Hamlet’s Veil Lifts
Literary Essay — William Shakespeare’s Hamlet
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he creates a play centralized around a prince. Presumably the reader or audience tends to assume that all princes are spoiled, carefree, and naive. However, Shakespeare alters this image in order to create his tragedy. Prince Hamlet recently lost his father in death and witnessed his mother’s new, incestuous, and abrupt marriage to his uncle. As a result, Hamlet remains in a state of mental turmoil, frustration, and confusion. In the first two lines of Hamlet’s soliloquy of Act II Scene II, Shakespeare illustrates Hamlet’s loneliness and negative attitudes about himself.
In Act II Scene II Line 527, Hamlet begins his soliloquy saying, “Now I am alone.” This could either works as a cue for other actors, to prepare the audience for a soliloquy, or to announce poetically his loneliness. One may infer that Hamlet feels alone as a result of his father’s death and his mother’s sudden marriage. If Gertrude gave birth to another child, then Hamlet would become the bastard son. This would lead to a reason for sadness and self-pity. Prince Hamlet, like many sons and daughters from broken homes feel as if their mothers have deserted them. This could also lead to Hamlet’s loneliness. Gertrude is trying to satisfy her new husband and does not consol her son in the time of his sorrows. In Hamlet’s mind his father is dead and his mother acts as if nothing has happened. This leaves Hamlet in a confused state. He thought his mother loved his father; however, he does not understand how his mother could remarry within two months of his father’s death. In Hamlet’s mind his family has been destroyed, and he has no one left. He has lost a piece of himself and nobody seems to recognize this situation. In this first line of the soliloquy Shakespeare establishes Hamlet’s loneliness; moreover, he continues to build into this loneliness with Hamlet’s negativity and self-pity.
The feeling of loneliness can invoke negative attitudes and pessimisms. Shakespeare illustrates this in the second line when he writes, “Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I!”. The reader or audience may have anticipated this next line to follow. Hamlet is already complaining he is alone and then he follows it with next line with a solemn “Oh” sound. Hamlet begins to downgrade himself by calling himself a “rogue” and a “peasant slave.” He is a prince, so why is he calling himself a “rogue” and a “peasant slave”? When Shakespeare uses these terms, the audience receives a feeling of negativity. Being alone is a brief description of what it is like to be a rogue. Rogue is defined as many things. One definition is a beggar or a wanderer. It also could mean a dissolute person formerly accountable under the various vagrancy acts. Dissolute is also a negative term, meaning loose in morals or conduct. Shakespeare speaks of morals throughout the play, specifically when he questions whether the ghost is the devil trying to play on his sadness. Vagrancy means wandering around place to place with no means of support. Hamlet has no support from anyone while his mind roams aimlessly, when trying to understand his feelings. Hamlet may not physically wander from place to place but his mind searches to understand the changes that have taken place in his life. Hamlet also refers to himself a “peasant slave”. In the time of Shakespeare, peasants made up a large portion of the population. The audience in 1600 would understand Hamlet’s negativity when watching a prince rename himself a peasant slave. He views himself even lower than a peasant.
Shakespeare not only chooses words that define each other but also selects words that share a similar sound. The words “alone”, “oh”, and “rogue” all have a solemn drone when read together. He specifically chooses these words to illustrate Hamlet’s emotions in his soliloquy. Shakespeare also chooses to reuse the words “I” and “am,” in both lines. The repeated usage of “I am” and then “am I,” shows the reader he is the one being affected by all these changes and corruptions. Shakespeare also employs “I am” to show Hamlet’s obsessions with his own confusions and frustrations. It is common for people to downgrade themselves when they do not understand life’s circumstances.
Throughout the first two lines of Hamlet’s soliloquy Shakespeare exposes Hamlet’s innermost feelings of loneliness and negativity. In life these two vices along with many others go hand and hand. Shakespeare expresses the first vice in the opening line and shows what other vices may follow from the feeling of solitude. If being alone is a negative term in one’s opinion than the mind can expand to anything else that may be as destructive. As the saying goes, “misery loves company.”
