anticipation of what is to follow. Horatio is sceptical at first of the stories of apparitions that Marcellus and Barnardo tell him, but is then shocked by the ghost's presence. Described as a "precurse of feared events As harbingers preceding still the fates" (lines 121-2), Shakespeare develops a foreboding quality, that warns the audience of the many deaths that appear in the play. The narrative quality sets up a context far greater than the contaminated depiction of the courts in Elsinore that exist in the following scene; the country is making frenzied preparations for war. The fourth commandment is being broken: shipwrights are being forced to work on Sundays in a Christian country. Also the presence of something supernatural (ghost) evokes themes of disorder, a theme present in any of Shakespeare's tragedies that support the representation of the setting as a whole. The threats of invasion from Fortinbras, support these ideas for the audience, and prepare us for the next scene where we see a magnified view of what is happening in the courts of Elsinore and in Hamlet's situation.
             Hamlet's soliloquies are where we are shown the true state of mind, by the way Shakespeare emphasises certain themes such as sickness and corruption to evoke an atmosphere that colours these speeches. The country is at war, and we are led to believe Elsinore is an infected place, but Hamlet's thoughts centre on his mother and uncle. "O that this too too sullied flesh would melt..." is the first time we hear Hamlet share his wretchedness. He wishes he could melt away, saying his flesh is 'sullied' meaning corrupted and degraded by the actions of his mother, and later states his abhorrence of the King and Queen in this soliloquy. He tries to come to terms with the recent loss of his father the late King Hamlet, and also the indecent haste of the marriage between his mother and uncle, said to be no l...