Hamlet's SoliloquyThe purpose of a soliloquy is to outline the thoughts and feelings of a certain character at a point in the play. It reveals the character's innermost beliefs and offers an unbiased perspective as it is simply the character speaking to the audience, albeit not directly, and not to other characters who might cause the character to hide his or her true opinions. Therefore, Hamlet's first soliloquy (act 1, scene 2) is essential to the play as it highlights his internal conflict caused by the events of the play. It reveals his true feelings and as such highlights the difference between his public appearance, his attitude towards Claudius in the previous scene is less conflicted than here where he is directly insulted as a "satyr", and his feelings within himself. In this essay, I will describe how Shakespeare communicates the turmoil of Hamlet's psyche. Hamlet's desperation stems from his mother's marriage to his uncle and this is the driving force behind what is communicated. His constant repetition of how long it took the two to marry, "But two dead months... yet within a month... A little month... Within a month... wicked speed," suggests his disgust with the situation and that it is not necessarily the nature of their "incestuous" relationship that troubles Hamlet; even more so the short time in which it occurred. Indeed, this is particularly well communicated to the audience as, during the soliloquy, the passage of time described by Hamlet decreases from "two months" to "Within a month". This has the effect of outlining Hamlet's supposed disdain towards his mother for only crying for a month, while also highlighting that it is the time it takes that bothers him to...... middle of paper ...... only through the diction but also through the images, language and underlying messages of the text. It successfully highlights the divisions in Hamlet's character helping the audience build a bond with him. Works cited and consulted: Boklund, Gunnar. "Hamlet." Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Levin, Harry. General introduction. The bank of the Shakespeare River. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Mack, Maynard. "Hamlet's World." Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Readings on Tragedies. Ed. Clarice Swisher. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1996.Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nn.