Hamlet's SoliloquyThe purpose of a soliloquy is to describe the thoughts and feelings of a certain character at a particular point in the play. It reveals the character's deepest beliefs and provides an unbiased perspective because it is simply the character speaking to the audience, but not directly, and not to other characters who might cause him to conceal his true opinions. Therefore, Hamlet's first soliloquy (Act 1, Scene 2) is essential to the play because it highlights his inner conflict caused by the events of the play. He reveals his true feelings and thus underlines the difference between his public appearance, his attitude towards Claude in the previous scene is less conflicting than here where he is directly insulted as a "satyr", and his inner feelings. In this essay, I will describe how Shakespeare communicates the troubles in Hamlet's psyche. Hamlet's despair stems from his mother's marriage to his uncle and this is what is the driving force behind what is being communicated. His constant repetition of how long it took the two to get married, "But two months dead...and yet in a month...A little month...In a month...the meanest speed" , suggests his disgust with the situation and that it is not necessarily the nature of their “incestuous” relationship that troubles Hamlet; plus the short time frame in which this happened. In fact, this is particularly well communicated to the audience because, throughout the soliloquy, the passage of time described by Hamlet decreases from "two months" to "in a month." This has the effect of emphasizing Hamlet's supposed contempt for his mother who only cried for a month, while also emphasizing that it is the time involved that upsets him in the middle of a paper...and only through the diction but also through the imagery, language and underlying messages of the text. It successfully highlights the divisions in Hamlet's character while helping the audience connect with him. Works cited and consulted: Boklund, Gunnar. "Hamlet." Essays on Shakespeare. Ed. Gerald Chapman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965. Levin, Harry. General introduction. The Shakespeare by the River. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Mack, Maynard. “Hamlet’s World.” Yale Review. flight. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rep. 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 number.