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

Is Hamlet Mad?  Perhaps the worlds most famous 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, but I can look at the evidence supporting ordispelling each argument and come to my own conclusion. Hamlet is obviously experiencing heartbreak and despair right from the beginning ofthe novel, with the death of his father and his uncles seizure of the throneand rapid weddign of Hamlets m an separate(prenominal), 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 flesh would melt,               Thaw, and decompose itself into a dew    &nb sp          Or that the Everlasting had not fixed               His canon gainst self-slaughter Macbeth wants his flesh to dissolve into a dew (solid contrasting with meltin the first line), and wishes that paragon 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 ghost of his father has much(prenominal) an effect on him, which is atrigger for all the subsequent events in the play. Moving on to the fourth scene, the next interesting speech is on l. 23.  It is along and complicated speech, but its general gist is that if a person has onefault, no matter how virtuous they may be in other ways, they are soiled by thestamp of one defect.  This speech is quite ironic, because it is Hamlets onedefect (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 well-nighthing is rotten in the cite 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 full intentof 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 base into the sea,           And there assume some other horrible form,           Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason,