In Hamlet, what literary terms can you identify in the following passage? O, that this too too solid flesh would melt Thaw and resolve itself...

There is a wealth of literary devices aside from the
standard metaphors: soliloquy, meter, repetition, auxesis (hyperbole),
metonymy/synecdoche, allusion, sibilance, consonance, alliteration, repetition,
anacoluthon, aphorism, to name some devices.  Of course, many of these devises overlap.
Take the most notable and obvious devices. This is a soliloquy written in iambic
pentameter.  Also, the tone of this soliloquy is heightened by its alliterative use of
sibilance that gives the impression that Hamlet is hissing a venomous tongue (we’ll get
to tongue in a bit so hold that thought.) Anacoluthon is the choppy thought process; the
disjointed nature of the soliloquy.

Let’s look at the first few lines.
First, There is repetition of “too” and “God”.  Also, this collection of lines is known
as an auxesis, i.e., the use of hyperbole of increasing force. This is typical teenage
exaggeration that also introduces an allusion to one of Shakespeare’s other “youthful”
characters: Richard II. To refresh some memories. Richard was the boy king who could not
keep his crown. He lost it to his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke who became Henry IV. We have
these marvelous lines from Richard and his queen as they lament the loss of the throne
of England.

NORTHUMBERLAND
My lord,--
RICHARD
II
No lord of thine, thou haught insulting man,
Nor no man's lord! I
have no name, no title-
No, not that name was given me at the
font-
But 'tis usurp'd. Alack the heavy day,
That I have worn so
many winters out
And know not now what name to call myself.
O that I
were a mockery king of snow,
Standing before the sun of
Bolingbroke,
To melt myself away in
water-drops!
4.1.253

And then in the next scene at 5.1.1
Richards's wife
meets him as he is conveyed to the
Tower:

QUEEN
This way the king will come. This is the
way
To Julius Caesar's ill-erected tower,
To whose flint bosom my
condemned lord
Is doom'd a prisoner by proud Bolingbroke.
Here let
us rest, if this rebellious earth
Have any resting for her true king's
queen.
(Enter Richard II and Guard)
But soft, but see, or rather do
not see
My fair rose wither. Yet look up, behold,
That you in pity
may dissolve to dew,
And wash him fresh again
with true-love tears.

Another allusion to Richard II is the garden
metaphor -a common Shakespearean image- but, in Richard II it is extensively explored in
Act 3, scene 4. This garden aphorism forms a part of Hamlet’s faulty inductive reasoning
(also a trait of immaturity) that we also see a few lines later with the aphorism of the
frailty of women. There are also the standard allusions and comparisons of the god-beast
dichotomy that is extensively explored in the play.

I love the
sibilant consonance at the end in the lines, “She married. O, most wicked speed, to
post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets.”

Finally,
there is Hamlet’s use of metonymy and synecdoche in the last line saying that he must
hold his tongue. Here tongue substitutes for voice or opinion,
etc.