Madness and Insanity in Shakespeare's Hamlet - Investigating Hamlet's Sanity

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).