Melancholy Hamlet Essay examples -- Essays on Shakespeare Hamlet

Melancholy juncture In Shakespeares tragic drama, Hamlet, the multi-faceted share of the hero is so complex that this essay will enlighten the reviewer on only one aspect of his personality his melancholy dimension. Our fellow feeling of the true extent of the protagonists melancholic mental commonwealth needs to be informed. A.C. Bradley in Shakespearean Tragedy presents convincing order regarding the true depth of the heros melancholy sentiment Hamlet and Horatio are supposed to be fellow-students at Wittenberg, and to have left it for Elsinore little than two months ago. Yet Hamlet hardly recognizes Horatio at first, and speaks as if he himself lived at Elsinore (I refer to his bitter jest, Well teach you to drink deep ere you get down). Who would dream that Hamlet had himself just come from Wittenberg, if it were not for the previous linguistic process about his going back there? How can this be explained on the usual view? Only, I presume, by supposing that Hamlet is so drop down in melancholy that he really does almost forget himself and forgets everything else, so that he actually is in doubt who Horatio is. (370) The depressing aspect of the sign imagery of the drama tend to underline and reinforce the plays melancholy. Marchette Chute in The Story Told in Hamlet describes such imagery of the opening scene The story opens in the cold and dark of a winter night in Denmark, while the guard is being changed on the battlements of the royal castle of Elsinore. For two nights in succession, just as the tam-tam strikes the hour of one, a ghost has appeared on the battlements, a figure robed in complete armor and with a face like that of the dead king of Denmark, Hamlets father (35... ...ven Press, 1999. Rpt. from Introduction to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Philip Edwards. N. P. Cambridge University P., 1985. Levin, Harry. General Introduction. The riverbank Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co., 1974. Mac k, Maynard. The World of Hamlet. Yale Review. vol. 41 (1952) p. 502-23. Rpt. in Shakespeare Modern Essays in Criticism. Rev. ed. Ed. Leonard F. Dean. impertinent York Oxford University P., 1967. Rosenberg, Marvin. Laertes An Impulsive but Earnest Young Aristocrat. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardo. San Diego Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Masks of Hamlet. Newark, NJ Univ. of Delaware P., 1992. Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http//www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.html No line nos.