Hamlet’s first soliloquy provides a striking contrast between the controlled, composed manner that he has around his mother, Gertrude, and uncle, Claudius, and his passionate melancholy which he expresses when he is alone. In this soliloquy, he is able to pour out his innermost feelings of hatred, anger, grief and pain.
His words are full of disgust and dissatisfaction, that he refers to Denmark as “an unweeded garden” (I,ii,135) and then describes it as being “rank” and “gross” (I,ii,136). It may be possible that due to his father’s death, it had affected the whole country and now the beauty and appeal have been extracted from the country. However this use of a negative language, which he uses to describe life, is opposite to the positive language he uses to describe death. In his first words of his soliloquy, he says “O that this too too sullied flesh would melt,” (I,ii, 129). When he speaks these lines, he wishes that he could somehow melt away but he considers his flesh too “sullied” or too solid. This then further exaggerates his desire for death.
