proceeds to determine its species, I see nothing to object to in that; I am grateful to him for emphasising the fact that Hamlet’s melancholy was no mere common depression of spirits; and I have no doubt that many readers of the play would understand it better if they read an account of melancholia in a work on mental diseases.  If we like to use the word ‘disease’ loosely, Hamlet’s condition may truly be called diseased.  No exertion of will could have dispelled it.  Even if he had been able at once to do the bidding of the Ghost he would doubtless have still remained for some time under the cloud.  It would be absurdly unjust to call Hamlet a study of melancholy, but it contains such a study.

But this melancholy is something very different from insanity, in anything like the usual meaning of that word.  No doubt it might develop into insanity.  The longing for death might become an irresistible impulse to self-destruction; the disorder of feeling and will might extend to sense and intellect; delusions might arise; and the man might become, as we say, incapable and irresponsible.  But Hamlet’s melancholy is some way from this condition.  It is a totally different thing from the madness which he feigns; and he never, when alone or in company with Horatio alone, exhibits the signs of that madness.  Nor is the dramatic use of this melancholy, again, open to the objections which would justly be made to the portrayal of an insanity which brought the hero to a tragic end.  The man who suffers as Hamlet suffers—­and thousands go about their business suffering thus in greater or less degree—­is considered irresponsible neither by other people nor by himself:  he is only too keenly conscious of his responsibility.  He is therefore, so far, quite capable of being a tragic agent, which an insane person, at any rate according to Shakespeare’s practice, is not.[47] And, finally, Hamlet’s state is not one which a healthy mind is unable sufficiently to imagine.  It is probably not further from average experience, nor more difficult to realise, than the great tragic passions of Othello, Antony or Macbeth.

Let me try to show now, briefly, how much this melancholy accounts for.

It accounts for the main fact, Hamlet’s inaction.  For the immediate cause of that is simply that his habitual feeling is one of disgust at life and everything in it, himself included,—­a disgust which varies in intensity, rising at times into a longing for death, sinking often into weary apathy, but is never dispelled for more than brief intervals.  Such a state of feeling is inevitably adverse to any kind of decided action; the body is inert, the mind indifferent or worse; its response is, ‘it does not matter,’ ‘it is not worth while,’ ‘it is no good.’  And the action required of Hamlet is very exceptional.  It is violent, dangerous, difficult to accomplish perfectly, on one side repulsive to a man of honour and sensitive feeling, on another side involved in a certain mystery (here