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Recently I quoted from this passage from Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals!
It is, perhaps, my favorite passage from Shakespeare. It is such an ennobling statement of what it means to be human. And yet it is contained in this larger passage which describes the very essence of depression:
…I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
Although Hamlet feigns madness, (“Though
this be madness, yet there is method
in 't” says Polonius of Hamlet).this passage reveals his
true malady.
Earlier in the same dialog he shows his understanding of the source of this malady:
Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing
either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me
it is a prison.
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This is one of those Shakespearean aphorisms that is one of the pleasures, for me, of Shakespeare. Its truth is obvious yet simply and beautifully stated. It speaks a universal truth, yet applies to the story at hand. To the point here, it shows that Hamlet understands the source of his malaise: his own thinking. Yet the next line shows his own inability to overcome his difficulty: “to me it is a prison.” Even though he understands the source of the problem to be his own thinking, he seems powerless to alter it.
That, not madness, is the fatal flaw in his character that will be his undoing.
The rest is silence.