Hamlet's preoccupation with hypocrisy surfaces more profoundly in his first soliloquy. The fact that his mother has joined in an incestuous union with her husband's brother less than a month after his father's death overwhelms Hamlet. A simple beast without the reasoning skills of a human being would have shown more respect for a dead mate, moans Hamlet. Worse yet, Hamlet must question her judgment. Hamlet sees Claudius as a satyr — a beast-man driven by his appetites — whereas Old Hamlet was Hyperion, the sun god himself. How can he trust a woman who would trade a god for a goat? In addition to his cynicism toward women, Hamlet's self-portrait begins to emerge in this soliloquy. When he says that his Uncle Claudius corresponds to his father, King Hamlet, no more "Than I to Hercules," Hamlet discloses his pacifistic demeanor. Hercules was a warrior who acted on impulse and charged enthusiastically into battles without questioning the ideology of the fight. Unlike Hercules, Hamlet drowns in words and perpetually struggles toward understanding.
Knowing his weakness, Hamlet decries his inability to commit suicide, revealing his devotion to the laws of Shakespeare's religion. Hamlet refers to Gertrude's marriage to Claudius as incestuous, though history and cultural practices often encourage marriage between a widow and her brother-in-law. Elizabethan laws had only recently been changed to ban such unions. Hamlet's pain and embarrassment over his mother's incest — a marriage that besmirches her entire culture — is great enough to make him long for the comfort of death but not great enough to allow him to reject "His canon 'gainst self slaughter."
When Barnardo, Marcellus, and Horatio tantalize Hamlet with news of the Ghost, Hamlet excitedly questions them as to the details of the sighting and asserts his absolute surety that the Ghost is "honest" rather than a "goblin dam'd." Horatio contradicts his own earlier observation that the old king was angry by telling Hamlet that the Ghost seemed clothed "More / In sorrow." The Ghost's misery reinforces Hamlet's belief that the Ghost is in earnest. As his interchange with Horatio illustrates, Hamlet's sardonic sense of humor disguises his own aching melancholy and nagging suspicion that some "foul play" is afoot.
