Why Hamlet Is Not Mad

In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he tells a story of Hamlet who has not only lost his father but has found that his uncle is the killer. To make matters worse, his uncle has married Hamlet’s mother making his father’s killer the new king. Throughout the play Hamlet appears to have gone insane. The characters in the play are left to wonder what has caused Hamlet’s sudden depart from reality. The main speculation is that his madness is due to the loss of his father and from a broken heart from the rejection of Ophelia, who is Hamlet’s love interest. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss why Hamlet was mad, but instead to argue that he was not mad at all. Since madness is one of the main themes of the play there have been many papers written on the Hamlet’s mental state of mind. Ernest Wolf wrote a paper where he classified theories of Hamlet’s mentality into groups. One of those groups in fact did classify Hamlet’s character as, “…representing a true feigned psychosis in a weak and indecisive soul” (Wolf, 1973). While there is clearly evidence to cause speculation that Hamlet was mad, there are plenty of people that believe that it was just another act in the play made to hide Hamlet’s grand plan to avenge the death of

In Act 3, Hamlet has an exchange of words with Guildenstern where he asks him over and over to play an instrument that Guildenstern clearly does not know how to play. Again Hamlet is putting in an act to make Guildenstern believe that he is mad and speaking nonsense. However, at the end of this exchange Hamlet momentarily drops the act when he says, “Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play upon me”. Later in the same quote Hamlet states, “Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you cannot play upon me” (Shakespeare, 2003). Hamlet breaks his act to show his old friends that he is not as dumb as they think he