Part one of term paper
A Soliloquy is a dramatic convention, in which the character stands alone on stage, speaking. Originally it was a plot device, to enable a character to tell the audience what he planned to do next, for example, in the course of revenge. But the device is heightened in Shakespeare as it enables a character to reveal the ‘inner soul’ ...

Part two of term paper
... of mind in his first soliloquy is deeply nihilistic; Shakespeare presents the world as an ‘unneeded garden’, ‘rank in nature’. In the first soliloquy and the third, Hamlet is particularly nihilistic. In the first he says; ‘Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve into a dew!’ He clearly has suicidal tendencies, which crop up again in the third soliloquy; ‘When he himself his quietus make With a bare bodkin’ Clearly, Hamlet ...