Note 149:3 — Chapter VI · Mad Folk in Comedy and Tragedy. (iii.) Melancholy.
Reading edition
Beside the melancholy of Hamlet we might place that of Haraldus, the young Prince of Shirley’s play, “The Politician,” were it not that the part played by his melancholy is purely nominal. His father—the Politician—sends two courtiers to cure him, and they make him drunk. His excesses bring on a fever which causes his death. His likeness to Hamlet only strikes us here and there, and the melancholy, such as it is, is caused chiefly by the discovery that he is a bastard.