The purpose of a soliloquy is to outline the thoughts and feelings of a certain
character at a point in the play. It reveals the innermost beliefs of the character
and offers an unbiased perspective as it is merely the character talking to the
audience, albeit not directly, and not to any other characters who may cause the
character to withhold their true opinions. Therefore, Hamlet's first soliloquy (act 1,
scene 2) is essential to the play as it highlights his inner conflict caused by the
events of the play. It reveals his true feelings and as such emphasises the
difference between his public appearance, his attitude towards Claudius in the
previous scene is less confrontational than here where he is directly insulted as a
"satyr", and his feelings within himself. In this essay, I will outline how
Shakespeare communicates the turmoil of Hamlet's psyche.
Hamlet's despair stems from his mother's marriage to his uncle and it is this that
is the driving force behind what is communicated. His constant repetition of the
time in which it took the two to get married, "But two months dead...yet within a
month...A little month...Within a month...most wicked speed", suggests his
disgust at the situation and that it is not necessarily the nature of their
"incestuous" relationship that troubles Hamlet; more the short time in which it
occurred. In fact, this is especially well communicated to the audience as,
throughout the soliloquy, the passage of time that Hamlet describes gets less
from "two months" to "Within a month". This has the effect of outlining Hamlet's
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