Study Notes on Hamlet's Melancholy (from A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy).

WHY DOES HAMLET DELAY?

The reason is: he's melancholic. This state of mind is quite unnatural to him and induced by special circumstances. The Schlegel-Coleridge theory states that Hamlet's ability to act has been eaten up by thought. Bradley states that Hamlet's reflectiveness played a certain part in the production of the melancholy and was only a contributory cause of his irresolution to act. Of course, melancholy once established only induced more and more thinking so it is a symptom as well.

HAMLET WAS NOT NORMALLY INDISPOSED TO ACTION

Nobody who knew him considered him a mere scholar who has never executed a deed. In the court he was highly considered although he was deprived of the throne by his uncle. He was the favorite of the people who have no inclination to love frail philosophers. He was fond of fencing and practiced even in his darkest hours. He must have usually been resolute and fearless: how else would he have followed the ghost, how would he have killed Polonius, dealt with the king's commission, boarded the pirate ship, leapt into the grave, executed his final vengeance?

WHAT DOES HAMLET'S MELANCHOLY IMPLY?

He was inclined to nervous instability, to mood-swings. He was easily consumed and for a long time by moods whether joyous or depressed. This meant "melancholy" to the Elizabethans, and indeed, the theory of temperaments was so familiar in Shakespeare's time that he may have made Hamlet melancholy on purpose. He gave to Hamlet a temperament which would not develop melancholy unless under certain exceptional circumstances.

HAMLET IS A DISILLUSIONED IDEALIST

There is in Hamlet an unusually sensitivity to moral good and evil - in the broadest sense of the word "moral". He had the soul of the youthful poet, an unbounded delight and faith in everything good and beautiful, a heart thrilled with wonder and swelling into ecstasy at the sight of the world. Where else in Shakespeare do we find a character who so profoundly idealizes his father? And does that imply that he must have idealized his mother, seeing her so fond of his father, clinging to him, and following him to his grave all in tears? He had a tendency to see only what is good in people unless forced to see otherwise, and when so happens, he becomes ruthless (as in the way he treats Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). He says to Laertes 'I loved you ever'. When he first sees R&G we see that tendency to take men at their best. His love for Ophelia surely had to do with her innocence, simplicity, and sweetness. His friendship with Horatio is based on the same foundations of humanity. The king knew all this and so he stated that since Hamlet is 'generous and free from all contriving' he would never doubt that he contrived against him. Hamlet will not have Horatio say he's his servant. When guards state their duty to him he replies: 'Your love, as mine to you.'

The negative side of this idealism as his aversion to evil is more developed in Hamlet the tragic character than in Hamlet of the earlier days. Hamlet's disgust at his uncle's drunkenness, his loathing of his mother's sensuality, and her shallowness, his contempt for everything false. Hamlet is not a revolutionary but only tends to judge people according to his own rigorous standards of human worth.

WHAT'S HAMLET'S INTELLECTUAL GENIUS LIKE?

It's definitely not a gift such as a genius for music or mathematics. It lays in his quickness of perception, great agility in shifting mental attitude, striking rapidity and fertility of resource. When his natural belief in others does not make him unwary, he sees through people and masters them.

His genius must be defined as speculative and imaginative, but without being poetic or philosophical. He must have been an ardent observer of human nature. He must have also kept reconsidering things too curiously as Horatio thought. There was a necessity in his soul to search below the surface and to question what others took for granted. He was forever rebuilding and unmaking his world in his mind, dissolving what others thought were solid facts and discovering what to others were general truths. To Horatio it must have been given that there's a divinity shaping our destinies, but to Hamlet it's a truth hard won.

Hamlet also had a mind that generalizes too rapidly.

WHAT'S TRAGICALLY DANGEROUS ABOUT ALL THIS?

