By: Nora Sediánszky
Ph.D. Candidate student
University of Pécs, Hungary
Abstract:
This essay analyses the concept of melancholy through Shakespeare’s works (especially Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and The Merchant of Venice), Freud’s studies on melancholy, and Julia Kristeva’s essay, “Black Sun: Depression and melancholia.” Melancholy, described by the Greek term of “black bile,” is a manifestation of the sensitive and poetic spirit in the Renaissance, rehabilitated by Marsilio Ficino from the negative overtones of the Middle Ages. In Shakespeare’s time, melancholy was a “fashionable disease,” a pathological mental state peculiar to the mens contemplantrix — both a disease and a spiritual energy — accompanied by symptoms of inexplicable sadness, pessimism, skepticism, decadence, alienation and introversion. In this paper, I seek to interpret Shakespeare’s idea of melancholy in the light of Freud’s and Kristeva’s theories, from the exciting and elusive imprint of the unconscious to the “Black Sun,” the blinding intensity of affect that eludes conscious elaboration.
Keywords: Melancholy, Shakespeare, mourning, narcissism, Freud, Julia Kristeva
To cite as: Sediánszky, N., 2025, “Hamlet’s Madness, Antonio’s Sadness, and Mercutio’s Illness: Interpretations of Melancholy from Shakespeare to Freud and Julia Kristeva,” PsyArt 29.1, pp. 116-127.