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Salom Gass | November 25, 2013 O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not fixd His canon gainst self-slaughter! O God! O God! How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie ont! O fie! tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this! But two months dead!nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king; that was, to this, Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month, Let me not think ont,Frailty, thy name is woman! A little month; or ere those shoes were old With which she followed my poor fathers body Like Niobe, all tears;why she, even she, O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason, Would have mournd longer,married with mine uncle, My fathers brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month; Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married: O, most wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! It is not, nor it cannot come to good; But break my heart,for I must hold my tongue. o Hamlet's first soliloquy provides a striking contrast to the controlled and artificial dialogue that he must exchange with Claudius and his court. Hamlet speaks these lines after enduring the unpleasant scene at Claudius and Gertrudes court, then being asked by his mother and stepfather not to return to his studies at Wittenberg but to remain in Denmark. Hamlet thinks for the first time about suicide (desiring his flesh to melt, and wishing that God had not made self-slaughter a sin), saying that the world is weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable. Hamlet feels that the option of suicide is closed to him because it is forbidden by religion. Hamlet is tormented by images of Gertrude's tender affections toward his father, believing that her display of love was a pretense to satisfy her own lust and greed. Hamlet even negates Gertrude's initial grief over the loss of her husband. She cried "unrighteous tears" because the sorrow she expressed was insincere, belied by her reprehensible conduct. Notice Shakespeare's use of juxtaposition and contrast to enhance Hamlet's feelings of contempt, disgust, and inadequacy. o Things divine and things earthly or profane o His desire for dissolution into dew, an impermanent substance (spiritual release), but then he uses everlasting which is permanent Another juxtaposition is Hamlet's use of Hyperion and a satyr to denote his father and his uncle. o Hyperion, the Titan god of light, represents honor, virtue, and regality o Satyrs, the half-human and halfbeast companions of the wine-

god Dionysus, represent lasciviousness and overindulgence In other passages from the play we see that Hamlet has begun to find revelry of any kind unacceptable, and, in particular, he loathes drinking and sensual dancing. As he runs through his description of their marriage, he touches upon the important motifs of misogyny, crying, Frailty, thy name is woman; incest, commenting that his mother moved [w]ith such dexterity to incestuous sheets; and the ominous omen the marriage represents for Denmark, that [i]t is not nor it cannot come to good. Each of these motifs recurs throughout the play.

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OPHELIA Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty? HAMLET Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once. OPHELIA Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. HAMLET You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not. OPHELIA I was the more deceived. HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it ere better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. Where's your father? OPHELIA At home, my lord. HAMLET Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. OPHELIA O, help him, you sweet heavens! HAMLET If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs

I think shes trying to get him to drop the doubletalk and speak plainly with her. Hamlet takes her question at face value, while continuing to use honesty as a synonym for chastity. Beauty is more powerful than chastity a beautiful woman will become a whore before a virtuous woman will lose her beauty. Its also a confession, and maybe even an apology. Hes saying that this is how he now sees the world, and its making it impossible for him to be with her. I did love you once, Hamlet is letting himself slide back into the love he once felt and continues to feel for Ophelia. In trying to say goodbye, he gets caught up in the attraction. Indeed, my lord Shes trying to get Hamlet to tell her more about what hes feeling and why hes doing this. But then Hamlet breaks away. He cant let himself give in to love. Ultimately, in this scene he is trying to end the relationship, because he believes neither he nor anyone else deserves to be in love in a world in which the kind of change that hes facing (his fathers death and his mothers remarriage) is possible. I believe that he does love her, and that makes pushing her away all the more difficult. You should not have, This line cuts deep if Hamlet and Ophelia have indeed already had sex. You shouldnt have believed I love you; theres no way that virtue could possibly overcome sin. I didnt love you if I did love you, I wouldnt have had sex with you. Again, hes saying this partially to hurt her and entirely as a way to push her away. He breaks away from her. I was the more deceived. Ophelia reverts to formality again, letting Hamlet know she knows hes lying when he says he never loved her. Shes trying to get him to drop the bullshit, letting him know she can see through it. Get thee to a nunnery, this could mean that Hamlet is getting Ophelia out of the way of the brewing violence for he loves her and he knows if she stays around she could easily get caught up in the revenge
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marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. Farewell. OPHELIA O heavenly powers, restore him! HAMLET I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a nunnery, go. [Exit] o

plot, and nuns cant get married so she could never get married to anyone else. But a nunnery was also used as word for a brothel, so he might want to send her to a brothel to act as the harlot he deems all of womankind to be Hamlet goes beyond makeup, "I have heard of your paintings too, well enough;" to insult the way women flirt and how they excuse their wantonness as ignorance. He declares that, "it hath made me mad" which might go to show that either he has been putting on an act, or that it relates to his later mention of his mother's marriage.

