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GR: The unweeded garden   Written by Laraine (5/19/2003 12:15 a.m.)
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Hamlet's firs soliloquy starts like this:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
But two months dead:
Is Denmark the unweeded garden, or is it "this world" in general? We already know that more people than Hamlet think that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark". Is he just re-interating that theme?

When he talks about dying or committing suicide, it makes me think that he's talking about life in general. But when he says "That it should come to this!" he seems to be talking about his father's life, and the "state" of Denmark as being profaned by his mother and uncle.

Even though it hasn't come up yet, Hamlet's father was poisoned in his garden, as was the character of Gonzago in the play-within-a-play. Is regicide a sin so great it's like original sin, filling Eden with "things rank and gross"?


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