Rhetorical analysis for William Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 1, Scene II, lines 129-158

Throughout William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, readers experience an array of rhetorical devices meant to convey emotion, tone, and attitude. In Act I, Scene II, lines 129-158, the reader is introduced to Hamlet’s first important soliloquy. Hamlet speaks unveils his speech after enduring an unpleasant scene at the court of Claudius and Gertrude, later being asked by his mother and new stepfather not to return to his studies at Wittenberg but to remain in Denmark, presumably against his wishes. Through diction and imagery, Hamlet expresses his disgust and painful sorrow about his father’s death and this mother’s quick remarriage.

Through the use of diction, Hamlet displays his tone of painful sorrow and intense disgust. Hamlet thinks for the first time about suicide. Desiring his flesh to "melt", wishing that God had not made "self-slaughter" a sin, and saying that the world is "weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." In other words, suicide seems like a desirable alternative to li...