Close Reading of "Hamlet"

Lines 133-164 make up Hamlet's first soliloquy in the play. He is dejected, frustrated, angry, and disgusted. He compares "all the uses of this world" to an "unweeded garden/That grows to seed." This metaphor describes the corruption and (more specifically) incest that he is experiencing directly. THe world is turning against his will and he is losing control of his own life. Moreover, he's seeing his uncle as a weed in his life, and his life as a garden. Clearly, he wants to take the weeds out of his garden; this is the first sign of Hamlet's desire to get rid of Claudius. This is even before he meets his father's ghost and finds out the truth of how he died.

There are three mythical allusions that stand out: "Hyperion to a satyr," "Niobe, all tears," and "I to Hercules." Hyperion is the sun god, and a satyr is a Greek creature that is half-man, half-goat. King Hamlet is compared to a god while Queen Gertrude is compared to an inferior being (or that is what I presume). This evokes Hamlet's disgust at his mother, who now seems like such a pathetic person compared to the shining figure his father was. Hamlet is more repulsed by his mother than he is by Claudius, and this is even more apparent when he cries, "O, must wicked speed, to post/With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!" (line 156-157) He also compares Gertrude to Niobe, who was a queen who taunted Leto, the mother of the gods Apollo and Artemis, with her abundance of offspring. Apollo and Artemis retaliated by killing all of Niobe's children, reducing her to endless tears. Her unending grief prompted Zeus to turn her into stone, from which tears still poured out. Hamlet clearly sees his mother with contempt; she may have cried at the king's funeral but she married again in a month. He is implying that her tears are all for show.
Hamlet also mentions Hercules, a strong Greek hero famous for being a man of action. He says that his "father's brother" is "no more like [his] father," saying that Claudius will never measure up to the former king. This is important because Hamlet doesn't know that Claudius murdered his father; we can see that Hamlet has disliked his uncle from the beginning. It's also notable that he brings the comparison back to himself, stating that he will never measure up to Hercules, just as his uncle will never measure up to his father. We see here that Hamlet knows that he is weak in action, foreshadowing his inaction for the remainder of the play. Someone like Hercules would have done something by now, whereas Hamlet is all words.

Hamlet sees the love that his mother had for his father as an "appetite." He recalls "Why, she would hang on him/As if increase of appetite had grown/By what it fed on." Even here, he is looking down on his mother, comparing her to a hungry human and his father to a succulent and satisfying feast. It also gives a feral connotation, as if he is already thinking like a savage.

This soliloquy gives a lot of insight into how Hamlet felt even before he knew about the murder, and foreshadows his deep-rooted desire for revenge, yet his lack of action to achieve his goal.