1) Hamlet's zealous first soliloquy provides the audience with the reasons for his deep despair and depression. He conveys profound disgust with his being a slave to his "flesh,"(131) and forced religious impotency in escaping to impermanence. Hamlet expresses his lack of self worth and contempt for his mother's actions in uncharacteristic, boisterous dialogue with himself. .
"O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt/.
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!.
Or that the everlasting had not fix"d.
His cannon against self-slaughter! O God! God"(131-135).
The first two lines create graphic imagery of Hamlets grief, his feelings of inadequacy and betrayal forming a desire for dissolution. There is a sense of urgency, or passion in his repetition of "too,"(131) which makes his yearning feel like need. Notice that at the end of the second line the pun in "resolve into a dew!/," Where "a dew"(132) has the dual connotation of water, and the phonetic value of the French word for goodbye, "adieu." It implies that he wishes to change into a "goodbye," or, to disappear. In the next two lines Hamlet is clearly discussing suicide with the mention of "self-slaughter,"(134) but also commenting on religion when he states "the everlasting,"(133) and "his cannon"(134) which are references to God and his making suicide a sin. It is therefore assumable that Hamlet wishes, at this moment, that he could kill himself, but does not wish to die a sinner. Hamlet continues with his depressed rant stating "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,/ Seem to me all the uses of this world!"(135-136) He likens the earth to an "unweeded garden"(137) where only "rank and gross"(138) entities exist and thrive. It is at this point in Hamlets speech that he a changes focus from his feelings to the nature of his grief. We discover that Hamlets father, the king of Denmark, is not yet two months dead and his mother has already married her brother-in-law.
