Desiree Kelly
Professor Rampello
Final Paper
December 15th, 2016
Does Hamlet Feign Insanity? Finding out if hamlet really went insane and lost his mind is one of those questions that people can always ask themselves but I feel like he actually did go insane, throughout the play of Hamlet written by William Shakespeare hamlet started to loose his mind, it all started when his mother married his uncle after his uncle killed his father while he was taking a nap while in the garden. In act one after his father 's ghosts came to visit hamlet makes Horatio and Marcellus swear that they will never tell anyone about the ghost or give any indication that they know anything about hamlet losing his mind. Throughout the rest of the play hamlet
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If Modern psychologists were involved in this, they would definitely see that there is a unstable mentality to Hamlet. With hamlet 's behavior and outburst for his age, you can see that inconsistent actions and speech are signs of emotional and mental distress, but it isn’t clear whether the inconsistency comes from going crazy or from the overwhelming stresses of his circumstances with the death of his father or the fact that he is living with a killer. Towards the last ask in the play when King Claudius is trying to get rid of hamlet he brings laertes back from school and the two of them plot to kill hamlet during a fencing match, Hamlet not knowing the two of them put poison on the fencing stick so when Hamlet was caught with it he would be poisoned and die , but before that the king had the idea while they were fencing to try and make hamlet drink the poison because he was Thursday but queen Gertrude ended up drinking the drink that was for Hamlet but because it was the poison she ended up dying first, after all was said and done at the conclusion of the play Hamlet tells laretes that he is the victim of his own madness, . I’m thinking that after pretending to be crazy he ended up losing his mind him being crazy, right before he died he realize that all of this happen because it was his fault but at the end of the day there was nothing you could do about
By verbally harassing Ophelia and estranging himself from her, Hamlet provides the apparent image of losing his prior care without a great amount of consideration. Additionally, Hamlet further displays his anger for his father’s death through this display. By dissolving his relationship with Ophelia, Hamlet furthers his image of insanity to further illustrate himself as incapable within Claudius’s eyes while still communicating distaste for his loss of his father. With Hamlet’s intentionally swift change of heart for Ophelia, Hamlet’s procedure warrants a certain level of sanity. Regardless of the sudden nature, Hamlet’s continual barring from Ophelia possesses procedure which causes further doubt of Hamlet’s mental instability from the audience of the
Have you ever wondered if the noble Hamlet from The Tragedy of Hamlet play written by William Shakespeare was insane? There are many instances in that the heroic Hamlet pretends to be legally insane, but there are many more occasions when the young Hamlet just pretends to go insane. There are three main reasons why gentle Hamlet is not insane. The reasons are that if he went insane he would fail his smart mission, there are some cases that he does seem insane, and no one that is insane can come up with the brilliant plans the classy Hamlet comes up with. Above all, he seems the most sane.
One of Shakespeare’s most infamous plays, Hamlet, has left many questioning one thing. Was Hamlet truly insane? There are several very convincing reasons for both sides of this debate, but there is more evidence proving that Hamlet was indeed insane. At the beginning of the play, the readers learn that he was grieving the death of his father, which was the stepping stone that paved his eventual madness. A few reasons Hamlet is actually insane are as follows, he becomes very misogynistic toward the two people left that he loves, he becomes obsessed with proving Claudius’ guilt, and lastly he pushes everyone around him away.
The topic of insanity commonly arises on many occasions, particularly in the law. The term “insanity” is defined as the “unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility” (Document A). In terms of the law, there exists an insanity defense, which is a plea that defendants are not guilty because they lack the mental capacity to realize that they committed a crime (Document C). This concept arises in several of Shakespeare's plays as well. In Hamlet, many readers claim that Prince Hamlet was actually mad, his actions guided by the grief he experienced when his father was murdered by his uncle King Claudius.
It is or is it not true that Hamlet was faking his insanity? I’m not saying Hamlet was faking the whole thing. The meaning for insanity on Dictionary.com is “a permanent disorder of the mind.” I don 't think Hamlet had a permanent disorder of the mind he knew what he was doing and even planned the majority of the events that happened. Most of the time anyway.
