Study Notes on Hamlet's Melancholy (from A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy).

WHY DOES HAMLET DELAY? The reason is: he's melancholic. This state of mind is quite unnatural to him and induced by special circumstances. The Schlegel-Coleridge theory states that Hamlet's ability to act has been eaten up by thought. Bradley states that Hamlet's reflectiveness played a certain part in the production of the melancholy and was only a contributory cause of his irresolution to act. Of course, melancholy once established only induced more and more thinking …

…cowardice? Is it conscience? Does conscience make a coward of us all? Is it sloth? Can I be thinking too precisely on the event? Why do I delay if I have the cause, the will, the strength and means to act? These are the questions of a mind stimulated for a moment to shake off the weight of melancholy, and, because at that moment he is free from it, he cannot understand its paralyzing pressure.