Importance of Hamlet’s Soliloquies in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Shakespeare often has his characters speak in soliloquies during the course of his plays. Soliloquies are essential to the presentation of a story through the medium of a play because they provide the opportunity the chance to tell the audience specific pieces of information which cannot be disclosed through normal conversation. In his work, Hamlet, Shakespeare’s title character is shown to speak in seven soliloquies. Each soliloquy advances the plot, reveals Hamlet’s inner thoughts to the audience and helps to create an atmosphere in the play.
The first soliloquy which Hamlet delivers gives the audience their first glimpse of him as a character. Hamlet is reflective and depicts the way he views his own position; he tells of his father’s death and then his mother’s quick remarriage. He says, “It is not, nor it cannot come to good” (I, ii, 163), when referring to the marriage of his mother. This gives the audience a hint of foreshadowing because it is the first time when Hamlet mentions the future. This speech also reveals his thoughts further when he says that his mother is frail because she is a woman, while he also admits that he knows he must hold his tongue. During the course of this speech Hamlet makes several allusions to historical figures and this demonstrates to the audience that he is an intelligent young man. One of these allusions is when he compares the love his late father had for his mother to Hyperion to Satyr; this is a reference to the sun god and his affections. This clearly shows the audience that his heart is breaking not only for the loss of affections towards his mother but the fact that she does not seem to care about this loss. A second allusion made during the course of this soliloquy is a reference to Niobe, a figure in Greek mythology who was so grief stricken she could not stop