In certain circumstances, these character traits might cause a catastrophe. Take into consideration Hamlet's profoundly moral being and imagine a violent shock to it combined with a situation in which there is nothing he can do. He begins to sink into melancholy - there's evil around him and there is no way he can set it straight. His imaginative mind and his inclination to generalize extend the effect of this shock to his whole being and mental world. With the state of melancholy thus deepened and fixed, a sudden demand of swift and decisive action is required from him. Naturally, he cannot act - most people find it difficult if not impossible to react when melancholy. And finally, the futility of this process and the shame of his delay further weaken him and disable action.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?

Let's turn to the first place in which Hamlet shares his thoughts and feelings with us. This should be the place where the author is likely to point out his meaning most clearly. In Hamlet's first soliloquy the fact that he is sick and tired of the world is perfectly clear, and so strong is this feeling that Hamlet can state that the only thing that keeps him away from suicide is religious fear. He further states that the sudden ghastly disclosure of his mother's true nature has fallen heavily on his heart, probably, even with a worse blow at the time of his deep sorrow for the death of the father he idealizes. We must realize that all his life Hamlet must have believed in his mother in a way in which only such a sun could. He stresses out the 'incestuous sheets'. Now, to us this aspect might seem irrelevant BUT to Hamlet it is indicative of the corruption of the court and the electors to the crown whose acquiescence must have been shocking to Hamlet: the world is corrupt, they just play the game, they have no moral judgment in them, a man can 'smile and smile and be a villain'. Shocking, shocking! We know he's too ready to generalize. How can he be kind to Ophelia when 'frailty thy name is woman', not 'my mother' but 'woman'. He's weak, bitter and edgy. No love to make him strong, sweet and soft.

And this is the moment fate chooses to introduce the ghost of his dead father to tell him that his mother was cheating on him while he was alive and that his own brother killed him. The ghost asks the Hamlet wreak his vengeance.

IS HAMLET INSANE?

No. He's not far from insanity, though. The longing for death might become a strong impulse of self-destruction. The disorder of feeling and will might extend to sense and intellect. Delusions might arise. A man might become incapable and irresponsible. But when we listen to Hamlet alone or talking to Horatio he exhibits no signs of this madness. He is therefore capable of being a tragic agent which, were he mad, according to the pattern of Shakespearean tragedy, he could not be.

WHAT DOES HIS MELANCHOLY ACCOUNT FOR?

First of all, it accounts for his inaction. His general feeling is that of melancholic disgust and apathy, never dispelled for more than brief intervals. Such a state of mind is naturally adverse to any kind of action. The body is inert, the mind indifferent, its responses are:

It does not matter.

What's the point?

It's not worth while.

It's no good.

This melancholy is also consistent with his constant dissection of the task assigned, but this is not a healthy deliberation of a man with such a difficult and demanding task. The action may hardly be named thinking since it is nothing but falling back on the sick bed, unconscious weaving of pretexts not to get up, the whole situation only increasing and deepening self-contempt.

Melancholy also accounts for his bouts of energy. There we see old Hamlet, suddenly stimulated to reappear, and the impulse to action works itself out before he has given it time to subside. He has to act on the spur of the moment because if he doesn't he'll find a reason not to act. This explains the pleasure those situations give him. He feels in them his old force and escapes from his self-disgust.

Melancholy accounts for the painful features of his character: his savage irritability, his self-absorption, his callousness, his insensibility to the fates of those whom he despises, and to the feelings of those he loves.

Two things can be accounted for by melancholy and nothing else. The first is his lethargy. It seems that at times Hamlet actually forgets his duty. The ghost says 'remember me' and 'do not forget' and these things are not accidental with Shakespeare. The second is his own inability to understand why he delays. The sight of Fortinbras's army stings Hamlet into shame and he asks himself in genuine bewilderment: Why? Is it cowardice? Is it conscience? Does conscience make a coward of us all? Is it sloth? Can I be thinking too precisely on the event? Why do I delay if I have the cause, the will, the strength and means to act? These are the questions of a mind stimulated for a moment to shake off the weight of melancholy, and, because at that moment he is free from it, he cannot understand its paralyzing pressure.