Hamlet On-Going Madness Analysis

Hamlet’s “antic disposition” is merely an act, and serves to mask his intentions of revenge from his peers; Hamlet does become somewhat unstable, though, and lapses into brief moments of true insanity. Following the first encounter with his father, Hamlet vows to put on an act of madness to hide his actions and thoughts from the King. Hamlet’s feigned madness begins with a half-naked appearance in Ophelia’s chambers, and escalates from that point onward. The effect of the “antic disposition” seems to wear off by Act IV though, as Hamlet’s actions cause Claudius to become suspicious of Hamlet. Hamlet seems to experience moments of true insanity at times, though, as seen when he rashly kills Polonius.

Throughout Hamlet, the characters consistently deceive each other to disguise their true intentions and actions. The first line of the play reads “Who’s there?” (Shakespeare, 7); these words foreshadow the multi-faceted aspects of the actors throughout the development of Shakespeare’s work. The characters deceive one another in order to achieve a specific longing for themselves. The motif of deception can be found throughout the play in the actions of Hamlet, Guildenstern, and Claudius.

This aids the reader in analyzing the motives for each of the intricate characters and how every action has a motive that can tie back to Hamlet’s grand scheme which is to get revenge for the kingdom overtaken by an authority figure who did not earn that title, honor his father’s legacy that is taken from him in the crossfire of jealousy, and for the good of Denmark. Between the murder of King Hamlet and Polonius, Ophelia’s death, and the disloyalty of many characters, we enable ourselves to see the mood of confusion

One definition of madness is “mental delusion of the eccentric behavior arising from it.” However, as Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Much madness is divinest Sense/ To a discerning Eye.” In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the main character, Prince Hamlet, shows apparent madness which proves to serve an important role throughout the story. This erratic behavior consists of his seemingly senseless dialogues, his loss of care for Ophelia, and his increasingly aggressive nature. Such behavior often proves justified by the play’s audience due to its convincing nature despite Hamlet’s predisposition towards insanity.

She convinces Macbeth to commit traitorous deeds which leads to a declivity of madness. Lady Macbeth persuades her husband with constant questioning of manhood which ultimately leads him into a nightmarish

He pretended his madness to know the plans, actions and loyalties of others towards him, and it was a trick to be played by Hamlet to know what others are thinking of him and to do what he wanted to. The word of Stopford Brooke (1913;96) would be best to take as a conclusion about the madness of Hamlet, “All man of genius are mad, genius itself is a kind of madness.. . . . . If genius is a madness, Hamlet was mad, but the maddest man that ever lived in England was Shakespeare, who made Hamlet. The fact is that Shakespeare never intended to represent Hamlet as mad or half mad, or verging on madness, and when he wished to represent real madness and to contrast it with feigned madness. He created the real madness of Ophelia and did it with wonderful truth and skill.

Playwright, William Shakespeare, in his drama, Macbeth, warns about the dangers of how ambition can lead to devastation. His purpose is to demonstrate how greed can drive a person to abandon their morals, and he adopts an unhinged tone in order to affectively shock his audience to its severity. Throughout the play, Shakespeare uses apostrophe, symbolism, and foreshadowing to show that desire for power can lead one’s own destruction. Throughout the drama, Shakespeare uses apostrophe as a way to communicate a character’s emotions to the reader; he does this with Macbeth as well as Lady Macbeth, and while both instances portray how desire for power can lead to the loss of a person’s integrity, it is during Macbeth’s monologue that the reader is able to understand the internal conflict that takes place in a struggle for power.

Again, Hamlet admits his insanity is all an act. A true crazy man would kill Claudius because a ghost told him too. Hamlet has a conscience and morals that force him to ensure that Claudius is truly guilty before he takes

“Mad call I it, for, to define true madness,/ What is ‘t but to be nothing else but mad?/ But let that go”(Shakespeare II. ii 95-97). Polonius is speaking about how crazy Hamlet is being and he keeps telling Gertrude that she needs to do something about

Hamlet is a revenge tragedy in which William Shakespeare plays greatly with the intellect of his characters. The structure of it is built upon Hamlet´s pretense of madness, so as to avenge his father´s murder, but the repercussions of such a farce lead our characters on a path of death. Hamlet`s “course of thought” (3.3.83) concerning his “antic disposition” (1.5.178) is understood as the work of a genius on the grounds that the main character redefines what is genuine and what is deceitful. Thus, the decay of our lead character is for grounded by his own actions, and his failure to recognize that the human intellect cannot be controlled or maneuvered with utmost perfection comes at too high a price, the result of which develops into a tragedy. What is clear is that the play’s construction unfolds around Hamlet’s decision to vindicate his father’s killing.

The play Hamlet by William Shakespeare is of a son whose murder madness and indecision takes a toll on avenging his father’s murder. The main character’s madness can be seen in multiple scenes of the play affecting numerous characters and the meaning of the play as a whole. This can be seen through analyzing his madness throughout the play, the recurrence of this madness as a motif, and the overall outcome. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is met by his father’s ghost and is explained on how King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle, murdered his father to gain access to the throne.

Corruption in Hamlet and 1984 Comparing William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet to George Orwell’s novel 1984 may seem like a difficult task on the surface, however, through further analysis, the theme of corruption links these two texts together. Corruption: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power. In both Hamlet and 1984, the protagonists desire to overcome corruption inevitably leads to their downfall. In society today, people are entitled to their own thoughts.