Hamlet | Melancholy and Grief in Hamlet

In the first excerpt, Oscar James Campbell contends that the nature of Hamlet's melancholy, or state of depression, was more easily perceived by an Elizabethan audience than by a modern one. Further, the critic asserts that while Hamlet is indeed emotionally unstable, he is not insane. In the second excerpt, Arthur Kirsch considers Hamlet a play which generates great intellectual energy, but perhaps more importantly reflects an experience of profound pain and suffering for the protagonist.

Oscar James Campbell

[Campbell contends that the nature of Hamlet's melancholy, or state of depression, was more easily perceived by an Elizabethan audience than by a modern one. Further, the critic asserts that while Hamlet is indeed emotionally unstable, he is not insane. Shakespeare dramatizes the prince's changeability by altering the mood of the play's structure from periods of meditative pauses to bursts of action. Since Hamlet is usually at the center of these pauses and surges, his character conveys a manic-depressive quality. In essence, his depressed phase is...

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