Blog Response #6: Close Reading of Hamlet's Soliloquy

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the first soliloquy from the protagonist introduces us to a capricious, diffident, and sharp-tongued young prince. Slighted by his father-in-law, and held in Denmark against his wishes, he is furious with the situation he faces at home. He is even angrier that he will not return to university and escape it. Instead of unleashing this rage with a flurry of insults posed towards his mother and step-father, however, he chooses self-destruction. The first lines of the soliloquy are a metaphor that is his plea for suicide. He hopes, “that this too too sullied flesh would melt” (I.ii. 133). In fact, as the soliloquy continues he reveals the only reason he will not commit suicide is because it is forbidden by religious laws.

This initial timorous display contributes to one of the major suicidal motifs that continues to rear its head throughout the play. It forces one consider Hamlet’s role in the play, as an inactive and brooding character, but also as a man who is characteristic for unpredictable rash actions. This idea is also played upon grammatically through the use of long syntax and then short exclamatory sentences. Although the play is clearly intended for a visual audience, there is still a purpose in grammatical structure, as it is the script an actor bases his performance on. Hamlet’s long syntax is paralleled with his long and drawn out thoughts, and after much consideration, and many lines, these thoughts are finally brought out to rash, short, and quick exclamations. 

Hamlet then goes on in the soliloquy to make numerous mythological allusions to aid in his insults of his mother and step-father. He claims that a comparison of his father and step-father is like comparing “Hyperion to a satyr” (I.ii. 144). And more importantly compares his mother’s mourning to the tears of Niobe, stating an infamous line from the play before the slight, “frailty, thy name is woman” (I.ii. 150). This relates to two other motifs in the play, Oedipal conflicts between Hamlet and Gertrude and misogyny. Although it is unfortunate that Gertrude has married Claudius so quickly, there is no reason on the part of Hamlet. He never attempts to logically explain his mother’s actions. Instead in a rash and cruel manner he labels a traitor to his father’s memory and her son. Gertrude is never considered in her role as a queen. How socially acceptable it would have been for her to rule alone without Hamlet at her side; and if she must remarry would not the brother of her late husband would be a logical replacement king? That match accomplishes two major goals: it keeps the power within the members of the royal family and ensures that Denmark has a fit king. I believe that this moment in the play does speak to Gertrude’s ostensibly fickle nature, but relates to the needlessly interrogative Hamlet, as well as the convenience of such an arrangement. The thing that is rotten in Denmark here is not Claudius’ and Gertrude’s marriage, it is the likelihood of the events themselves; his father’s death and subsequently their marriage. It is the lack of consideration of the cause of the events which occurred that allows this moment to lend itself to the misogynist motif in the play.

Hamlet is posed as an intelligent but inactive figure in this soliloquy. The final words seemingly seal his fate, “...I must hold my tongue” (I.ii. 164). It is this holding back that results in his rash actions, the lack of confrontation of issues, and ultimately the tragic demise and subsequent ending of the play.