Why Is Hamlet Insane

The question of whether or not Hamlet was insane is of a never-ending debate. Was he always crazy? Was he always faking it? Or was he somewhere in between? In this paper I will share three different views and provide my own interpretation of Hamlet’s sanity.

Throughout the play, Hamlet claims to be feigning madness, but his portrayal of a madman is so intense and so convincing that many readers believe that Hamlet actually slips into insanity at certain moments in the play. Do you think this is true, or is Hamlet merely playacting insanity? What evidence can you cite for either claim?

Insanity is when someone isn’t able to determine right from wrong, cannot differentiate fantasy from reality, or has irrational thoughts and impulsive behavior. This doesn’t describe Hamlet, the main character from William Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Hamlet. Hamlet is overwhelmed with grief from his father’s death and his mother’s overhasty incestuous marriage with her deceased husband’s brother, Claudius. The ghost of King Hamlet appears from the shadows to reveal the truth – “The serpent that did sting thy father’s life now wears his crown” (I, 5, 27). To add on to his burdens, Hamlet has to get revenge on his uncle for murdering his father. In order to disguise his true intentions and deceive his enemies, he pretends to be insane.

Everyone at some point in their life sets a goal that they wish to accomplish for some reason or another, and in William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the goal of the main character is to avenge the death of his father who was killed by his uncle, Claudius. Furthermore, when achieving these goals, people are willing to go to the extreme to make sure that these goals are completed. In Shakespeare’s play the main character, Hamlet, falsely portrays himself as mentally unstable which adds a crafty element to the storyline because his false derangement allows him to undertake rash decisions without consequence to achieve his ultimate goal.

Hamlet is a very confusing character in the story Hamlet. In this story Hamlet is acting as an insane person towards typical people. This is very debatable because, Hamlet is a person who switches on and off being an insane or sane person. There is many evidence that proves that Hamlet is not actually an insane person. Hamlet is a sane person because of the actions he takes. He is an intelligent person. He is a person who thinks about his actions. Another idea is he thinks like a wise person. Even though there is evidence of him being sane there is some evidence that shows the reader that hamlet is actually insane.

In the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, as the play progresses Hamlet portrays himself as going insane. However, I believe that in reality Hamlet is really just acting as if he was insane to deter attention from his plot to kill Claudius, his father's murderer. For instance, at the very beginning of the play when Hamlet, Horatio, his good friend, and Marcellus see the ghost of Hamlet's father Hamlet makes them both swear that they will not tell anyone about the ghost. He also says, “How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself

In Hamlet, Shakespeare uses many references to sanity and insanity. Throughout the play, Hamlet goes back and forth between sanity and insanity, whether pretending to be insane just to mess with those he does not like or to save himself from getting in trouble. Hamlet is actually one of the smartest characters in the play, which is why he can pull off acting crazy so well. Shakespeare uses this idea of sanity and insanity to help the plot change and take a different directions.

Since the early times, people have discussed whether those among them are truly sane or not. During the Shakespearian Era, nobody actually understood who was insane and those who were merely more eccentric than most. One of the most debated plays of all time is Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Many professors and scholars have analyzed and questioned Hamlet’s sanity. Hamlet displays the characteristics of sanity throughout the play.

In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, there are a series of events that causes Hamlet to act abnormally. He has to deal with his father’s death, mother’s remarriage, and his lover Ophelia. However, it is often argued whether Hamlet’s madness is real or fake. Throughout the tragedy, he is over-exaggerating his madness for his plan of revenge. Hamlet is sane because he only acts mad in front of certain people, he told his friends of his plan of revenge, and the fact that many people continuously doubted his insanity.

There are many reasons for Hamlet to truly go mad including the death of his father, his mother’s remarriage and the relationship he holds with Ophelia, leading many away from the fact that he is “not

He uses his deception of madness to make this sound like mad ramblings to everyone else, but he is truly asking these questions and wondering about the ins and outs of how life truly works, and what it all means. So Hamlet basically acts insane to cover up the seriousness of these questions he is seeking the answers to. “But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,/Could force his soul so to his own conceit,/That from her working all his visage wann’d,/ Tears in his eyes, distraction in’s aspect,/ A broken voice, and his

Insanity is an idea that has been examined for a long time in numerous mediums such as films, music, plays, and even works of literature. William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is no exception to that rule. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most complex characters, and many scholars have been debating for centuries whether or not Hamlet is truly insane, or whether there is a particular reason for his odd behavior. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet merely pretends to be mad but in reality is sane.

There are plenty of examples of Hamlet appearing mad, but there are just as many examples of Hamlet appearing sane, even intelligent. Hamlet is even aware of his madness, which can be seen in the quote, “What I have done that might your nature, honor, and exception roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness… It ‘t be so, Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged; His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy” (273). Hamlet is clearly aware of his own madness, but this does not necessarily invoke his sanity. Hamlet still appears insane,

The differences in their madness strongly support the assertion that Hamlet is, in fact, not truly mad. "The mad role that Hamlet plays to perfection is certainly a proof of Shakespeare's genius, but by no means a surety of the insanity of the prince, unless we be prepared to maintain that no one saves a madman can simulate dementia" (Blackmore). As Blackmore points out, his crazy behavior is such that only someone who is not mad could play the part so well. Again, a truly mad person would not have so much control over his actions and

In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare reflects the common early modern beliefs and perspectives about madness by using the character development of the protagonist who feigns madness throughout the play. Given Hamlet 's status as a prince, current knowledge of madness during the time period, and the contrast of the different types of madness of other characters in the play, Elizabethan audiences would have found it plausible that Hamlet feigns madness as part of his plot to avenge his father 's death. This new historicist perspective steers the modern reader away from anachronistic psychological interpretations of the play.