What is the conceit(s) in Hamlets first soliloquy in Act I, Scene 2?
scarletpimpernel Teacher High School – 12th Grade Editor Debater Expert Educator $(document).ready(function() { $(‘a.toggle_expert_titles’).click(function() { $(‘#show_expert_titles’).toggle(); return false; }); }); Concisely, a conceit is an extended metaphor or unusual comparison. During Elizabethan times, conceits were common and normally flowery or representative of complicated logic. In Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet, Hamlet first compares the world to a forgotten and overtaken garden, controlled by the grotesque of the earth. He claims that the world now only grows “things rank and gross in nature” (1.2.139). Not only does this conceit demonstrate Hamlet’s suicidal thoughts which would enable him to leave behind so despicable a place as the earth as become to him, but it also hints at the relationship between his mother and uncle–Hamlet believes that what they are doing is “rank” and that it goes against nature. A second conceit begins later in Line 143 when Hamlet compares his mother
