Hamlet, the Melancholy One Essay - 3212 Words

Hamlet, the Melancholy One Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet features the most famous protagonist in English literature – Hamlet. Inseparable from his character is the melancholy which permanently afflicted him. This essay concerns itself with this aspect of Hamlet. Harry Levin explains the choices open to the melancholy hero in the General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare: The explanation of Hamlet, â€Å"What a piece of work is a man!† (II.ii.303), carries an ironic reverberation. His melancholy gaze looks up and down: skyward toward â€Å"this brave o’erhanging firmament† and earthward toward the grave. Those two portraits which he shows to the Queen illustrate man’s potentialities for good and for evil. The†¦show more content†¦(35) Horatio and Marcellus exit the ghost-ridden ramparts of Elsinore intending to enlist the aid of Hamlet. The prince is dejected by the â€Å"o’erhasty marriage† of his mother to his uncle less than two months after the funeral of Hamlet’s father (Gordon 128). There is a post-coronation social gathering of the court, where Claudius insincerely pays tribute to the memory of his deceased brother. Hamlet is present, dressed in black, the color of mourning, for his deceased father. His first words say that Claudius is A little more than kin and less than kind, indicating a disapproval of the new king’s values. Hamlet’s first soliloquy is quite depressing; it emphasizes the frailty of women – an obvious reference to his mother’s hasty and incestuous marriage to her husband’s brother: Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, As if increase of appetite had grown By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- Let me not think ont--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she followd my poor fathers body, Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, Would have mournd longer--married with my uncle, My fathers brother, but no more like my father Than I to Hercules: within a month: Ere yet the salt of mostShow MoreRelated Melancholy in Hamlet Essay1039 Words   |  5 Pages Melancholy in Hamletnbsp;nbsp; Melancholy has caused many to look down on the world and themselves, driving themselves to suicide or treating their life like it has no meaning. 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