Is Hamlet Mad Essay Research Paper Is

Is Hamlet Mad. Essay, Research Paper

Is Hamlet Mad.

Perhaps the world’s most famous mental patient, Hamlet’s sanity has been

argued over by countless learned scholars for hundreds of years. As a mere

student of advanced-level English Literature, I doubt I can add anything new to

the debate in 2000 words, but I can look at the evidence supporting or

dispelling each argument and come to my own conclusion.

Hamlet is obviously experiencing grief and despair right from the beginning of

the novel, with the death of his father and his uncle’s seizure of the throne

and rapid weddign of Hamlet’s mother, and we can observe his great grief

bordering on irrational suicidal tendencies as early as Act II Sc I, where he

gives his first soliloquy. He cries:

“O that this too too solid flesh would melt,

Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fixed

His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!”

Macbeth wants his flesh to dissolve into a dew (”solid” contrasting with “melt”

in the first line), and wishes that God had not forbade suicides from going to

heaven. This is also the first glimpse of another recurring theme in the play,

that of Hamlet’s unhealthy obsession with the afterlife. This is one of the

reasons that the ghost of his father has such an effect on him, which is a

trigger for all the subsequent events in the play.

Moving on to the fourth scene, the next interesting speech is on l. 23. It is a

long and complicated speech, but its general gist is that if a person has one

fault, no matter how virtuous they may be in other ways, they are soiled by “the

stamp of one defect”. This speech is quite ironic, because it is Hamlet’s “one

defect” (his hesitancy and inability to take action), regardless of his other

qualities (such as honour and integrity), will be the main reason why the play

ends so tragically.

Although we are supposed to suspect that “something is rotten in the state of

Denmark”, as Horatio puts it, from the start of the play, it is only when Hamlet

talks with the ghost of his father in Act I Sc V that we realise the full extent

of his uncle’s treachery. When he first sees the ghost, Horatio and Marcellus

try to restrain him, Horatio saying:

“What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord,

Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff

That beetles o’er his base into the sea,

And there assume some other horrible form,

Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,

And draw you into madness.”

Horatio is afraid that the ghost will get Hamlet to follow him to a cliff

hanging over the sea, and then change into some other apparition, making Hamlet

lose his mind and his sovereign power of reason. These words are very ironic,

for as a result of seeing the ghost and hearing the dreadful truth about his

father’s murder and mother’s adultery Hamlet says he will put on an “antic

disposition”, telling the others that he will act oddly, but that they musn’t

tell anyone why he is doing so. Hamlet has already told us that he is a man of

thought rather than action (earlier in the play he says that Claudius is as

different to his father “as I to Hercules”), and he is going to act oddly so

that the King doesn’t suspect Hamlet is plotting his downfall. However, Horatio

and Marcellus even now think that Hamlet is acting rather strangely, saying

“These are wild and whirling words, my lord”, and “this is wondrous strange”.

The next passage of interest is in Act II Sc II, when Claudius says to his

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern:

“… Something have you heard

Of Hamlet’s transformation; so call it,

Since nor th’ exterior nor the inward man

Resembles that it was.”

Claudius is keen to talk of Hamlet’s rumoured madness, because he thinks Hamlet

might know something about his treachery and wants to deflect his guilt and

detract from Hamlet’s credibility. To the audience, who have already heard the

ghost’s speech, Claudius seems to be going over the top, saying that he can’t

imagine what has rendered Hamlet mad and going back to childhood reminisces.

This is similar to one of Shakespeare’s other tragedies, Macbeth, where Macbeth

goes weaves all sorts of flowery expressions of grief over a king he himself

killed.

In this act, we do not see Hamlet much but are gradually introduced by others to

the notion that he is mad. Different people give different reasons – Polonius

says “… I have found // the very cause of Hamlet’s lunacy”. The Queen thinks

that the only reason is “His father’s death, and our o’erhasty marriage”,

whereas Polonius thinks it is because his daughter rejected Hamlet, after he

himself ordered her to: “I will be brief :Thy noble son is mad. // Mad I call

it.” But by the end of the act, a hint of doubt over Hamlet’s sanity will be

ingrained in the audience’s mind.

The first time

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