Blog #6: Close Reading

In act I, scene II, Hamlet delivers his first important soliloquy. His speech hints about suicide. In lines 129, the use of “too” twice in a row stresses his “sullied” flesh. Hamlet continues to lament about wishing his skin could “melt,/ Thaw, and resolve...” but he cannot because it is against God to “self-slaughter.” Shakespeare compares an “unweeded garden” to Hamlet’s life. By using “gross” and “possess it merely” creates a negative connotation and reflects Hamlet’s situation; Hamlet is obviously unhappy with his current situation – the loss of his father and seeing his uncle marry his mother – and he believes he has no power to control it, which is similar to a garden overtaken with weeds. He sees life as “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.”

Shakespeare also uses allusions to mythology. He sees his father as Hyperion – the sun god – while his uncle is merely a satyr (a half-man and half-goat). Through this allusion, Hamlet believes his father to be a far superior king than his uncle. Hamlet does this again but with a reference to Hercules in lines 152-153. “Niobe” in line 149 references his mother’s nonstop crying during her husband’s funeral, but then creates a contrast with how fast (within a month) she stopped her mourning and married Claudius.

Besides the last two lines, the rest of the periods end in the middle of a line. The use of commas and dashes emphasizes Hamlet’s stream of thoughts and complaints. The use of periods at the end of the last two lines creates dramatic pauses and ultimately foreshadows that nothing good will come out of this marriage, but also Hamlet’s hesitancy to speak out.