"Hamlet's character is a dramatic study in melancholy". Discuss. Or, What are the causes of Hamlet's melancholy?

"Hamlet's character is a dramatic study in melancholy". Discuss.

 Or,

What are the causes of Hamlet's melancholy?

Ans. There are ample evidences in the play that before the murder of his father, Hamlet was of a cheerful, frank and free disposition. He was neither weak, nor a one-sided scholar given to vain speculation. He was not only a keen student given to reflection but also a man of action, given to fencing and other martial exercises—Had he lived, he would, "have proved most royally," and that is why Fortinbras has his body borne away "like a soldier." Such was the young Hamlet, who under ordinary circumstances would have lived a happy life and proved a popular King. But the rude shocks, caused by the sudden death of his father and the hasty remarriage of his mother to his uncle Claudius, transformed his whole being. Further his melancholy intensifies when he learns from the Ghost that his uncle Claudius, the present King is the murderer of his father.

It is in a state of weariness and disgust with life that we find Hamlet in the beginning of the play. He appears first in the drama with, "dejected behavior of visage" mourning his father's death. His uncle, addressing him as his son, bids him, "throw to earth this unrevealing woe" and the Queen advises him to cast his, "nighted colour bf'. But Hamlet in his first soliloquy gives an indication of the depths of depression and gloom into which he has already sunk, "O that this too too solid flesh would melt, / Thaw and resolve itself into

He is disgusted with life and longs for death. All the characters in the play notice his sudden transformation and give their own interpretations of it. He broods incessantly on the death of his father  and the remarriage of his mother till his whole being is exhausted and weakened. And the cruel fate chooses the hour of his weakness for the revelations of the Ghost. In the hour when his whole being is sinking towards annihilation there comes on him with a shock of astonishment and terror the revelation of his mother's adultery—a dishonor which he had not even dreamed of—and his father's murder. With this shattering blow a demand is made upon him in the name of everything sacred and dearest, to arise and act. Though his brain reels and totters under the impact of the severe blow, yet for a moment his soul leaps up to answer the demand: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right."

Henceforth, Hamlet is a melancholic figure. The rest of the play exhibits the effect of melancholy on his character and its consequences. He grows sarcastic, callous and bitter, insensitive even to the feelings of those he loved. He is-unable to fulfil his duty, and indulges in vain self-excuses and unavailing self-reproaches, hesitates and delays, and his inaction results in tragedy for all. But Hamlet's melancholy is totally different from the madness that he feigns; he is still- in some way removed from insanity. Hamlet's melancholy is the central point in the play.