Jessica Sacker
Eng 151W
Professor Jacobs
Hamlet : The Thin Line Between Grief and Madness
William Shakespeare’s protagonist, Hamlet, of the play of the same name, has
continued to puzzle critics over the years. Hamlet outwardly feigns madness to disguise a
bloody plot to avenge his murdered father. However, many wonder if Hamlet’s madness
was real. I believe that Hamlet truly did only feign madness. Any further instability in
private behavior stemmed from grief over a broken personal life, and not mental illness.
As Arthur Kirsch writes in his article Hamlet’s Grief, “If vengeance composes the
plot of the revenge play, grief composes its essential content, its substance”(17). As
Kirsch notes, right from his first appearance in the play, Hamlet is overcome with grief
obviously because of his father’s death. Hamlet shows signs of “conventional
Elizabethan forms of mourning” meant to be relatable to an audience (19). Hamlet even
goes above and beyond convention, by arguing that mere outward signs of mourning,
such as his black clothing, forced breath, tears, and depressed expression and mood
cannot “denote [him] truly” or fully express his inner feelings of woe (I.ii.76-85).
Some argue that Hamlet’s grief is a kind of madness in/of itself , specifically
clinical depression. Freud, a renowned psychoanalyst, calls clinical depression by another
name, “melancholy” and explores what sets it apart from grief or mourning in his
writings. Interestingly, as Kirsch notes, “almost all of Freud’s ideas can be found in the
vast Renaissance literature on melancholy” (Kirsch 22). According to Freud, melancholy
and mourning are almost completely the same, sharing symptoms of “loss of interest in
the outside world”, “loss of the capacity to love”, and “inhibition of all activity”. Grief,
(or mourning) by itself, however, is temporary, and does not include lack of self-esteem
whereas melancholy does. (qtd in Kirsch 22).
One can obviously see a hint of nihilism when Hamlet describes the world as
“stale”, “flat” and “unprofitable” (I.ii.133) and he definitely seems hateful of his family
in the second act. However, Hamlet does not stay “catatonic in his melancholia”
(Jorgensen 253) for the whole play, and if such symptoms are temporary, they are more
characteristic of mourning than clinical depression. After Hamlet’s return from England,
Hamlet is increasingly better. He begins to display more interest in life, he takes
a more hopeful attitude towards the world, his thinking loses much of his morbid
quality, and his confidence in human nature is restored. In the final scenes of the
play, as in the jesting with Osric, or in the friendly fencing contest with
Laertes...his melancholia has almost disappeared (qtd in Jorgensen 241).
Hamlet’s grief does lessen eventually, and there are clear reasons why that would
have been difficult in first part of the play. Kirsch writes that “what a person who is
grieving needs is not the consolation of words, but sympathy” (20). Contrary to this, both
Hamlet’s uncle and mother try to discourage Hamlet’s sadness instead of sympathizing.
Essentially they shoot down his behavior most likely as an attempt to help, but only
manage to deepen his sorrow further. His mother advises him to cast off his sadness
because “ ’tis common: all that lives must die” (I.ii.72), his uncle also reiterates the
mortality of man, calling Hamlet “stubborn” for his mourning, and his grief “unmanly”
(I.ii.94). Even the ghost of Hamlet’s father, when revealing his brother as his murderer,
declines sympathy to Hamlet. Instead of even trying to console his son, he asks to be
avenged and remembered, which serves to keep the memory of his death fresh in
Hamlet’s mind (Kirsch 26). How can Hamlet get over his father’s death, when the ghost
of his father appears to him?
The incestuous quality of the remarriage between Hamlet’s mother and uncle, and
the fact that it occurred so soon after his father’s death truly amplifies the pain and
loneliness of Hamlet’s loss, and shatters any power their consoling may have on Hamlet.
He is shocked and cannot understand how his mother can feel so content in the face of
such an unjust marriage... how she almost seems to completely forget her old husband,
who (according to Hamlet) was far superior to the new king in every way (I.ii.150-158).
