What literary devices are present in act 1, scene 1 of Hamlet?

Act I, Scene 1 of Hamlet is the exposition of Shakespeare's play, and, as such, it establishes the mood and provides background information for the drama. In generating the mood and information, there are a number of literary devices that are employed.

As the scene opens, Francisco, a soldier, comes to relieve the watchman and officer, Bernardo. Francisco is happy to be relieved because it is bitter cold and he is "sick at heart" (l.8); further, he tells Bernardo that he has had a quiet night, with "Not a mouse stirring"(l.10), both of which are figures of speech for unhappy and nothing happening, respectively. 

In lines 35-36, there is visual and auditory imagery:
Bernardo speaks of "yond same star" that...has moved along its course "t'illume" one part of heaven" where it "burns" (visual imagery). There is also a "bell then beating one" (auditory imagery).

In line 64, Marcellus refers to the time as "this dead hour," affording the hour personification.
In another example of this personification, in line 76, Marcellus asks why "the night is joint-laborer with the day," referring to the war preparations that go on twenty-four hours a day.   

In line 101, there is synedoche used--"But to recover of us, by strong hand" as the body part "hand" is used to mean the fighters that Fortinbras has assembled.

In line 112-113 a worried Horatio makes a historical allusion to Julius Caesar: 

In the most high and palmy state of Rome,

A little ere the mightiest Julius fell,

and a mythological allusion to Neptune as he describes what occurred the night before Caesar's death stars, using such metaphors [unstated comparisons that are implied in this case] as "with trains of fire and dews of blood" to describe some of the sights of that evening.

In 149-150 after the ghost appears, there is a simile in Horatio's words as he describes the spirit that "started (jumped) like a guilty thing."

In line 152 there is a metaphor as Horatio continues his description of the ghost, comparing the rooster to a trumpet: "The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn."

What literary devices in Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet characterize him?

Hamlet's soliloquy in Act 1, Scene 2 (Lines 131-161) provides a number of literary devices that offer insight into Hamlet's character.

One is found at the beginning, where Shakespeare uses a metaphor as Hamlet wishes he could just disappear:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew (131-132)

Hamlet is wishing that he could become unsubstantial, like dew on the plants (which evaporates in the sun) or like a candle (which could just melt away). It is at this point that he bemoans God's laws against suicide ("self-slaughter"). This shows how unhappy Hamlet is after his father's recent death, and after his mother and step-father's criticism that he has mourned too long. As Claudius puts it, Hamlet's continued grief is sinful:

...'tis a fault to heaven (104)

Then Hamlet compares the world to a neglected piece of land, another metaphor:

'tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature

Possess it merely. (137-139)

Here Hamlet speaks of how things used to be (implying that when his father lived, the world was a garden). He compares the world now to a rank place, where weeds abound (he could be referring to Claudius) and things that are "gross" have taken over. (This may well refer to the wedding between Claudius and Gertrude. In Elizabethan times, the marriage of a widow to her brother-in-law was considered incestuous.) There is also the sense here that his mother has turned her back not only on her dead husband's memory, but also on her son by marrying again so soon.

Hamlet lets his unhappiness over his mother's recent marriage be known in lines 140-159. He personifies "Frailty" when he speaks to it as if it were a person, something that could hear his words:

Frailty, thy name is woman! (148)

In this portion of the soliloquy, Hamlet uses allusion when he compares his mother's mourning to Niobe.

...she follow'd my poor father's body

Like Niobe, all tears (151-152)

This is a reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses and the story of Niobe and Anfione who ruled Thebes. Niobe angered the gods and lost all of her fourteen children; she cried until she turned to stone. We learn that Hamlet is disgusted with Gertrude's "show" of grief: he believes her tears were empty. He has lost faith in his mother.

Hamlet then compares his mother to an animal, noting that animals cannot reason but one that had lost its mate would have mourned longer than his mother did:

O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason

Would have mourn'd longer— (153-154)

Then Hamlet uses an allusion again to compare his uncle and his father, no more alike than Hamlet is to the demigod, Hercules:

...married with my uncle,

My father's brother, but no more like my father

Than I to Hercules. (154-156)

...who was able to...

surpass all mortal men in strength, size and skill...

In these last two examples, Hamlet is puzzled: how could his mother (1.) lower herself first to act with less reason than an animal and (2.) marry a man so much less than the husband she buried? This shows that Hamlet loved his mother, but it also reveals jus how devoted he was to his father.

What literary device is used in Act 1, Scene 2 of Hamlet?

When Hamlet speaks to his stepfather and uncle, the new king, he employs a pun to indicate his displeasure at the king's quick marriage to Hamlet's mother after his brother, Hamlet's father's, death. King Claudius asks why the clouds still hang upon Hamlet, referencing his sadness and continued mourning. Hamlet replies that he is "too much in the sun," where "sun" is a pun on the words "son" and "sun"; he matches the king's metaphor having to do with clouds with "sun," but he also implies that he is "son" too many times now that he is both his father's and mother's son as well as his uncle/stepfather's (1.2.69).  

