Madness And Insanity In Hamlet

The play Hamlet by William Shakespeare depicts the story of young Hamlet trying to avenge his deceased father who was killed by his uncle Claudius, who went on to claim the throne as his own and marry Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude. This situation supposedly causes young Hamlet to succumb to madness and insanity. With this insanity, Hamlet and the rest of the royal family goes through a journey that causes Denmark to go into chaos. The play ends with the death of all the royal family and the prince of Norway, Fortinbras, taking over the throne and ruling Denmark. Madness is one of the central theme in the play and appears in many of the characters throughout the play: Ophelia mad with love, Laertes mad with revenge etc. But one character’s madness

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In the midst of Hamlet’s apparent madness, he is able to talk about his deep underlying thoughts about the world and his life. He is feeling depressed and annoyed with the world to a point where nothing brings him joy anymore. Hamlet, having the ability to express his emotions clearly and his ability to switch into this state of mind so quickly shows that Hamlet has still retained his mental sanity, despite the way he has acted in all the previous scenes. In one of the scenes leading up to the end of the play, Hamlet agrees to a fencing match against an angry Laertes. Before their match, Hamlet says:

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong;

But pardon ’t as you are a gentleman. This presence knows, And you must needs have heard, how I am punished

With a sore distraction. What I have done

That might your nature, honor, and

All of the other individuals in the play have their own motives or have thoughts that cloud their thinking, straying them away from what is spiritually and rationally right. Hamlet is the only person seem to see both the lower and higher morality, making him separate from everyone else right at the start. Hamlet’s struggle and eventual acceptance of the higher morality of justice and God. This then makes him the only character to follow the higher morality while everyone else submits to the lower one. William Shakespeare, by making Hamlet stand independently as the only higher morality character and the only mentally sane character, made Hamlet into “a man ahead of his time, as Shakespeare was ahead of his.”