Even before Hamlet discovers that his uncle is his father’s murderer he feels betrayed and
estranged from his family and the world (I.ii.133).
Hamlet only continues to be stripped of such personal relationships that,
according to Freud, “nourish the [soul] and give it purpose and vitality” (qtd in Kirsch
31). It started with his mother and uncle’s apathy towards his father’s death, along with
their marriage. Next, he learns of his uncle’s murder of his father, destroying any chance
at reconciliation. His love was rejected by Ophelia, and this “echoes his mother’s
inconstancy”, denying him a affection when he needed it the most (Kirsch 29), and
finally loses her to her suicide. He even faces betrayal from his former friends
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern when they are sent to spy on him and oversee his death.
Once Hamlet cut himself off from those who reminded him of his situation, (He traveled
to England, then returned alone and spent time with a faithful friend Horatio), he was
able to heal (Jorgensen 241).
Another way to differentiate between melancholy and mourning, and discern
which Hamlet suffers from is the presence of self-esteem. Freud also writes, “the fall of
self esteem is absent in grief” (qtd in Kirsch 22). Hamlet does have moments where he
scorns his own reluctance to act. However, as a whole, Hamlet seems more discontent
with the world and the acts of others than himself throughout the play. At one point when
Hamlet criticizes himself, he compares his reluctance to take action against his uncle to
the dynamism of an actor. While the actor is able to “drown the stage with tears and
cleave the general ear with horrid speech”, Hamlet remained a “dull and muddy-mettled
rascal, peak/Like a John of dreams, unpregnant of [his] cause” (II.ii.556-563). Hamlet,
however, makes a decision to act, and fix his own dilemma whereas one with clinical
depression, as Freud says, would not make any effort (qtd in Kirsch 22). Hamlet resolves
the same soliloquy by planning to prove his uncle’s guilt by using the visiting actors to
put on a show mimicking his uncle’s crime and watching his reaction (“the play’s the
thing/Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king” [II.ii.590-601]). Hamlet, whenever
critical of himself, finds a way to improve to fit the situation.
It is plain to see that Hamlet was consumed by grief throughout a large part of the
play. However, Hamlet eventually becomes much more active and violent. This
behavior is still linked to his grief. Jorgensen, in his article, Hamlet’s Therapy, mentions
a prevailing idea in “Renaissance psychotherapy” that Shakespeare was likely familiar
with. It was the idea that it was possible for grief to “stem from suppressed
anger”(Jorgensen 250). In fact, Hamlet was most depressed in Act I when he is first
introduced: the instance in which he directly mentions emotions he was holding back. He
decides against outwardly protesting his mother’s actions, saying “But break, my heart,
for I must hold my tongue.” (I.ii.158).
Jorgensen quotes from Timothy Bright, a Renaissance psychoanalyst, who wrote
that once such suppressed anger is released in a person, it would replace the grief felt by
them (qtd in Jorgensen 250). Whereas Hamlet is mournful to the point of mentioning
suicide in his first soliloquy (“Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d/His canon ‘gainst selfslaughter...” [I.ii.131-2]), he actually plans dynamic action after an angry outburst
regarding his uncle in the next act:
...Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murder’d,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab,
A scullion! Fie upon’t! Foh! (II.ii.576-583)
This was in the same soliloquy mentioned earlier in which Hamlet forms his plot reveal
his uncle’s guilt. Basically, “in Hamlet’s progress from grief to anger” we see his
“change from passiveness to angry activity” (Jorgensen 254). Once Hamlet released his
pent up anger, his symptoms of mourning ended and he was able to act. According to the
psychology accepted during Shakespeare’s time, Hamlet’s grief and anger are connected,
stemming from the same causes.
This anger continues to influence Hamlet’s behavior in later parts of the play. In
Hamlet’s first appearances, he is a “moral man”. Utter, in his article In Defense of Hamlet
notes that there is a “deep contrast between Hamlet’s sensitivity, and the dull, brutalized
living of the court around him” (Utter 140), and this divide is the source of his negative
emotions, both grief and anger. Hamlet is the only one to see any wrongdoing with his
mother and uncle’s marriage, and finds Denmark’s customs of “heavy-headed revelry”
and drinking “more honour’d in the breach than in the observance” (I.iv.16-17).