Hamlet also employs an allusion to the Garden of Eden when he describes life as an "unweeded garden / That grows to seed. Things rank and gross in nature / possess it merely" (1.2.139-141). This reference alludes to the Garden of Eden, or Paradise, after the fall of Adam and Eve. Once God banishes them from the garden because they have disobeyed him, it is no longer a paradise. Nothing good seems left to Hamlet now that his father is gone and his mother, he feels, has betrayed his father. His innocence seems to be lost, just as innocence was lost in the Garden of Eden when Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Like Eve, Hamlet now believes that he knows evil.

He employs another allusion, this time to Greek mythology, when he compares his mother to Niobe, a woman who so grieved the loss of her children that she could not stop crying. Hamlet says that "[Gertrude] followed [his] poor father's body, / Like Niobe, all tears [...]" and yet, now, just a short time later, she seems fine and happy with her new husband (1.2.152-153). He points out his mother's hypocrisy, or, perhaps, her lack of true feelings by suggesting that she seemed like Niobe then, but is miraculously fine now.

What literary devices are used to describe Claudius's character in Hamlet, act 1, scene 2?

In act 1, scene 2, Claudius is characterized by his own words and through Hamlet's soliloquy.

Claudius uses the high, formal speech of a king as he addresses the court and various courtiers as well as Hamlet. Shakespeare characterizes Claudius as a smooth speaker, a man who uses the literary device of juxtaposition to segue into his own concerns. Claudius juxtaposes wisdom and sorrow and deftly turns from mourning for the dead king to thoughts of himself:

Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature

That we with wisest sorrow think on him

Together with remembrance of ourselves.

How is it that the clouds still hang on you?

What literary devices are used to describe Claudius's character in Hamlet, act 1, scene 2?

In Hamlet I.ii, Hamlet describes Claudius, or at least his relationship to Claudius, as being

A little more than kin and less than kind.

This line is so much fun! First, it's a joke on the similarity between the words 'kin' (a relative outside your immediate family of parents, children, and siblings), and 'kind', and on 'kind's double meaning--the way we know it, meaning nice or considerate, and an older meaning, something like 'ancestor' or 'relative'.  Claudius, according to Hamlet, is more than a distant relative, because he is now both uncle and stepfather, but he isn't very nice or considerate.

Some literary devices in this line are alliteration between kin and kind, irony (Hamlet speaks in an aside to the audience), and a double entendre.

We learn a lot about both characters from just this one line--Hamlet is clever with words, and he's angry, but more comfortable with insinuation and double entendres than a direct confrontation. Claudius, if we believe Hamlet's take on him, is unkind, a particularly faulty part of his personality when it comes to the way he treats his family, the people he should be kindest to.

What literary devices are used to describe Claudius's character in Hamlet, act 1, scene 2?

I would say Claudius is sneaky.

When Claudius talks to Hamlet in Act 1, Scene 2, he uses metaphors.

Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother's death

The memory be green,  (act 1, Scene 2)

 He also mentions “bear our hearts in grief and our whole kingdom

To be contracted in one brow of woe”

 By using these flowery metaphors, he seems to be trying to prove that he is sensitive, and cares about the former king.  As we know, this is not true.  He is the one who killed the king, after all!

What literary device is used in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3, Line 63?

This question has been previously asked and answered. Please see the link below, and thank you for using eNotes.

What literary devices are used in the ghost's speech in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5?

In act 1, scene 5, of Hamlet, the Ghost's speech features alliteration, which refers to starting words that are close to each other with the same sound. The Ghost says he is doomed "to fast in fires." The repetition of the "f" sound is an example of alliteration.

The Ghost later says that he could tell a tale whose "lightest word," or least frightening word, would "harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood." These are examples of personification, or making something that is not alive into something animate. A word cannot by itself slice up one's soul or freeze one's blood, but the personification used by the Ghost makes it sound as if words can accomplish these types of acts.

The Ghost also uses similes, or comparisons that use the word "like" or "as." For example, he says that his tale will make Hamlet's hair stand up "like quills upon the fearful porcupine." In this simile, the Ghost says that Hamlet will be so frightened by the tale the Ghost has to tell that Hamlet will look like a porcupine because his hair will stand up like quills. He later uses a metaphor, or a comparison that does not use "like" or "as," to refer to his brother, Claudius, as "a serpent that did sting thy father's life." In other words, he likens Claudius to a serpent who killed him by stinging him and who now wears the crown.

What literary devices are used in the ghost's speech in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5?

The ghost of Hamlet's father says,

My hour is almost come
When I to sulfurous and tormenting flames
Must render up myself.

Here, the ghost substitutes the word "hour" to refer to time, using a figure of speech called metonymy. Metonymy occurs when a writer substitutes a detail associated with a thing for the thing itself. An hour is a measurement of time, and so we understand what the ghost means when he says that his "hour" to return to Purgatory is near.

