Madness in Hamlet

Many people have seen Hamlet as a play about uncertainty and about Hamlet's failure to act appropriately. It is very interesting to consider that the play shows many uncertainties that lives are built upon, or how many unknown quantities are taken for granted when people act or when they evaluate one another's actions. Hamlet is an especially intriguing production, both on the set and on the screen because of its uniqueness to be different from what most people expect to be in a revenge themed play. Hamlet's cynicism and insane like behavior cause him to seem indecisive, but in reality he is always judging and contemplating his actions in the back of his mind in order to seek revenge for the murder of

Hamlet’s sanity has made many people question him. “Hamlet certainly displays a high degree of mania and instability throughout much of the play, but his “madness” is perhaps too purposeful and pointed

     Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, is a complex play, filled with layers of meaning. These are often revealed through the madness of the characters and the theme of madness throughout the play. Although Hamlet and Ophelia are the only characters thought to be so afflicted, the reactions of other characters to this madness mirrors their own preoccupations.

Throughout the Shakespearian play, Hamlet, the main character is given the overwhelming responsibility of avenging his father’s "foul and most unnatural murder" (I.iv.36). Such a burden can slowly drive a man off the deep end psychologically. Because of this, Hamlet’s disposition is extremely inconsistent and erratic throughout the play. At times he shows signs of uncontrollable insanity. Whenever he interacts with the characters he is wild, crazy, and plays a fool. At other times, he exemplifies intelligence and method in his madness. In instances when he is alone or with Horatio, he is civilized and sane. Hamlet goes through different stages of insanity throughout the story, but his neurotic and skeptical personality amplifies his

He goes from general melancholy to pretend madness, to this in-between state, to full on hallucinations. It all started in the very beginning, his grieving method was really the determinate of all the following consequences. He chose to deal with his grief through revenge and deceit and hate, partly because he was looked down upon by everyone for dealing with it in any other typical way. Hamlet didn’t start out as a crazy person, I'm not even sure if he was predisposed to the sickness, however, under the right circumstances and in the right mindset, anyone can teeter towards their side of insanity. Hamlet is just one of many examples of a person lingering too long and embodying the madness they once just faked. This is prevalent not only in pieces of literature, but also in

The insanity of a person can be contributed through the trauma that is caused by a few events in a person’s life, but in the play Hamlet, William Shakespeare wrote the main character prince Hamlet experiences a few dramatic events from the play which his attitude changes throughout. In order to figure out whether hamlet is insane is by figuring out what the characteristics of his insanity. Characters see Hamlet in different shades of gray, each side more or less sane than others. His sanity can be his truth or his lie.

Mellissa Moreno ENGL 4323-900 Dr. U. Klein 10 June, 2018 Mental Illness in Hamlet Hamlet is one of the most popular tragedies Shakespeare wrote back in 1599. This is due to the constant dramatization on the many deaths that occurred throughout the play. Hamlet’s vague dialogue brings up various theories involving the idea of Hamlet being mad or pretending to be. One’s interpretation on the play could be inclined into the idea that he indeed was mad due to his father’s death, others suggest he pretended to do so to confuse those surrounding him all along. In the aftermath of him seeing his father’s ghost and the relationships between him and the King & Queen, and him & Ophelia are proof that insanity took over his mind toward the end of the play.

Dominic Wassef Mr. LeBlanc English 7-8 20 March 2017 The general concern on mental health Mental health, the topic of mental health is one of such pre-eminent focus in today's media as it was also a strong issue in the story Hamlet. Now surely how can real life matters such as mental health have relation to a fictional book such as Hamlet. In Hamlet, the setting starts off in medieval times with such gruesomeness and violence, although there are two characters that really stood out. The characters Hamlet and Ophelia had suffered from severe mental health issues such as hallucinations, along with delusional and erratic behavior.

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlets’ peculiar personna composed of paranoia and manic depression plays a vital part in the outcome of the play by manipulating his actions. Shakespeare depicts Hamlet as a Prince that has been dealt a bad hand in the beginning of the play. This hand is comprised of his father dying and his uncle marrying his mom. These set of events create a domino effect that brings despair, hostility, confusion, and denial. The combination of these emotions arise a sense of paranoia within Hamlet.

Madness is a trait which it is difficult to tell its authenticity. The theme of madness is an essential piece in William Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, the protagonist, Hamlet, who just lost his father, and having his uncle, Claudius marrying to his mother, Gertrude weeks after, he is very upset about the events and became very depressed. When Hamlet meets the ghost of his father, he decides to put an antic disposition on and started acting crazy as a part of his plan in order to discover if his father’s been murder or not. From time to time, Hamlet’s act of lunacy gets out of control and eventually caused him to lose his sense of reality and actually go insane, just like when he sees the ghost in his mother’s room, but Gertrude did not see or hear a thing, and he starts to lose his logical sense at the end when he is talking to the Osric and his best friend, Horatio. Finally, Hamlet’s antic disposition overtakes his rationality, controls him, and leads him to his downfall and many others around him.

There are several reasons why one would suspect Prince Hamlet to have bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder has five classifications, including: bipolar I, bipolar II, rapid cycling, mixed bipolar, and cyclothymia. It causes mood swings, severe depression, extreme feelings, and/or confusion. Hamlet, said to be about twenty years old, has been through so much more than the typical twenty year old has. In the play, Hamlet’s father had been recently murdered by his uncle, whom his mother has also recently married. These are the main reasons why Hamlet has also shown serious signs of major depressive disorder as well, which can often go hand-in-hand

Furthermore, Hamlet’s madness within the play can be interpreted as a subsequent result of metaphorical poison in the mind. At the beginning of the play when Hamlet gets to know of his father’s death and his uncle re-marrying his mother, immediately it is seen that Hamlet shows traits of a poisoned conscience. He says:

“Mood disorder: although Hamlet worries a lot, he doesn’t avoid situations that cause him to worry. He confronts the ghost of his father as it appears before him. Also, he presents two symptoms namely restlessness or feeling on the edge and irability.” (Character Analysis of Hamlet, Psychological Disorders, Sept. 22, 2012).

Hamlet's five soliloquies reveal enough about his inner thoughts and reasoning to allow a mental health professional to offer a diagnosis of Hamlet Syndrome. Hamlet Syndrome describes someone in a mental health state that slowly goes crazy and procrastinates. Throughout the whole play, Hamlet is waiting to kill his Stepfather. He is

Motivation fuels almost every action that takes place in the world. In William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, the main character, Hamlet, has an episode where those around him observe that he is seemingly mad. His reactions and remarks to other characters, however, prove that perhaps his madness is a façade and a way to stay under the radar of King Claudius, his uncle. The interpretations of Hamlet’s mental state can be assessed differently for each reader. This, in turn, causes the story of Prince Hamlet to be individualized to each reader. This effect serves to raise questions about the complexities of the main character.