[Campbell contends that the nature of Hamlet's melancholy, or state of depression, was more easily perceived by an Elizabethan audience than by amodem one. Further, the critic asserts that while Hamlet is indeed emotionalry unstable, he is not insane. Shakespeare dramatizes the prince's changeability by altering the mood ofthe play's structurefromperiods of meditative pauses to bursts of action. Since Hamlet is usually at the center of these pauses and surges, his character conveys amanic-depressive quality. In essence, his depressed phase is marked by brooding inaction, whereas his manic phase includes abrupt lunges toward action. Campbell asserts that Hamlet is more than a"creature of psychotic impulse," however,for Shakespeare generates sympathy for him by "enabling his melancholy to express itself in some of the most pro found philosophical lyrics ever written in the English language." Because.....
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