Prince Hamlet's character dominates Shakespeare's tragedy "Hamlet", lending the play its maximum philosophical and metaphysical magnitude. His first soliloquy in Act I Scene II reveals his destiny to be a tragic hero. His feelings of inadequacy will preordain his fate as he is charged with a responsibility he does not know how to fulfill. Dense with imagery and allusion, Hamlet's first soliloquy is a passionate outburst of extreme anguish and bitter revulsion, which culminates to a stoic acquiescence of heartbreak and still inactivity.

Hamlet's fervent first soliloquy offers a striking contrast to the preceding controlled and artificial conversation he had with Claudius and his court. Hamlet reveals to the audience his profound melancholia and the causes of his misery. He experiences such despair over King Hamlet's death and his mother's hasty and unnatural remarriage that he considers suicide for the first time. In an incoherent torrent of aversion...