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Rhetorical Devices In Hamlet's First Soliloquy

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Hamlet’s first soliloquy occurs in Act 1, scene ii. Before giving this monologue, Hamlet is faced with the difficult truth of his dad being murdered in cold blood. The soliloquy reveals Hamlet’s true feelings about his new “father” that his mother has married. Some thematic issues revealed in Hamlet’s soliloquy are religion and reprisal. After giving the monologue, the reader learns about Hamlet’s hatred towards Claudius. Throughout Shakespeare’s drama, “Hamlet,” he uses very sophisticated and artful diction. In Shakespeare’s first soliloquy, he is very graphic and straightforward with the meaning behind his distressed demeanor. “Oh, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,” affirms Hamlet’s graphic, artful diction used to describe the way he feels about his mom, Gertrude, marrying his father’s brother, Claudius. The hatred of Claudius stems back earlier in Hamlet’s life, his father’s death. At the time of giving the soliloquy, Hamlet does not know that Claudius is the one who killed his father; so one can imagine his puzzlement after he finds out. The theme of hatred and resentment quickly boil …show more content…

Hamlet says, “How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on ’t, ah fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed,” and he is describing his life to that of an overgrown, uncared for garden. That quote is also a way Hamlet tied imagery into his speech, calling for the reader to imagine a messy, untidy garden as Hamlet’s outlook on life. Hamlet also uses the words “incestuous sheets” as metonymy when describing the marriage of his mother and Claudius. Hamlet’s metaphor, “My father’s brother, but no more like my father than I to Hercules,” indicates that Claudius is like his brother just about as much as Hamlet is like Hercules. Hamlet’s various poetic devices provide for a more in depth description for the

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When it is said, “Would have mourn’d longer-- married with my uncle, My father’s brother” (I, i) it is shown that Hamlet’s mother, who was said to have been as grief-stricken as Niobe just three lines prior, marries her late husband’s brother. The second part of the line says, “But [my uncle] no more like my father/ Than I to Hercules” For Hamlet, a common man, to compare himself to Hercules, the most well-known and renowned hero in all of Greek mythology, it shows that they are complete opposites. The reference that Hamlet’s father, who could be compared to a titan as wonderful as Hyperion, was as different from his brother as Hamlet from Hercules, proves that Hamlet’s uncle was not by any means a good soul. To conclude, Shakespeare uses allusions to Greek mythology to help develop characters in his soliloquy Hamlet.

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(Hamlet 568-82). Hamlet feels pity for himself for being in such a horrible situations with his father’s death, his mother’s quick marriage, and his depression but he is angry at himself for not doing anything about his situation, for not avenging his father against a horrible person. He does not create a revenge plan, he does not speak for his father, etc. He is frustrated and angry because wanted to avenge his father but he does not follow through with his desires. Hamlet then begins to fire up with anger and motivation for revenge against Claudius.

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Shakespeare differentiates Hamlet from the rest of the Danish Court through his eloquence of speech and ambiguity in the opening play. Arriving back home from Wittenberg, Hamlet is still in mourn about his father’s death whilst becoming familiar with his mother’s sudden remarriage with Claudius, the present king of Denmark. Hamlet’s initial impression on Claudius is “A little more than kin and less than kind”, utilising the effect of an aside with a riddling comment that plays with his family relationship with Claudius and with a pun on ‘kind’, suggesting that Claudius is both ungenerous and unnatural and reveals Hamlet’s eloquence and extraordinary quickness of mind. The increasing focus on the issue of Hamlet’s mother’s remarriage is developed through his repetitive exclamations of “O God, God” and “Oh most wicked speed” in his soliloquy “O that this too solid flex”. The exclamations reveal that the speech develops a series of disrupted, broken and interrupted thought and feeling that concentrates on his reaction to his mother’s incest, oblivious to the Danish Court.

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