Insanity In Hamlet

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

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.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet each of the characters face many trials and tribulations throughout the play. Hamlet, the main character, suffers the most. While Hamlet deals with all of the problems he faces, he becomes mentally unstable. Some believe that Hamlet just feigned madness while others believe that he actually became insane. Hamlet began to face insanity after the marriage of his mother and uncle and his problems only became worse which leads to Hamlet truly becoming insane.

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

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.

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.

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 tragedy Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark, the main character Hamlet is stuck in a position where he does not know how to avenge his father's death and whether his life is still worth living. During the play, Hamlet is depicted in a deranged mental state. Critics continue to disagree on whether Hamlet was or wasn’t mentally distraught. Insanity. The APA, the American Psychological Association, the leading scientific organization focused on psychology in the United States and the world, defines Insanity as, “a condition of the mind that renders a person incapable of being responsible for their criminal acts.”

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.

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

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?

Hamlet is trying to make his family believe that he is truly insane by his words. Hamlet says himself that he will be faking to be insane so that he can kill Claudius when he says “as I perchance hereafter shall think meet to put on an antic disposition”(1.5.58), an antic disposition is to act insane to seem harmless to Claudius. Also Hamlet says“Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me”(3.1.118). This shows that Hamlet is annoyed by his mother as she so soonly remarried after her father death and he insulting his mother. As the ghost said to Hamlet “leave her to heaven and to those thorns that in her bosom lodge to prick and sting her”(1.5.89), which was basically asking him to not physically hurt his mother but to make her feel ashamed for her actions that her consciousness overwhelms her and she comes to realize how offending of an act she has done. Gertrude is shocked when Hamlet starts to talk to the wall and she says “O gentle son, upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience! whereon do you look?"(3.4.132-141). As the ghost just talked to Hamlet and since Gertrude did not see the ghost she thought that Hamlet was talking to the wall. Hence Gertrude is convinced that Hamlet is insane as he is talking to the wall. It also was a move by Hamlet to talk to the wall to make Gertrude believe that he was insane, as it was all part of his plan to kill Claudius. Hamlet demonstrates another action of madness when he strikes

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

Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, is about a young prince who wants revenge when he learns about the murder of his father. As the play begins, Hamlet’s character appears to be a normal, sane person. Moving through the acts Hamlet’s personality changes from normal to depressed. There are hints of insanity that try to convince people Hamlet is “mad”. Others might say that Hamlet is faking madness to pursue his goal of revenge. First, he sees a “ghost” that tells Hamlet who killed his father and married his mother. Was this a dream or was this real? Second, Hamlet kills more than one person to avenge his father’s death. Where these accidents or intentional? “Insanity: a legal term for mental illness of such degree