Many factors can influence the outcomes of relationships. A common and particularly hard-to-weather stress on relationships is a change of mind by one of the individuals. William Shakespeare's Hamlet provides several instances of this. Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark has recently lost his father. He subsequently learns that his uncle has killed the king and married the queen; therefore, Hamlet is suffering an intense sadness following these events. Hamlet's deep melancholy which prevents him from forming a functional relationship with his father's ghost and causes his relationship with Ophelia to wither.

From Hamlet's commencement, the titular character is enduring a state of intense melancholy. He states in the first act, "But I have that within which passeth show; / These but the trappings and the suits of woe" (I. ii. 88-89). When the play opens, the mourning, physically-affected Hamlet is an anomaly in the sea of happy, glimmering courtiers. He also soliloquizes about "how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / seem to me all the uses of this world" (I. ii. 137-138) To him, there is nothing bright left in his existence; he is without purpose in life (Bradley

Knight, G. Wilson. "The Embassy of Death: an Essay on Hamlet." The Wheel of Fire. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1930. Rpt. In Major Literary Characters-Hamlet. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1990. 80-95.

Hamlet's state of mourning makes him ill-equipped to have a functional relationship with the ghost. In the end of Act I, an apparition professing to be that of Hamlet's deceased father appears to Hamlet and informs him that he was "by a brother's hand / of life, of crown, of queen at once dispatched" (I. iv. 81-82). As G. Wilson Knight states, had the spirit "been kind, it would have prayed that Hamlet might forget" (82). Unfortunately, the ghost does just the opposite: he closes his explanation with the phrase "remember me," implying to Hamlet that he is to act upon Claudius in order to exact revenge. Had Hamlet not already been in a state of deep sadness and confusion, this might have simply given him more purpose in life (81). Within an hour of vowing to get revenge for his father's murder, he states, "O cursed spite, / That ever I was born to set it right" (I. ii. 210-211). After dealing with the fact that his uncle has killed his father and married his mother, Hamlet has little capacity for new stresses; fate has poorly timed this entry. Therefore, "The rest of the story exhibits his vain efforts to fulfil this duty, his unconscious self-excuses and unavailing self-reproaches, and the tragic results of his delay" (Bradley 105). Not only has the ghost forgotten Hamlet's best interests, but also he has made a bit of a misjudgement by entrust

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