Authors use various literary elements to give insight into the mental composition of their characters. In Shakespeare's “Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,” we can trace Hamlet's mental process through his soliloquies. Hamlet's first soliloquy reveals him to be thoroughly disgusted with Gertrude, Claudius, and the world in general. “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, seem to me all the uses of this world” (1284), he said. He is saddened by the death of his father, who he admired as a king and husband to his mother. His grief over his ....