SOURCE: Levy, Eric. “The Problematic Relation between Reason and Emotion in Hamlet.” Renascence 53, no. 2 (winter 2001): 83-95.

In the following essay, Levy investigates the conflict between reason and emotion in Hamlet, demonstrating the ways in which the play explores not only the importance of rational control of emotion, but also the role of reason in generating emotion. Levy also comments on the relevance of Christian-humanist doctrine to the play's treatment of the relationship between reason and emotion.

Hamlet opens on a state of incipient alarum, with martial vigilance on the battlemented “platform” (act 1, scene 2, line 252) of Elsinore and conspicuous “post-haste and rummage in the land” (1.1.110).¹ For the sentries, this apprehension is heightened by the entrances of the Ghost—a figure whom Horatio eventually associates with a threat to the “sovereignty of reason” (1.4.73). In the immediate context, loss of the “sovereignty of reason” entails “madness” (1.4.74). In turn, madness is here...