Shakespeare's Hamlet: Investigating Hamlet's Insanity

 

 

        Hamlet is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, and hardest to

perform. The reason it is so hard to perform is because of the main

character Hamlet. Hamlet is an easily liked character that must revenge his

father's death. He is forced to act insane in order to find out the truth

of his father's death. Hamlet does an excellent job of acting insane, so

good, in fact, that it is questioned if he was acting insane or if he

actually was. Hamlet's madness is an important part in the play. It is an

important role that recurs throughout the play. The question to his

insanity lies in the reasons for his insanity. He is constantly betrayed

throughout the play by everyone he loves and holds dear except for one

person who sticks by him throughout his ordeal, Horatio.

 

        Hamlet first shows his passion and how upset he is by his father's

death when his mother and the king enter the room and question him on his

grief for his father. His mother mentions that his grief seems common.

Hamlet replies:

 

         “Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'

        'Tis not  alone my inky cloak, good mother,

        Nor customary suits of solemn black,

        Nor windy suspiration of forced breath,

         No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,

        Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,

        Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,

        That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,

        For they are actions that a man might play:

        But I have that within which passeth show;

        These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”(1.2)

 

Here Hamlet shows his unstable mind. He is screaming at his mother telling

her how his actions are honest and he is not pretending to grieve, but that

he is truly saddened by his father's death. He has become offended by his

mother's inference that Hamlet is not actually upset by his father's death..

She uses the term "Seems" which pushes Hamlet to this rage.

 

        Hamlet is so saddened by his father's death that he begins to think

of suicide. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt / Thaw and resolve

itself into a dew!”(1.2.129-130). He is wishing that his flesh would melt

away or “Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd / His canon 'gainst self-

slaughter!”(131-132).  He then reveals the first part to his madness: ”But

two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: /  So excellent a king; that

was, to this, /  Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother”(138-140).

Hamlet soliloquy is revealing that he is upset also because of his mother's

quick marriage to his uncle. She had married him within two months of his

father's death.

 

        Hamlet's next reference to madness is when he begins to follow the

Ghost.  Pleading with Hamlet not to follow the Ghost, Horatio asks him to

think about what might happen if the Ghost "assume some other horrible form,

/ Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason / And draw you into

madness" (1.4.72-74). Horatio believes that the Ghost is not Hamlet's

father in the form  of a ghost, but a spirit in the form of Hamlet's father.

That spirit could instantly take on another shape or lure Hamlet to the

edge of a cliff. It seems here that Horatio thinks Hamlet is unstable

enough that he may easily be deprived of his senses when Hamlet appears

about to tell him what the Ghost said, but suddenly changes course: "These

are but wild and whirling words, my lord" (1.5.133). Hamlet does not seem

to trust Horatio enough to tell him the truth.  After Hamlet meets the

ghost, he is given an instruction to remember. Hamlet begins his obsession

with revenge here:

 

        “ I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,

        All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,

        That youth and observation copied there;

        And thy commandment all alone shall live

        Within the book and volume of my brain,

        Unmix'd with baser matter”

 

Hamlet vows to himself that he will think of nothing but his task till it

is complete. He will wipe his memory of everything in his life and the only

thing dwelling within will be his task given to him by the ghost. "I

perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on"

(1.5.171-172), Hamlet warns Horatio and Marcellus. In the course of

swearing them to secrecy about the Ghost, Hamlet adds that they can't so

much as hint that they know anything, even if he should act strange or odd.

Hamlet then begins his plot on how to kill Claudius.

 

        Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, and his adopted father, his uncle, the

Kings, Claudius, begin to recognize the changes in Hamlet. They are given

an answer to Hamlet's maddness by their servant Polonius. He tells them

that the cause of Hamlet's lunacy is his daughter, Ophelia. "Mad for thy

love?" (2.1.82), Polonius asks Ophelia, when she tells him about Hamlet's

strange visit to her closet. This isn't really a question, because Polonius

has already jumped to his conclusion. He has become certain that Qphelia is

the cause. For the rest of the play he is sure that Hamlet has been driven

over the edge because Ophelia (on her father's orders) won't see him

anymore. Polonius' idea has its roots in a popular idea of the time, which

was that frustrated love brings on a melancholy that is a near neighbor to

madness. Polonius says to the King and Queen, "your noble son is mad: / Mad

call I it; for, to define true madness, / What is't but to be nothing else

but mad? (2.2.92-94). Thus begins Polonius' windy explanation of Hamlet's

madness, which Polonius attributes to disappointed love for Ophelia.

Polonius gives this reason to the King and Queen and they accept it and ask

Polonius if there is a way to test his theory. Polonius comes up with the

idea of sending his daughter in a room where they know Hamlet will be and

observe his reactions in a place where they cannot be seen. When Opehlia

gives a token of Hamlet's affection back to Hamlet, he becomes angry and

begins to yell and scream at Ophelia. When he asks her where her father is

he hope she will answer him honestly, but when she lies,  and goes into a

rage. Hamlet is angry that she will not tell him the truth. In the play,

all the people that he has had contacts with have shown themselves to be

untrustworthy.  Even his mother and friends seem to have abandoned him and

sided with his father's murderer. "Something have you heard / Of Hamlet's

transformation" (2.2.3-4), the King, when he is telling Rosencrantz and

Guildenstern to find out what's wrong with Hamlet, says that Hamlet has

been "put . . . from th'understanding of himself." The King may be just

saying this as an excuse to see what he can find out what Hamlet may know

about his father's murder,  but Gertrude describes Hamlet as "My too much

changed son" (2.2.36), and she probably has Hamlet's best interests at

heart.

 

        Hamlet again has thoughts of suicide in the play. He talks to

Polonius in the library and they talk for a moment while Polonius tries to

gain more proof of the cause of Hamlet's insanity. "Into my grave"

(2.2.207), replies Hamlet to Polonius' question, "Will you walk out of the

air, my lord?" Apparently the chamber is drafty, and Polonius is inviting

Hamlet to go to a warmer room, but Hamlet implies that he'd sooner be dead

than go anyplace with Polonius. Moments later, Hamlet makes a comment that

sounds similar, but expresses a great weariness with life. Polonius says

goodbye with the usual polite words, "My lord, I will take my leave of

you," and Hamlet replies "You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I

will willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life"

(2.2.215-217). Hamlet means that he is very willing to be free of Polonius,

and that he is even more willing to be free of his own life.

 

        Throughout the play Hamlet seems to be insane then sane again. His

comment to his friends best describes his madness when he says,"I am but

mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a

handsaw" (2.2.378-379). He is mad only when the conditions are right. The

conditions are betrayal: Ophelia's betrayal to him, his friends betrayal to

him, his mother's betrayal to his father, and his uncle's betrayal to his

brother. By definition, Hamlet is insane. He has shown mental instability

throughout the play but the question still remains: Was Hamlet Acting?