Hamlet’s Tears

Research output: Chapter in Book/Entry/PoemChapter

Abstract

This essay begins by asking whether the grieving Hamlet weeps when he makes his wish ‘that this too, too sullied flesh would melt / Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew’ (1.2.133–134). Cognizant of the fact that critics are more often concerned with whether Hamlet actually says ‘sullied’, ‘sallied’, ‘solid’, or ‘grieved and sallied’ than whether or not he sheds tears as he says it, this essay argues nonetheless that Hamlet expresses not just a death wish in the first soliloquy—a temptation to suicide—, but also that he actively seeks Ovidian transformation in the form of a watery metamorphosis. Indeed, the desire to weep becomes a powerful engine of tragic catharsis despite the period’s profound reservations about mourning.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationPalgrave Shakespeare Studies
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
Pages135-159
Number of pages25
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Publication series

NamePalgrave Shakespeare Studies
ISSN (Print)2731-3204
ISSN (Electronic)2731-3212

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Visual Arts and Performing Arts
  • Literature and Literary Theory

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