Melancholic Elements of Shakespeare

Although Hamlet is a quintessential Shakespearean tragedy, there are certain elements in this work of drama that transcend this genre and render it outright melancholy. This quality of sadness, of a dissatisfaction and a despondency with oneself, the world, and all who inhabit it, is personified within the titular character. Shakespeare tries to connect readers to the human condition. Despite all the many instances in which Hamlet is perceived as mad, he is above all a highly melancholy being, a young man prone to study and contemplation and, disgusted by all he finds within his family and life around him, prone to a marked sadness in which he finds little reason to live—save to kill. A thorough analysis of some of the key passages within this play indicates the extent of Hamlet’s melancholy and its definition as a profound depression exerted upon the prince.

One of the principle causes of Hamlet’s melancholy is the fact that his father, the king of Denmark, was murdered. This incident is exacerbated by the fact that the murderer is actually a family member: the young man’s uncle. Lastly, to complete the disillusion Hamlet feels about the state of family (and even about the virtue in women, it seems), his mother—the queen—hastily remarried his father’s killer within a matter of months. Hamlet appears disconsolate at this final point and expresses his poignant melancholy with suicidal thoughts which the following quotation indicates. “O that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew! / Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d/His canon ‘gainst self slaughter!” (I.ii.129-132).  Melancholy is a state in which one is dissatisfied and depressed about all he or she perceives. This quotation proves that Hamlet is moved into this depressed state since he is wishing that he were dead and that there were not religious convictions prohibiting suicide.

Whereas the former passage alludes to Hamlet’s melancholy as expressed through his thoughts of suicide, there are others in which he discusses his complete disillusionment with the world itself. Such disillusionment, of course, is another hallmark of melancholy. Hamlet verbalizes these thoughts to his friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz in the second scene of the second act in the subsequent quotation. “I have of late…lost all my mirth…it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory...the air…this…firmament…it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours” (II.ii.287-290). The imagery in this passage certainly proves the extent of Hamlet’s melancholy. Not only has he lost his good humor, but he also perceives the world around him as corrupt and poisonous.

By the third act of the play, it has become clear that Hamlet’s overwhelming sadness can only in death. He states as much in one of the more notable passages from this work when he alludes to his perception of death as beneficent. He muses that: “To die,--to sleep,--…and by sleep to say we end / The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks / That flesh is heir to,--‘tis a consummation / Devoutly to be wished” (III.i.62-65). Again, this passage gives voice to Hamlet’s suicidal yearnings. Moreover, it expresses his belief that death is a relief from his melancholy state and from all the afflictions of life itself.

Thus, it is fairly apparent that Hamlet is inhabited by a melancholy that is borne out of the circumstances he encounters when he initially returns to Denmark. The murder of his father and the betrayal of his uncle and mother certainly hasten this feeling within him. Other incidents, such as the loss of the woman he once physiology loved, Ophelia, also contribute to this sentiment. 

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet”. www.shakespeare.met.edu. 1601. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/hamlet/full.html