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

Is Hamlet Mad?  Perhaps the worlds most far-famed mental patient, Hamlets sanity has beenargued over by countless learned scholars for hundreds of years.  As a merestudent of advanced-level English Literature, I doubt I can add anything new tothe debate in 2000 words, plainly I can look at the evidence supporting ordispelling for each unmatchable argument and come to my own conclusion. Hamlet is obviously experiencing grief and desperation right from the beginning ofthe novel, with the death of his fuck off and his uncles seizure of the thr superstarand rapid weddign of Hamlets mother, and we can observe his great griefbordering on irrational dangerous tendencies as early as Act II Sc I, where hegives his first soliloquy.  He cries                O that this too too solid contour would melt,               Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew                Or that the Everlasting had not fixed               His canyon 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 forgather,that of Hamlets unhealthy obsession with the afterlife.  This is one of thereasons that the ghost of his father has such an effect on him, which is a offset for all the subsequent events in the play. Moving on to the fourth scene, the attached interesting speech is on l. 23.  It is along and complicated speech, but its general gist is that if a person has onefault, no enumerate how virtuous they may be in other ways, they are cheating(a) by thestamp of one defect.  This speech is quite ironic, because it is Hamlets on edefect (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 estate 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 realise the entire extentof his uncles treachery.  When he first sees the ghost, Horatio and Marcellustry to restrain him, Horatio saying           What if it call for you toward the flood, my lord,           Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff           That beetles oer his base into the sea,           And there assume some other horrible form,           Which might deprive your sovereignt y of reason,