Halmet's Act 1, Scene 2 Soliloquy: Brief Notes of Explanation

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
    (He wishes he would simply dissolve away)
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
    (Wants to commit suicide, but it is a sin by religious law)
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
    (His routine life has become uninteresting and useless)
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
    (Compares his life to an unkept, weed-filled garden)
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
So excellent a king; that was, to this,
Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother
    (The previous king, his father, was like a god compared to the new king, Cladius -- his uncle -- who is more like a monster)
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
    (His father was so protecting of his mother, so much that he would protect her from the winds)
Must I remember? why, she would hang on him,
    (Even as they moved forward in their relationship, the love between his father and his mother was still strong)
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on: and yet, within a month–
Let me not think on't–Frailty, thy name is woman!–
    (Comparing women to his own frailty, foreshadowing his future treatment of women in the play)
A little month, or ere those shoes were old
With which she follow'd my poor father's body,
Like Niobe, all tears:–why she, even she–
    (Just a month ago his mother was crying unstoppably for the death of his father)
O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason,
    (He compares his mother to a such a beast without reason, saying that even a mere beast would've mourned longer than she had)
Would have mourn'd longer–married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules: within a month:
    (Makes sarcastic comparison that Cladius is no more like his father than Hamlet is to Hercules)
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
    (She remarried even before she had finished mourning, and most disgracefully to someone in her own family, (incest))
It is not nor it cannot come to good:
But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue.
    (Hamlet knows he should not speak of his feelings for it is considered treason to speak against the king)

 

Node your homework.