on of behaviour,41 at which point there is no turning back for Hamlet.It is incredibly clear at this point that Hamlet battled heavily with his emotions and his inability to clearly identify them. We know that he was indeed a malcontent and melancholic based upon the newer standards of such identifications being the self-degrading and irregular behavior. In the character Hamlet it is the buffoonery of an emotion which can find no outlet in action; in the dramatist it is the buffoonery of an emotion which he cannot express in art.42 Hamlets sole escape from his pain is through his expressive language and games which he plays with the other characters in Hamlet. Gomez sites that [...] the melancholic stance should be viewed as a legitimate response to the stresses of an age of transition. The influence of [...] cynicism about human weakness may also be traced in the [...] malcontents.43 Perhaps Hamlets actions and overall persona were not fully understood at the time because of the lack of knowledge on the subject since Hamlets criticisms are couched in terms that would have been familiar to contemporary audiences as characteristic of a melancholic [...]44 However, Hamlet did not have the advantage of advanced psychological profiling during his time and had no way of rationally communicating his position to other is in the play. Therefore [] in Hamlet, self-estrangement is dramatically demonstrated through the tension between the publicly assumed role and the inner self and the gulf between self-image and the real self.45 Admittedly so Hamlet suffered from melancholy and depression, but how is one to know what other characters in Hamlet fell victim to? Even if another character had complex emotional scars and/or issues, no other aspect of the mind serves to highlight the complexity with which a master dramatist made used of a stock dramatic type and yet transcended it. 46 Gomez points out the fact that Hamlets melancholy and malcontent dr...
