Madness and Insanity in Shakespeares Hamlet - Is Hamlet Mad? :: Shakespeare Hamlet Essays

Is Hamlet Mad?  Perhaps the worlds some famous mental patient, Hamlets sanity has beenargued over by countless in condition(p) scholars for hundreds of years.  As a merestudent of advanced-level English Literature, I incertitude I can add anything new tothe debate in 2000 words, unless I can look at the evidence supporting ordispelling each argument and come to my own conclusion. Hamlet is obviously experiencing brokenheartedness and despair right from the beginning ofthe novel, with the death of his father and his uncles seizure of the sensand rapid weddign of Hamlets m different, and we can observe his great griefbordering on stupid suicidal tendencies as early as Act II Sc I, where hegives his commencement soliloquy.  He cries                O that this too too solid state flesh would dissolve,               Thaw, and resolve itself into a d ew               Or that the Everlasting had not furbish up               His canon gainst self-slaughter Macbeth wants his flesh to dissolve into a dew (solid contrasting with meltin the first line), and wishes that God had not forbade suicides from going toheaven.  This is also the first glimpse of another recurring theme in the play,that of Hamlets unhealthy obsession with the afterlife.  This is one of thereasons that the tincture of his father has such an effect on him, which is atrigger for all the subsequent events in the play. Moving on to the ordinal scene, the next interesting speech is on l. 23.  It is along and obscure speech, but its general gist is that if a person has onefault, no matter how virtuous they may be in other ways, they be soiled by thestamp of one defect.  This speech is sort of ironic, because it is Hamlets oned efect (his hesitancy and inability to take action), regardless of his otherqualities (such as honour and integrity), will be the main reason why the playends so tragically. Although we are supposed to suspect that something is rotten in the state ofDenmark, as Horatio puts it, from the start of the play, it is only when Hamlettalks with the ghost of his father in Act I Sc V that we greet the full extentof his uncles treachery.  When he first sees the ghost, Horatio and Marcellustry 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 oer his grounding into the sea,           And there assume some other horrible form,           Which might divest your sovereignty of re ason,