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Reasons To Insane In Shakespeare's Hamlet

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Imagine people trying to figure out if a person if indeed crazy or not crazy. How would that make the person in question feel? When they are looking for help out of their craziness, there could be people doubting they even need help. Though no one knows what is going on in Hamlet’s mind, this could be exactly what he is going through during Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. There are many reasons as to why Hamlet is crazy, including how talking to the ghost affected him, how a lot has recently happened to him and his family, and how he imagines things.
The ghost was one of the contributing factors in what caused Hamlet to go crazy. In act one scene four, Horatio and Marcellus were talking about how Hamlet talking to the ghost was a bad idea because …show more content…

In act two scene one, Ophelia tells Polonius, her father, about when Hamlet came to her room. “O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted! . . . Lord Hamlet . . . as if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors-he comes before me” (Shakespeare II. i. 75-84) This quote helps to point out how other people definitely notice Hamlet’s craziness, that it is not only apparent to the readers of the play. Another thing that this quote points out is how much losing Ophelia has affected Hamlet; Ophelia’s quote assists in demonstrating how much Ophelia meant to Hamlet because he obviously was not himself. Ophelia is not the only one that is a witness to Hamlet’s madness in seeing things. When Hamlet is talking to Gertrude in her room, and after he kills Polonius, he sees the ghost again, but Gertrude does not see it. In an article discussing the ghost in this play, it says, “Gertrude sees ‘nothing at all’ and hears ‘nothing but ourselves’ meaning herself and Hamlet, in the closet scene. The guards and Horatio couldn’t hear it in the opening scene, and the queen can’t hear it here. This makes me think only Hamlet can hear it” (Walthall). One important aspect of this quote is that the guards could see the ghost in the opening scene, but nobody but Hamlet has seen the ghost since that point. Another important part to remember is Horatio was worried that talking to …show more content…

If the readers of the play knew whether Hamlet is crazy or just acting crazy would help to make his motives more clear, but there is no way to really know if Hamlet was really crazy. Hamlet’s state of mind was mainly the basis to the whole play, so how much would the play change if the readers knew he was one or the other for

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