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KING Laertes, was your father dear to you? Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, A face without a heart? LAERTES Why ask you this? KING Not that I think you did not love your father; But that I know love is begun by time; And that I see, in passages of proof, Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. There lives within the very flame of love A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; And nothing is at a like goodness still; For goodness, growing to a plurisy, Dies in his own too much. That we would do We should do when we would; for this "would" changes And hath abatements and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sigh, That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer: Hamlet comes back: what would you undertake, To show yourself your father's son in deed More than in words? LAERTES To cut his throat i' the church. KING No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Laertes, Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. Hamlet return'd shall know you are come home: We'll put on those shall praise your excellence And set a double varnish on the fame The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together And wager on your heads. He, being remiss, Most generous and free from all contriving, Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, Or with a little shuffling, you may choose A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise Requite him for your father.

Claudius struts for Laertes in this scene, but, if we believe what he says, he also demonstrates his ability to care. o Caring would mitigate his evil and add to the paradox inherent in his character. o As shown in his prayer scene in Act III, Claudius has a Christian conscience even if he is incapable of satisfying it. o In this scene he demonstrates that he may also be a devoted husband who prizes the emotional well being of his beloved wife. Despite his knowledge that Hamlet is a great danger to him, he tells Laertes that he has chosen not to hurt his "son" because of the Queen. Claudius cleverly preys on Laertes sorrow over his fathers death, asking him if his grief is just an illusiona mere painting of sorrow? Claudius knows how to manipulate people and there feelings to use them against each other for his purpose. Laertes, unlike Hamlet, minces no words and loses no time on regret. His deep anguish over the loss of his father and sister commits itself to murder. Laertes is immediately ready, able, and willing to act. A sympathetic and formidable adversary for the sympathetic and formidable prince, Laertes will garner as much support from the audience as Hamlet will, and the confrontation will be doubly moving as the audience will be torn in its allegiance. Hamlet couldnt kill Claudius in the church, but Laertes a man who acts without thinking would have no qualms in doing that.

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HAMLET How all occasions do inform against me, And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarterd, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, I do not know Why yet I live to say This things to do; Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To dot. Examples gross as earth exhort me: Witness this army of such mass and charge Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puffd Makes mouths at the invisible event, Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare, Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honours at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father killd, a mother staind, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!

The soliloquy begins with Hamlet realizing that all the events have led him to believe that he needs to seek his revenge. A man who marks time (one who just performs the duty of life by eating, sleeping, and so on) is no good to anyone. God has created us for a reason, and it is up to each person to fulfill it. He is disgusted with himself; contemptous of his own weak inadequacy and his fearful failings. He continues asking himself what is the benefit of being alive to say he should have done this deed instead of actually doing it. He knows he has the "ambition," power, and ability, so he must do it. He refers back to Fortinbras ("a delicate and tender prince") who is leading the men into battle to fight for something as thin and delicate as an eggshell, but they are doing it because it is what they are supposed to do. Hamlet knows he has a reason to fight. His father was murdered, his mother's honor stained when she married his brother, and he has watched the enemy march their soldiers to fight (and die) for a piece of land so small it couldn't hold all of their burials. But Hamlet is not Fortinbras. Certainly they have much in common. Their fathers have been killed. They each might have 'inherited' their country's thrones, but did not, since each currently has an uncle on their nations throne. Both feel somewhat impotent, being princes without power. Unlike Hamlet, though, Fortinbras is not an intellectual; he is a soldier, Hamlet is different. He is a thinker; a philosopher. He wants to be sure that the ghost who claims to be Old Hamlet really is his father, and not a lying demon from hell, before acting upon his orders. He wants to prove that Claudius really is a murderer, before deciding to kill him. He cannot kill him for incest alone, as wrong as he thinks it is, because that would be a crime unacceptable to the country.

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QUEEN GERTRUDE Ay me, what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? HAMLET Look here, upon this picture, and on this, The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See, what a grace was seated on this brow; Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; A station like the herald Mercury New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; A combination and a form indeed, Where every god did seem to set his seal, To give the world assurance of a man: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? You cannot call it love; for at your age The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd But it reserved some quantity of choice, To serve in such a difference. What devil was't That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, Or but a sickly part of one true sense Could not so mope. O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, Since frost itself as actively doth burn And reason panders will.

o o

Written in prose, so it is disrespectful He shows her a picture of the dead king and a picture of the current king, bitterly comments on the superiority of his father to his uncle, and asks her furiously what has driven her to marry a rotten man such as Claudius. o He describes the two as opposites, the one all nobility and virtue, the other all deformity and vice. Oedipus Complex o Attracted to his mother o He is very concerned about her sexuality instead of being concerned about other things such as was she complicit or not o

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