content], he falls into self-recrimination and resorts to self-flagellation.19 This aspect of Hamlets personality and life is a special feature in the characterization of the malcontent [...], a dichotomy between the role played by a person and the inner self of the individual.20 Although Hamlet was unaware of it at the time, seeing as he did not classify himself as a malcontent, the gulf between the self-image and the real self is a characteristic shared by [...] malcontent outsiders [...]21 If the character Hamlet were alive today, he would have company in regards to his feelings and general state of melancholy. While during his time Hamlet was viewed as incredibly odd, today one would simply state that Hamlet was suffering [...] from melancholy adjust.22 This labeling of what Hamlet was suffering through goes more intricately than anything Hamlet could have observed, or anything Hamlets peers were able to sense. This melancholy adjust can happen to anyone, even to those who do not undergo the severity of trials as Hamlet does. The malcontent is a character who is aware of the death of one culture and watches the emergence of another. He is an ambiguous figure who condemns the corruption of his society and yet partakes of it.23 The death of one culture to Hamlet is the death of his father, the King, and the emerging culture is that of his Uncle Claudius. Hamlet speaks out against the corruption of his time, and yet knows nothing else but the standards which the corrupt society has placed before him. Watching a culture die is more figurative, whereas quite literally the realization of death was one of the most important factors in producing melancholy.24 Even today we are overcome with grief and melancholic behavior, when death is the subject at hand. Hamlet has his share of death throughout the play. He hears of the death of his father and then, along with the deaths of Polonius, Ophelia, Gertrude, and Claudius, Hamlet realizes that ...
