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
his bloody plot against his uncle to avenge his murdered father. However, a controversy
lies in the actuality of said madness: could Hamlet actually have been crazy? I believe
that Hamlet truly did feign madness. Any further instability in private behavior stemmed
from grief over a broken personal life, and not mental illness.
As Arthur Kirsch writes, “If vengeance composes the plot of the revenge play,
grief composes its essential content, its substance.”() As Kirsch notes, right from the 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 (), but argues that even such outward signs of
mourning, such as wearing black, forcing breath, crying, and depressed expression and
mood cannot “denote [him] truly” or fully express his inner feelings of woe. (I.ii.76-85)
Kirsch writes that “what a person who is grieving needs is not the consolation of
words, but sympathy”(). Both his uncle and his mother try to discourage Hamlet’s
sadness instead of sympathizing. Essentially they shoot down his behavior, deepening 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). Furthermore, Hamlet is
shocked at the haste at which his mother remarried after her husband’s death, and finds it
horrifying that the remarriage is with a relative as close her brother-in–law...especially
someone as pathetic (according to Hamlet) compared to the original king (I.ii.150-158).
This remarriage reinforces the “pain and loneliness of Hamlet’s loss” (Kirsch), Hamlet
cannot understand how his mother can feel so content in the face of such injustice, and
feels betrayed and cut-off from her. The ghost of Hamlet’s father, when revealing
Hamlet’s uncle as his murderer, even declines sympathy to Hamlet: instead of consoling
his son, he asks to be avenged (Kirsch).
Throughout the play, Hamlet’s world continues to be “emptied of all the human
relationships” that according to Freud, a renowned psychoanalyst, “nourish the [soul]
and give it purpose and vitality” (qtd in Kirsch). This can be seen in first the insensitivity
from his mother, and then betrayal by his uncle, amplified by his father’s testimony.
Even rejection of love from Ophelia paired with her untimely death, and manipulation
from his former friends Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern suffocate his mental state.
Before the relationship of this grief can be made to Hamlet’s violence, it must be
mentioned that some critics think Hamlet’s grief is a kind of madness in/of itself ,
specifically clinical depression. Freud calls clinical depression by another name,
“melancholy” and explored its difference with grief or mourning in his writings.
Interestingly, “Almost all of Freud’s ideas can also be found in the vast Renaissance
literature on melancholy” (Kirsch). 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 by itself, however, is
temporary, and does not include lack of self-esteem whereas melancholy does. (qtd in
Kirsch).
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 from sadness” (Jorgensen)
for the whole play, and if such symptoms are temporary, they are more characteristic of
mourning than clinical depression. Throughout the play,
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. (Jorgensen)
Regarding self confidence, Hamlet seems more discontent with the world and the
acts of others than himself throughout the play. However he does scorn his own
reluctance to act and take revenge against his uncle, his father’s murderer. At one point,
Hamlet actually puts himself down when he compares his reluctance to take action
against his uncle to the dynamism of an actor:
...He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
/Yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak
Like A John of dreams, unpregnant of my 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. Hamlet resolves the same
soliloquy by planning to prove his uncle’s guilt by using the visiting actors. He says
I’ll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle. I’ll observe his looks;
I’ll tent him to the quick. If a do blench,
I know my course...
/...The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king. (II.ii.590-601)
It is evident that Hamlet’s grief was not a symptom of madness. So what can
Hamlet’s angry outbursts, and violent behavior in later acts of the play be attributed to?
Jorgensen, in his article, mentions a prevailing idea in “Renaissance psychotherapy” that
Shakespeare was likely familiar with that “grief stems from suppressed anger”(). In fact,
Hamlet was most depressed in Act I when he is first introduced. That is also the instance
in which he directly mentions the 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).
According to Timothy Bright, a Renaissance psychoanalyst, once such suppressed
anger is released, the grief caused by its suppression would subside. He writes “For
although [grief and anger] both breed a dislike, yet that proceedeth of other cause,
rebateth the force of it which first gave occasion, as one pinne is driven out with another
so the later may expel the former” (qtd in Jorgensen) 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 self-slaughter...” [I.ii.131-2]), but he only plans action in his after
an angry outburst regarding his uncle:
...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)
Hamlet’s grief and anger go hand in hand. “In Hamlet’s progress from grief to anger” we
see his “change from passiveness to angry activity” (Jorgensen).
Anger continues to influence Hamlet’s behavior throughout the play. Hamlet
seems at first to be a “moral man” . There is a “deep contrast between Hamlet’s
sensitivity, and the dull, brutalized living of the court around him” (Utter). Hamlet is the
only one to see any wrongdoing with his mother and uncle’s marriage. He also does not
act on the ghost’s testimony until he is sure of his uncle’s guilt, but somewhat still, “the
emotionalism of the Ghost’s first revelation...clouded [Hamlet’s] intense moral nature”
(Utter). Hamlet’s accidental murder of Polonius who he mistook for his uncle was a
“tragic error” in which “passion prevails over reason” (McClosky). 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)
In Hamlet’s anger, he projects his uncle’s guilt onto every other member of the royal
court...and his former friends Rosencrantz and Guilderstein who he knew were working
with his uncle, who he eventually ordered dead. Hamlet justified violence against those
who denied him sympathy, and those who appalled him with their insensitivity and lack
of morals. Anger and Revenge, are the obvious, albeit simplistic motives behind
Hamlet’s murders...probably “the majority of the people in [Shakespeare’s] audience
were not ready for the idea that personal revenge should be superseded by something
higher” (Utter). As explained before, however, the grief clouding Hamlet’s judgment
was temporary, as he later apologizes to Laertes for the murder of his father. Hamlet
attributes his lack of judgment to a previous “madness”, most likely to continue his
deception, but nevertheless expresses the knowledge of his wrongdoing (V.ii.222-239).
Hamlet never acted out of evil, but perhaps but out of anger and grief.
He obviously had faced emotional trauma and betrayal from those he once trusted. It is
safe to say that any rash action he may have took was caused by external factors, instead
of his own madness...and were perhaps even justified!