Page "Hamlet" Paragraph 67

Hamlet is the most skilled of all at rhetoric.

He uses highly developed metaphors, stichomythia, and in nine memorable words deploys both anaphora and asyndeton: " to die: to sleep — / To sleep, perchance to dream ".

In contrast, when occasion demands, he is precise and straightforward, as when he explains his inward emotion to his mother: " But I have that within which passes show, / These but the trappings and the suits of woe ".

At times, he relies heavily on puns to express his true thoughts while simultaneously concealing them.

His " nunnery " remarks to Ophelia are an example of a cruel double meaning as nunnery was Elizabethan slang for brothel.

His very first words in the play are a pun ; when Claudius addresses him as " my cousin Hamlet, and my son ", Hamlet says as an aside: " A little more than kin, and less than kind.

" An aside is a dramatic device in which a character speaks to the audience.

By convention the audience realises that the character's speech is unheard by the other characters on stage.

It may be addressed to the audience expressly ( in character or out ) or represent an unspoken thought.