How Does Shakespeare Create Insanity In Hamlet

1. It is hard to imagine what Hamlet must have gone through. The experience of losing a parent is hard enough, but the news unveiling that his own uncle was responsible for his father’s death was probably even more horrifying. Although everyone has their own way of grieving, I believe that Hamlet combined a developed irrationality with vengeance, to create insanity from within. At the beginning of the play, the setting introduces King Hamlet’s ghost, where he comes in to haunt Elsinore and remind Hamlet of his obligations. One of the first things Hamlet addresses is his sadness to the current situation:

“O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew,

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon 'gainst

To die: to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd….”

(Act 3, Scene 1, Lines: 57-65)

It is clear from this that Hamlet is struggling to fight these challenges and there is a desire to put them to an end. What makes his decision of finding his peace so admirable is the fact that he would rather die with the dignity of trying rather than not trying at all. Moreover, there are times where he feels as if he is not contributing enough to achieve his best self:

“O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Is it not monstrous that this player here,

But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,

Could force his soul so to his whole conceit

…With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!”

(Act 2, Scene 2, Lines: 545-548 and Line 552)

Here, he compares himself to an actor who is presenting his lines with much emotion. Hamlet is so critical about himself because he realizes that he is not committing his whole heart into what really matters versus this player who is putting so much effort into a