Hamlet's First Soliloquy Analysis

Like anger is to fury and red is to crimson, so too are soliloquies in a play comparable (and nearly synonymous) to the first person point of view in a novel. An actor’s job is to convey emotion to an audience, but in a simple reading of Hamlet, stage directions and dialogue are all the common reader has to interpret deeper meaning and emotion within characters. Soliloquies therefore play a critical role in the analysis of a character’s motivations, thoughts, and point of view. In the Prince of Denmark’s case, the progression of his soliloquies indicate a shift from a suicidal to homicidal mindset, and furthermore demonstrate the dangers associated with blame, whether it is placed on oneself or on others. Although it is common for a person to blame himself for problems or shortcomings, Hamlet takes such an idea to extremes. As he laments how “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable [the world] seems to [him],” (29) Hamlet indicates not that the world has those qualities, but that it appears that way to him. Thus, right out of the gate in his first soliloquy, Hamlet

Even though he seems to cope much better with his own inadequacies after the fourth soliloquy, he deals with the immense pressure on him by turning his rage outward. Although in the fifth soliloquy he vows to “speak daggers to [Queen Gertrude] but use none,” (161) his rage scares her to the point where Gertrude questions, “Thou wilt not murder me?” (171). Hamlet’s anger goes so far as to cause him to stab Polonius through a curtain, and he would have killed Claudius during his sixth soliloquy except that Hamlet would not be “revenged to take [Claudius] in the purging of his soul.” (167). When he does act, the Prince of Denmark does so where he shows no remorse for the pain he inflicts on others. Instead, Hamlet decides in his final and most haunting soliloquy that his “thoughts will be bloody or nothing worth [thinking of]”