to say no. He quotes “Frailty, thy name is woman” classing women as pathetic and weak. Hamlet thinks that his Mother has no right to cry over his Father’s death. ‘Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears’; this shows that he knows she is crying hypocritical tears. This quote follows on; “Had left the flushing in her galled eyes”. This means that she stopped crying quickly and stopped mourning over his Father’s death so fast, it seems as if it had never happened; she carried on with her life and got remarried to her recently deceased husband’s brother.
