Sanity In Hamlet Essay

Sanity is questioned on many occasions throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is not a question of whether a character is sane or insane, but rather which is more desirable. Normally, it is the more admired trait to be considered be sane and in ones right mind. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the idea of how desirable it is to be sane or insane is questioned and looked at through binary oppositions, undecidability, and the unstable qualities of language. In contrast to popular ideas, on many instances throughout this play it appears that insanity is the more preferred trait in characters. This can be revealed through Shakespeare’s polar opposites throughout the play, how many conflicting meanings fill the text, and just how contradicting the words being

He reveals that he is seeing the ghost to only a few of his friends and his mother. When he tells his mother that he believes he is seeing the ghost of his father, it is unclear exactly how she feels about his sanity. “Queen: To whom do you speak this? Hamlet: Do you see nothing there?” (Act 3, scene iv, line 131-132). She goes on to tell the King that Hamlet is mad, but it is unclear whether she truly believes that he is, or if she is hoping that he is mad to sooth her own guilt of remarrying after his father’s death. This is an occurrence of decidability in which the Queen is saying one thing, but possibly meaning another. It cannot be determined what the real meaning of the text is here. The question of whether it is better to be sane or insane continues within the relationship between Hamlet and this

He talks with what he thinks is the ghost of his father on multiple occasions, and seems to question whether this Ghost is his father, or the Devil in disguise. “The spirit that I have seen May be a [dev’l], and the [dev’l] hath power ‘T’ assume a pleasing shape” (Act 3, scene i, line 578-580). Hamlet is showing that although he thinks he is a normal sane person for seeing a ghost, he must not be totally sane because he is still willing to do exactly what this ghost wants him to do. The unstable qualities of language is shown clearly here, and is very contradicting to the idea that Hamlet should be considered a sane person. In this case, it could be argued that it would make Hamlet and the audience more comfortable if they were to know that he was insane for being so blindly willing to act upon the Devils