Find Hamlet Essay | Shakespeare

Hamlet may already be going mad when the play begins, and his later decision to fake madness is just a cover for real insanity. The first line addressed to Hamlet is: “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (I.ii.): Claudius thinks it’s strange and unhealthy that Hamlet is still grieving for his father. In the same scene, Hamlet tells us that he is wearing “solemn black” and a “dejected ‘havior” (I.ii.), which audiences in Shakespeare’s time would have recognized as signs of “melancholy,” a condition which Renaissance doctors believed could lead to madness. Although several characters see the Ghost during Act One, only Hamlet hears it speak, which opens the possibility that the Ghost’s speech is a hallucination of Hamlet’s. Later Hamlet wonders the same thing, asking whether the Ghost’s story was a trick played on him by the Devil, “Out of my weakness and my melancholy, /As he is very potent with such spirits” (II.ii.). The possibility that Hamlet is mad when the play begins forces us to question the truth of everything he says, making his character even more mysterious.

Hamlet’s misogynistic behavior toward Gertrude and Ophelia can be seen as evidence that Hamlet really is going mad, because these scenes have little to do with is the quest for justice, and yet they seem to provoke his strongest feelings. We see little evidence in the play that either Gertrude or Ophelia is guilty of any wrongdoing, and they both appear to feel genuine affection and concern for Hamlet. Yet he treats them both with paranoia, suspicion, and cruelty, suggesting he has lost the ability to accurately interpret other people’s motivations. Hamlet describes Gertrude’s marriage as “incestuous” (I.ii.), but no one else in the play agrees with his opinion. Even though the Ghost instructs Hamlet not to “contrive against thy mother aught” (I.v), Hamlet’s disgust with his mother’s sex life mounts as the play continues: when he finally confronts Gertrude, he paints a picture of her “honeying and making love over the nasty sty” (III.iii). Hamlet demonstrates a similar attitude to Ophelia’s sexuality, telling her “Get thee to a nunnery” rather than become “a breeder of sinners” (III.i). After giving Ophelia a long list of what he sees as women’s faults, Hamlet confesses: “It hath made me mad” (III.i). The fact that Hamlet’s biggest emotional outbursts are directed against the sexual feelings of the women in his life suggests that his mad behavior is not just a ploy to disguise his revenge plans.

In spite of the proof that Hamlet is really distraught, we additionally observe considerable proof that he is simply imagining. The most evident proof is that Hamlet himself says he is going to profess to be distraught, recommending he is in any event sufficiently normal to have the option to differentiate between disarranged and judicious conduct. Hamlet tells Horatio and Marcellus that he plans to ‘put a prank demeanor on’ (I.v). His ‘distraught’ comments to Polonius—’you are a fishmonger’ (II.ii)— are excessively senseless and once in a while too smart to even think about being truly frantic: even Polonius notes ‘How pregnant at times his answers are’ (II.ii.). Hamlet’s most frantic appearing upheaval, against Ophelia, might be clarified by the way that Claudius and Polonius are keeping an eye on the discussion: if Hamlet speculates that he’s being kept an eye on, he might be acting more disturbed than he truly is to support his audience members. In the event that Hamlet knows that Claudius and Polonius are tuning in, the way that he can quickly change his conduct indicates the possibility that he has a firm hold on the real world and his very own psyche. Likewise, when Hamlet is sent to England, he acts skillfully and heartlessly to get away, which recommends that even at this late stage in the play he is able to do flawlessly normal conduct. For each bit of proof that Hamlet is frantic, we can likewise point to confirm that he’s rational, which adds to the riddle of Hamlet’s character.

By making the crowd always question whether Hamlet is extremely frantic or simply imagining, Hamlet asks us whether the line between the real world and acting is as obvious as it appears. Hamlet reveals to us that he accepts the motivation behind acting is ‘to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to Nature’ (III.ii), that is, to be as near reality as could reasonably be expected. The First Player cries as he conveys a tragic discourse, and Hamlet asks whether the Player’s imagined emotions are more grounded than his very own genuine sentiments, since Hamlet’s emotions are not sufficiently able to make him cry. Hamlet appears to accept that acting can be as genuine, or more real, than a genuine feeling, which raises the likelihood that by claiming to be frantic, Hamlet has really caused his very own psychological breakdown. Another elucidation could be that Hamlet demonstrations frantic as an approach to express the solid, alarming feelings he can’t enable himself to feel when he’s rational, similarly as the on-screen character can cry effectively when assuming a job. All through the play, Hamlet battles to figure out which job he should play—insightful, hesitant researcher, or retribution disapproved, unequivocal beneficiary to the position of royalty—and by acting the two sections, Hamlet investigates what his actual job ought to be. Hamlet constrains us to address what in all actuality: how might we differentiate between the real world and falsification?

When Hamlet saw his phantom of a dad, his sole reason in life was to reveal reality with regards to the issue and retaliate for his dad should it be esteemed essential. From that point of view, franticness appeared to be the ideal vessel to control the manner in which the individuals worked around him. Indeed, frenzy enabled him to confound Polonius into accepting that Ophelia was the base of his franticness such a great amount in actuality that Polonius went to the lord and sovereign who additionally appear to be slanted to accept that Ophelia could in reality be the reason for Hamlet’s frenzy. The capture of the affection letters from Hamlet to Ophelia was additionally in support for Hamlet’s depiction of ‘frenzy’. For Hamlet to convey this on viably, he would have needed to hold a type of association with reality so as to control those that would some way or another uncertain whether he really recognized what he was discussing. Hamlet was a splendid man to be sure!

Contingent upon how Hamlet is analyzed, no doubt there are both genuine and not-exactly-so-genuine episodes of franticness. The universe of Hamlet contracts from being one in which he could have been a respectable ruler in a quiet and prosperous realm to one where potential foes are wherever present. Since time is running short in his life, all things considered, Hamlet would in certainty be a casualty of franticness while as yet holding a portion of his capacity to stay in contact with reality somewhat. This connection is the thing that prevented Hamlet from going totally over the edge, in any case, his franticness is the thing that made the story take the way that it did in light of the fact that his frenzy prompted his fixation which seeped over into a few diverse different subjects inside the play. William Shakespeare’s Hamlet was a disaster that is ached to be recalled.