Hamlet: #1

            Shakespeare uses the second scene in Act I to give the audience an uneasy first impression of Claudius. King Hamlet’s death is a mystery to begin with, so Claudius snatching the thrown from Hamlet so quickly adds to the suspicion. Gertrude is a symbol of Denmark’s unification, so Claudius thinks that if he marries her, he will automatically gain the country’s respect and trust. The atmosphere in the courtroom is supposed to be cheerful, but it seems superficial. It is odd that only Hamlet is taking the mourning of his father seriously, as everyone else is so quick to move on. Claudius declares that the cycle of death and marriage is a balanced scale: “Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen,/ Th' imperial jointress to this warlike state,/ Have we (as ’twere with a defeated joy,/ With an auspicious and a dropping eye,/ With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage,/ In equal scale weighing delight and dole) Taken to wife” (I.ii.8-14). However, this cycle is unnatural; a marriage does not perfectly balance a death. Claudius’s speech is also full of oxymoronic language, which symbolizes the oxymoron between King Hamlet’s death and Claudius and Gertrude’s marriage.