Madness is often a symptom, and in the case of Hamlet this may be the reason behind his actions. The death of Hamlet’s father is the catalyst for Hamlet, causing him to see the ghost and ultimately become obsessed with the idea of revenge. A common theme for shakespeare is to explore a character’s mind and reasonings, and Hamlet’s character being mad was a perfect opportunity to continue this theme. Hamlet’s debatable madness, Ophelia being truly mad and the death of every character involved with Hamlet or his father is a prime example of tragedy, which Shakespeare is known for. While Hamlet’s madness is not certain, it is indisputable that the play Hamlet was built off of the idea of what is madness, and how does it affect one’s
When the play first began Hamlet did not seem crazy but more depressed and suicidal after his father’s death, he did not begin to act crazy until learning about his father’s murder. ”How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself, to put an antic disposition on...”, here Hamlet tells Horatio that he will start to act crazy but for them to just ignore it. After this when Hamlet only acts mad around thoses who he does not trust but when
After a month or two of analyzing Hamlet and the people around him, I feel like I can conclusively determine he suffers from a mental illness. But the question is what. What mental illness might he suffer from. There are hundreds of different mental disabilities. Each has endless possible ways of linking it back to Hamlet in some way, shape or form.
The question of whether or not Hamlet was insane is of a never-ending debate. Was he always crazy? Was he always faking it? Or was he somewhere in between? In this paper I will share three different views and provide my own interpretation of Hamlet’s sanity.
Insanity is an idea that has been examined for a long time in numerous mediums such as films, music, plays, and even works of literature. William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is no exception to that rule. Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most complex characters, and many scholars have been debating for centuries whether or not Hamlet is truly insane, or whether there is a particular reason for his odd behavior. In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet merely pretends to be mad but in reality is sane.
An overwhelming amount of evidence shows that Hamlet faked his insanity to confuse the king and his accomplices. Often revered for their emotional complexities, William Shakespeare’s tragic characters display various signs of mental illness. Sylvia Morris notes “Hamlet contains Shakespeare’s most fully-developed study of mental illness, and has always intrigued commentators on the play.” (“Shakespeare’s Minds Diseased: Mental Illness and its Treatment”). When looking at the play, one can infer that Shakespeare makes the relationship between sanity and insanity undistinguishable from one another.
William Shakespeare tells the tale of a troubled man in his masterpiece, Hamlet. Imagine your beloved father dying and your mother marrying his brother shortly after. You’re left to grieve on your own. Instead of consoling you, your mother and uncle have a wedding and begin to share the same bed. This is what Hamlet suffers through in the play.
In the play, Hamlet, William Shakespeare reflects the common early modern beliefs and perspectives about madness by using the character development of the protagonist who feigns madness throughout the play. Given Hamlet 's status as a prince, current knowledge of madness during the time period, and the contrast of the different types of madness of other characters in the play, Elizabethan audiences would have found it plausible that Hamlet feigns madness as part of his plot to avenge his father 's death. This new historicist perspective steers the modern reader away from anachronistic psychological interpretations of the play. Hamlet’s status as a prince gives the character certain roles and expectations to fulfill, such as avenging his father’s
In Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet, there are a series of events that causes Hamlet to act abnormally. He has to deal with his father’s death, mother’s remarriage, and his lover Ophelia. However, it is often argued whether Hamlet’s madness is real or fake. Throughout the tragedy, he is over-exaggerating his madness for his plan of revenge.
In William Shakespeare’s tragic play, Hamlet, the minds of most characters are overcome by apparent insanity. Certain characters suffer from genuine madness, which dictate the actions the character will make. Yet, for others, it is quite simply an act and tactic necessary in order to achieve goals, as shown by the play’s witty and clever characters. The story’s astute protagonist in the end attains his goal of avenging his father’s death by murdering his own uncle, Claudius. Although Hamlet died shortly after murdering Claudius, many argue that he dies as a hero and the extermination of the royal family benefits the greater good for Denmark and its citizens.