Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Shakespeare’s Hamlet

  • Madness and gender in Gregory Doran’s Hamlet

    Sarah BahrIndianapolis, Indiana, United States In director Gregory Doran’s 2009 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, David Tennant’s Hamlet becomes a bawdy lunatic who consciously or unconsciously uncouples himself from reality. The intentionality of Hamlet’s madness is more muddled than in Shakespeare’s text because of the confrontational quality Tennant lends to the prince’s mental angst. Tennant…

  • Emptiness Melancholia: depression sweet depression

    Camila MachadoMinas Gerais, Brazil The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality.1—Andrew Solomon Vitality had seemed to seep away from me through the years, stopping me from feeling joy, sadness, affection, and love. I felt empty but somehow managed to continue living, insisting on existence. Everything seemed too much work. Instead of being thrilled…

  • Resounding silence: The trouble with Hamlet’s body and soul

    Mary ValloGlastonbury, Connecticut, United States Central to medieval and Renaissance thought was the divide between the carnal body and the transcendent soul. As the only earthly beings to possess a soul, humans integrated the animal and the spiritual—a unique status that was both a blessing and a source of intense inner conflict.1 Shakespeare’s Hamlet addresses…