How Does Hamlet Expresses His Melancholy In His First Soliloquy?
Hamlet’s melancholia and the reasons for his dispair are demonstrated in an outpouring of anger, disgust, sorrow, and grief. He explains how everything in his life seems futile and miserable. He mourns the death of his father, is sickened by his mother’s marriage to his uncle, and also feels extremely miserable about the entire situation with regards to the value of his own life. He is so melancholic that he wishes he could die: “O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into dew” (I.ii.133-134). He would commit suicide if it were not a sin that would send him straight to hell: “that the Everlasting had not fixed his canon ‘gainst (self slaughter!)” (I.ii.136). Hamlet’s sorrow at his father’s death is matched by his outrage at the inappropriately quick marriage of his mother Gertrude to his uncle Claudius. Hamlet does not believe that his mother grieved the King’s death at all, saying that she shed “unrighteous tears” (I.ii.159). He is disgusted by though
