A talented writer and playwright, William Shakespeare is known for having mastered and employed numerous literary devices essential to quality writing in his many plays. In the classic revenge tragedy Hamlet, he certainly puts these skills to good use. Throughout Hamlet's soliloquy in Act I, Scene 2, Shakespeare manifests several harsh, specific images depicting Hamlet's feelings of both helpless depression and angry frustration to convey to the audience a tone of despair and misery in the young Prince of Denmark.
At several different points in the soliloquy, Shakespeare underscores Hamlet's feelings of depression and helplessness to communicate to readers the overlying sense of dismay felt by the play's titular character. Opening with the words, "O, that this too, too sullied flesh would melt.that the Everlasting had not fixed/ His canon "gainst self-slaughter!", Shakespeare introduces a dejected individual wishing to end his own life. With these lines, he creates an image of a broken, lacerated young man who would rather commit suicide than endure the pains of his present predicament. Fearing a strict, punishing God, however, Hamlet cannot pursue this course of action, giving readers a picture of a disobedient little boy cowering from the hand of an angry father. Shakespeare once again conjures up this image of a helpless, timid boy at the end of the selection, as Hamlet laments, "It is not, nor it cannot come to good/ But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue." Presenting the prince as a trapped, depressed young man in a very unenviable position, Shakespeare uses imagery to enhance the soliloquy's somber tone.
All throughout the selection, Shakespeare also generates depictions of Hamlet's frustration over the infestation of Denmark by his uncle Claudius, which further adds to the sad, hopeless ambiance of the scene. Hamlet's confused anger comes to the surface when he calls the world "an unweeded garden/ That grows to seed.