Later, the ghost says to Hamlet that, if he could tell his son about Purgatory, the tale

Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine.
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.

In this passage, the ghost uses a metaphor comparing Hamlet's soul to land that has been plowed and broken up (harrow can also mean to cause distress to, but not typically with the word "up"), conveying the idea that the story of Purgatory would be so awful that it would tear up Hamlet's soul. Further, the ghost says that the tale would freeze his blood; now, it wouldn't actually freeze Hamlet's blood, but it would make Hamlet feel very frightened. Therefore, he's created another example of metonymy, using the idea of blood running cold to stand in for simply saying that it would be frightening (consider that the expression, "My blood ran cold," means to be scared). Further, Hamlet's blood, in isolation, is not young; it is his whole self that is young, and so this is an example of synecdoche (when a part of something stands in for the whole thing).

Next, the ghost uses a simile to compare Hamlet's eyes to two stars; he means that they would come out of their sockets as stars that shoot across the sky. Next, another simile compares Hamlet's hair to the quills of a porcupine because his individual hairs would seem to separate from each other and then stand straight up. Finally, he says that people with "ears of flesh and blood" are not meant to hear about Purgatory; this is another example of synecdoche: flesh and blood are part of what makes up the whole human ear.

What literary devices are used in the ghost's speech in Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5?

When the ghost of Hamlet's father meets his son, he explains the circumstances of his murder and commands Hamlet to avenge it. In doing so, the ghost's lines include:

• Inversion:  "My hour is almost come, /When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames/Must render up myself."

This inverted syntax was likely employed for metrical purposes.

• Simile:  And each particular hair to stand on end,/Like quills upon the fretful porpentine

Here, the ghost tells Hamlet that if he could speak freely, what he would have to say would make Hamlet's hair stand on end, like quills on a startled porcupine.

• Allusion:  "And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed/That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,"

Lethe was, in Greek myth, the spirit of forgetfulness, often associated with a river in the underworld.  

• Metaphor:  "The serpent that did sting thy father's life/Now wears his crown."

The ghost uses a metaphor to identify Claudius, his murderer.  Claudius is the late King Hamlet's brother, and he has taken the throne of Denmark, along with his wife, Gertrude.

• Repetition:  "List, list, O, list!" and "O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!"

These repetitions, the first to command Hamlet to listen, and the second to express the outrage of Claudius's fratricide and regicide, emphasize the pathos of the cruel and unnatural circumstances of the end of the ghost's earthly life.

What literary devices are used in Hamlet, act 1, scene 5?

The first literary device used in this scene is meter. Rather than being written in prose, the speeches are written in iambic pentameter. This means that each line in the longer speeches consists of five iambic "feet." An iambic foot consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. This rhythmical pattern is repeated five times in most lines, with occasional variations.

Next, the content of the scene is presented to us by "mimesis". In other words, the actors in the play pretend to be characters speaking to each other, rather than there being a narrator who tells a story.

The scene uses the device of "simile", meaning a direct comparison using a comparative term such as "like" or "as." An example of this is the line "Like quills upon the fretful porpentine."

The ghost also uses the technique of praeteritio, or calling attention to something by claiming to avoid the topic, as when he says "I could a tale unfold whose lightest word . . ."

The ghost also uses the technique of metaphor or indirect comparison, as when he uses the phrase "freeze thy young blood". Obviously, the blood of a living person does not literally freeze, and so this is figurative language comparing a mental state of terror at imagined horrors to physical cold.

What literary devices are used in Hamlet, act 1, scene 5?

When the ghost speaks to Hamlet, he uses the literary device of alliteration. Alliteration occurs when words beginning with the same consonant are placed in close proximity. In the quote below, the ghost uses "f" alliteratively in the words "fast," "fire," and "foul," and he uses "d" alliteratively in "day," "done," and "days." This puts emphasis on those words and adds majesty to the ghost's utterance from beyond the grave:

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature . . .

What literary devices are used in Hamlet, act 1, scene 5?

When the ghost of old King Hamlet charges his son to exact revenge on his killer, he calls Claudius, his brother and murderer, a "serpent," thus associating him via allusion with the sinful serpent in the Garden of Eden (1.5.45).  Not only is this an example of an allusion to the serpent in the Bible, but it is also a metaphor.

Further, he compares his former union with Gertrude, his wife, to a "celestial bed" and her new union, with Claudius, to "garbage" (1.5.64-65); this, too, is metaphor.  He also calls the poison Claudius used, "swift as quicksilver," employing a simile (1.5.76).  About Gertrude, again, old Hamlet charges his son to "Leave her to heaven / And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge / To prick and sting her" (1.5.93-95).  Thus, he compares the actions for which she will feel guilty to thorns via another metaphor.  There is no need for Hamlet to exact revenge on her because her guilt with accomplish it for him.