Hamlet

Cedric Erhard
English 11AP, Period 4
Mr. Reed
1 March 2006

1.2.133-164

Hamlet is left alone after hearing Claudius and Gertrude trying to convince him to give up his mourning, to accept the fact that all men die even as his father died. Talking to himself, he proclaims his wish that he were dead, that his “sullied flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew.” He complains that God forbids the alternative – suicide, indicating that Hamlet is a man of some faith. That idea is supported earlier in the scene when Claudius declines to allow Hamlet to return to Wittenberg. That university was the center of theological debate early in the sixteenth century when Martin Luther launched the Reformation. Perhaps Hamlet is a theology student. Hamlet explains his desire to die by lamenting the corruption of the world he calls “weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.” When he calls the world “an unweeded garden,” the image recalls the Garden of Eden. This picture shows that garden after the fall of humanity; it is a place corrupted by sin.

Hamlet next turns his complaints toward the king and queen, his uncle and mother, who married about a month after King Hamlet’s funeral. Later in the scene, Horatio also observes how close the two events came while Hamlet suggests the same food was served at the funeral dinner and the wedding feast. At length, the prince praises his father’s love for Gertrude. The king protected her from every harm, while her love seemed only to increase the more time she spent with him. He compares King Hamlet to the Titan who ruled the sun and contrasts him with Claudius whom he compares to a satyr, suggesting the contrast between the purity of King Hamlet’s love to Claudius’s lustfulness.

He expresses his anger toward his mother for her hasty re-marriage, remarking that she had barely broken in the shoes she wore for her first husband’s funeral procession before wearing them in her march down the marriage aisle when wedding Claudius. Using another classical allusion, he compares her mourning over King Hamlet to the mourning of Niobe in Greek mythology who died of crying over her lost children. This allusion hints at the idea that Hamlet feels she should be mourning for her own son’s loss of a father. With more condemnation, he asserts that even animals mourn their lost mates longer than Gertrude mourned for King Hamlet. In once more expressing his contempt for his uncle, Hamlet asserts that Claudius is less like his brother the king than Hamlet is like the Greek hero Hercules. He crowns his criticism of his mother by accusing her and Claudius of incest, the marriage of close kinsmen.

When he ends by saying, “it cannot come to good,” he parallels Horatio’s concern in the first scene that the ghost’s appearance is an omen of disaster to come. Then the prince ends by declaring that he must keep his thoughts to himself even though his heart is breaking for his dead father and his too hastily married mother. The entire speech is Hamlet’s answer to Claudius’s request that his nephew look upon his uncle as a father. That answer is a resounding “No!”