Insanity In Hamlet

Throughout the play of Hamlet, one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedy's the main character, Hamlet is faced with the responsibility of getting vengeance for his father's murder. He decides to pretend madness as part of his plan to get the opportunity to kill Claudius who was the suspected murderer. As the play goes on, his portrayal of a madman becomes believable, and the characters around him respond quite vividly. Through his inner thoughts and the obvious reasons for his actions, it is clear that he is not really mad and is simply an actor faking insanity in order to complete the duty his father assigned him.

What is madness? Madness to most appears like a complex double-cross between reality and fantasy of the mind. William Shakespeare creates the use of madness throughout his play Hamlet, he portrays the sense of it as the breakdown of the mind, but also the breakdown of society. Within the play, two main characters welcomed madness into their lives, one is fake for personal reasons, and the other is real. Hamlet, prince of Denmark, had a plan to act mad to confuse Claudius. On the other hand, Ophelia the daughter of Polonius, goes insane due to many factors, such as grief, isolation, and distrust.

Hamlet is in a situation where his sanity is turning into insanity. He is like one of those people who tell so many lies that they start believing their own lies. Hamlet's acting is so vivid to him that, unconsciously, his state of mind has become

Hamlet's actions display something of a madman. Hamlet’s madness contributes to the many examples that his insanity in fact seemed real. Few people believe his insanity seemed faked or feigned. Nevertheless Hamlet's actions can get confusing, since he could be deeply in love one minute, then talking and screaming to himself the next. These events that have occurred may have altered Hamlets life, by leaving him horribly troubled, and in a state of madness.

In William Shakespeare's play, The Tragedy of Hamlet, the sanity of the main character, Hamlet, is often questioned. The loss of a close family member or friend can cause any person to have a change in mental health. When Hamlet lost his father, he was devastated, but when his mother remarried within a month of his father's death, it hit him even harder. Since Hamlet knew that others looked at him as crazy, he frequently portrayed his madness to see how people who were against him would react and to keep them from finding out his real intentions. Oftentimes, he intentionally faked his madness depending to whom he was talking.

Through the course of the play, Hamlet both feigns madness and experiences real madness as a result of his father’s death and his quest to avenge him until his need for vengeance drives Hamlet into single-minded insanity; Hamlet’s psychosis is not that he is unable to control himself and that his actions have no thought behind them, but that the only thing that matters to him is revenge, and everything else does not matter. The constant questioning of Hamlet’s sanity is present in the play because Hamlet is neither completely sane nor completely insane. Hamlet’s fictitious mania is a cover for his real madness, to allow him to get revenge for his father’s death while not allowing Claudius to be completely sure that his death is what Hamlet

After the death of old King Hamlet, Hamlet was struggling to keep himself and his feelings contained. His mind has so many thoughts running from his father’s death, to his neglected relationships, and from his thoughts towards Claudius. As the story escalates, more events pile up on top of Hamlet’s troubles making him slowly go insane.

In Hamlet, by shakespeare, and intelligent scholar’s piecemeal development of insanity is portrayed during the undertaking of revenging his father’s killer. Hamlet’s tragic flaw, is being irresolute. He is always complaining in drawn out monologues, about his discontent with his father’s death, but delays taking action in revenging his father’s death, which ultimately resulted in his death, as well as every other significant member in his life, except Horatio and Fortinbras. Hamlet is an intelligent scholar and student of theology, but is also very sensitive and irresolute, which crates moral quandary for him to seek revenge on his father’s murderer. For example, when Hamlet is met by the ghost of his father, and confronted

Insanity is a severe mental illness that results in the misunderstanding of reality (Howes, 2009). Insanity is a condition that many people find difficult to understand. Therefore, it has the power to deceive others for specific purposes such as evasion and to avoid suspicion. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the theme represented is the ambiguous and deceptive madness of Prince Hamlet of Denmark as a motive to avenge his father’s death. Hamlet, an impulsive and melancholic character, learns that his uncle, Claudius, has murdered his father, Old King Hamlet, to obtain the throne of Denmark and marry the deceased king’s widow, Gertrude. Consequently, Hamlet decides to feign madness to prove that Claudius has committed the cruel act of murdering

He speaks with his good friend Horatio and tells him he is going, “to put an antic disposition on” (1.5.191). Hamlet is literally telling Horatio that he is feigning his madness. If he notices any strange behavior from hamlet this is why. Throughout the play Hamlet keeps his word and only acts rationally around Horatio and feigns his insanity around others. But why pretend to be crazy?

From this, it may seem as if he is not actually insane, that it is all an act. However, because of Hamlet’s initial reaction to the death of his father it is obvious he is not completely sane to begin with. Hamlet pretending to be more insane than he actually is allows him to seek revenge on Claudius without Claudius realizing what he was doing.

At first, Hamlet only pretends to be insane to uncover the truth that Claudius killed his father. After contemplating suicide, and telling Ophelia he loved her once, is when he actually went crazy, I believe. When Hamlet is talking to Gertrude and the

Since he is the tragic hero of the story, his motives are prone to branch off to influence the characters surrounding him. His madness begins to rapidly develop after he is exposed to the ghost of his father. He learns the truth of how Hamlet Sr. really died and how he was murdered by Claudius, and the encounter left Hamlet in such a frenzied state that his entire perspective on Claudius and his reign changed. As Claudius grew more powerful, Hamlet’s hatred for him grew stronger. An objection to Hamlet's sanity is sometimes seen in his own alleged confessions of madness. He seeks pardon, they say, from Laertes for his violence against him on the plea of madness (Blackmore). Hamlet is more likely to be viewed as mad in craft, as he proclaims so in act III scene IV, “I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft”. That being said, Hamlet is so possessed by his desire for revenge that it transforms him mentally into one who spends every waking moment deciding what will happen to Claudius. In his mind he comes up with conceptions so vivid that he even begins to live and act within them. However, when he returns from exile in Act V, we see a very different Hamlet. He is calm, rational, and less afraid of death than merely indifferent. He has come to the realization that destiny is ultimately controlling all of our lives

Along with Revenge comes Hamlet’s streak of Madness, He feigns madness almost like a tool at his disposal. Hamlet first uses the illusion of his madness as a way of proving Claudius’s guiltiness. His madness acts as an excuse so that he can get away with strange behavior, and he won’t be held accountable for his actions. He feigns madness for so long that his depression over his father’s death and his mother’s remarriage pushes him into a madness which is not faked but rather quite real. He goes as far as to consider suicide. “To be or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and

Hamlet is a play that is focused around tragedy, revenge, love and an underlying message about mental health. The theme of mental illness is present all throughout the course of play, present through the mentions of suicidal thoughts, suicide itself and madness. Hamlet’s insanity was constantly in question during the play, even his family and friends began to believe he had gone mad. I believe that Hamlet was not truly insane, but rather a man who, due to unfortunate circumstances, struggled with depression and anxiety in a time period of little understanding of mental health.