Madness and melancholy

Madness and melancholy are themes that are interlinked in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. While madness refers to insanity, melancholy refers to a state of depression. 

Hamlet’s melancholy 

Hamlet is a sensitive thinker, and already from the beginning of the play he feels overwhelmed with sadness and meaningslessness. This is made even worse by the feeling that he is entirely isolated in his mourning for the late king as everyone else at court seems to have moved on with life. The ghost’s revelation that his father was murdered by Claudius then sends Hamlet into emotional turmoil.

Hamlet actually describes himself as melancholic. At the end of the second act, he even confesses in a soliloquy that he may have imagined the ghost’s appearance. As someone of a melancholic nature, he is particularly vulnerable to such apparitions and deceptions: 

The spirit that I have seen May be the devil: and the devil hath power To assume a pleasin...