For many years, the standard commentary, from academia to the media, is that Hamlet is so troubled by the death of his father that he’s gone mad. Character Analysis of Hamlet: Psychological Disorders | Transmedial Shakespeare
https://transmedialshakespeare.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/character-analysis-of-hamlet-psychological-disorders/All of which is bullshit analysis by people deeply embedded in the late twentieth and early twentyfirst century. They show zero comprehension of Shakespeare’s time.
First of all, Shakespeare would have expected his audience to know that the odds are that Hamlet was fostered – sent to live with some other noble family for years, and he was not that close do his parents.
Second of all, it was the high Middle Ages, and at this point, let me ask my readers how they feel about Reality Winner Reality Winner – Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner
Why am I asking that? Reality Winner had a conflict of honor: to keep secret what she was sworn to protect, and to the American people, because democracy *depends* on informed consent.
Hamlet had three conflicting loyalties. For one, his father had been the king – and this is a time period when Louis XIV, a few years later, could say he *was* the state. Queen Elizabeth I *was* the state – this is a time where there was a belief in the divine right of kings. Therefore, Hamlet owed fealty (go look up the word) and loyalty to his father as the king. I have read suggestions that the oath of fealty included “rewarding oathbreaking with vengance”.
So that’s his first loyalty, and its his *duty* to take revenge for his king’s death.
Second, he has the same fealty to the new king, his uncle.
Family loyalty is a poor third.
Hamlet’s issue is which fealty, which loyalty takes precedence – to his late father the king, or to the current king?
Winner, and Snowdon, both chose loyalty to the American public over an oath sworn as an adult to keep secrets. Which loyalty should Hamlet choose – that is the question.