Hamlet, the MelancholicShakespeare's tragedy Hamlet features the most famous protagonist in English literature: Hamlet. Inseparable from his character is the melancholy that afflicted him permanently. This essay deals with this aspect of Hamlet. Harry Levin explains the choices open to the melancholic hero in the General Introduction to The Riverside Shakespeare: Hamlet's Explanation, "What a Work is a Man!" (II.ii.303), carries with it an ironic reverberation. His melancholy gaze looks up and down: towards the sky towards “this brave firmament above” and towards the earth towards the grave. Those two portraits that he shows to the Queen illustrate the potential of man for better or for worse. The scale ascends or descends with the spiritual and carnal aspects of its dual nature; he can aspire to be a divine Hyperion or he can humble himself as a brutal satyr. Hamlet's existential dilemma echoes Montaigne's self-questioning, not only through the language of John Florio's translation but in its ambiguous balance between skepticism and faith.(8) Hamlet's melancholy did not prevent him from choosing the noblest of available options. But let's start from the beginning: it is obvious that from the beginning of this tragedy there is a melancholic protagonist. And the depressing aspect of the play's initial imagery tends to underline and reinforce Hamlet's melancholy. Marchette Chute in "The Story Told in Hamlet" describes some of these images from the opening scene: The story opens in the cold and darkness of a winter night in Denmark, as the guard is being changed on the ramparts of the royal castle of Elsinore. . For two nights in a row, just as the bell rings... in the center of the sheet... Greenhaven Press, 1996. Excerpt from Shakespeare's Women. Np: np, 1981.Rosenberg, Marvin. "Laertes: an impulsive but serious young aristocrat." Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardò. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from Hamlet's Masks. Newark, NJ: Univ. of Delaware Press, 1992.Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 1995. http://www.chemicool.com/Shakespeare/hamlet/full.htmlWest, Rebecca. “A Court and a world infected by the disease of corruption”. Readings on Hamlet. Ed. Don Nardò. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1999. Rpt. from The Court and the Castle. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957. Wilkie, Brian, and James Hurt. “Shakespeare”. Literature of the Western world. Ed. Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1992.