However, for Hamlet, the shock of meeting his father’s ghost, and hearing its request,
“clouded his intensely moral nature” (Utter 141). The ghost directly “tells Hamlet to kill”
and it “enjoins Hamlet to identify with him in his sorrow and to give murderous purpose
to his anger” (Kirsch 27). Hamlet does not act on the ghost’s testimony right away, but
when his uncle’s guilt is confirmed, Hamlet wholeheartedly embarks on his relentless
journey for vengeance, starting with the murder of Polonius. Hamlet’s apathetic attitude
towards his own murders is often times interpreted as madness, but considering Hamlet’s
moral divide with the royal court and his father’s request to be avenged, it may very well
been justified...especially to a medieval audience which may have been accustomed to
such conventions in revenge plays.
Hamlet’s accidental murder of Polonius whom he mistook for his uncle, was a
“tragic error” in which “passion prevails over reason” (McClosky 449). Hamlet’s
passionate drive for revenge goes a little too far, and although an accident, Hamlet coldly
justifies Polonius’ death, describing it as :
A bloody deed. Almost as bad, good mother,
As kill a king and marry with his brother.
/Thou wretched, rash intruding fool, farewell. (III.iv.27-31)
Later, while he was in England, a similar situation happens when Hamlet discovered an
order for his death decreed by his uncle, and forged it so Rosencrantz and Guilderstein
(who were spying on him) would be the ones killed. Hamlet justifies their deaths too,
claiming that “they are not near [his] conscience, their defeat/Does by their own
insinuation grow” (V.ii.58-59). In Hamlet’s anger, he projects his uncle’s guilt onto
every other member of the royal court. Hamlet justified violence against those who
denied him sympathy, and those who appalled him with their insensitivity and lack of
morals. According to Hamlet, nothing he did was any worse than the crimes he had
already seen committed in the court of Denmark: the sources of his anger and of his grief.
This clouding of Hamlet’s judgment, just like his grief, was temporary, as he later
apologizes to Laertes for the murder of his father, Polonius, and actually wanted
reconciliation. When speaking to Laertes, Hamlet attributes his rashness and apathy in
killing Polonius to a previous “madness”, most likely to continue his deception, but
nevertheless to express the knowledge of his wrongdoing (V.ii.222-239). Laertes cannot
forgive Hamlet, and replaces him as the one driven solely by passion and a drive for
revenge, while Hamlet is only looking for a “friendly fencing match” (Jorgensen 241). In
the end Hamlet only makes the final blow towards his uncle after his treachery is
broadcast, when there is no longer any shred of doubt to question Hamlet’s morality.
Hamlet’s judgment was clearly clouded, but not from psychosis. As a reaction to
emotional trauma: a plea for revenge from his father’s ghost, and immoral behavior from
those around him, Hamlet acted on an impassioned sense of morality- his conscience was
still there, just temporarily silenced. Any rash action Hamlet may have took was caused
by external factors, instead of a madness of his own... and were perhaps even justified!
Works Cited
Jorgensen, Paul A. "Hamlet's Therapy." Huntington Library
Quaterly Shakespeare 27.3 (1964): 239-58. University of
California Press. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.
Kirsch, Arthur. "Hamlet's Grief." The Johns Hopkins University
Press 48.1 (1981): 17-36. The Johns Hopkins University
Press. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.
McCloskey, John C. "Hamlet's Quest of Certainty." College
English 2.5 (1941): 445-51. National Council of Teachers of
English. Web. 23 Mar. 2011.
Shakespeare, William, Burton Raffel, and Harold Bloom. Hamlet.
New Haven: Yale UP, 2003. Print.
Utter, Robert P. "In Defense of Hamlet." College English 12.3
(1950): 138-44. National Council of Teachers of English.
Web. 23 Mar. 2011.