Oh Too Solid Flesh Would Melt Soliloquy Meaning

Shakespeare’s tragedy “Hamlet” is a playwright about the lengths one is willing to take in an effort to gain vengeance and avenge a lost loved one. In “Hamlet”, there are several soliloquies spoken by Hamlet that ellicit hatred, seek to place blame, and fuel a thirst for vengeance, but none like Hamlet’s “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” soliloquy from Act I, scene 4 of the play. Literary devices such as repetition and allusions help convey the meaning of this soliloquy in the context of the tragedy that is “Hamlet”. Repetition within the “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” soliloquy allows Hamlet to convey and emphasize his emotional distress through the soliloquy. In lines 1, 4, 22, and 28 of the soliloquy, Hamlet

In line 12, he uses the allusion of Hyperion, a god, to compare to his own father as a wonderful man and king, and compares Claudius to a satyr, an ugly, drunken woodland creature that was half man and half goat. Hamlet’s uses of this allusion to express to the audience that his father was that of a god compared to his uncle, who was inwardly an ugly man who lusted for power and sexual sin. This reflects the meaning of the soliloquy by bashing his uncle for being a cruel murderer and furthers the point that he isn’t half the man Hamlet’s father was. Another allusion in the “Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt” soliloquy is about Niobe. Niobe was a mother in Greek mythology who mourned unceasingly over the deaths of her children. Hamlet compares the story of Niobe to his own mother to illustrate the lack of mourning in regards to the death of her husband, his father. He curses his own mother for after only a month being fully recovered from her loss, whereas Niobe cried continually for the loss of her own children. This emphasizes the meaning of the poem to call out the monstrosities Hamlet finds to be in Gertrude and Claudius. These two allusions found in the