Hamlet's Sanity in William Shakespeare's Hamlet

In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, an obvious subject to discuss would be that of Hamlet’s sanity. To some people Hamlet just seems mad or angry, but others would argue that he is truly mad, as in insane. At first, Hamlet wants people to get the impression that he has gone into madness so they won’t suspect his plan of revenge. The question is, does he place himself too close to madness and not realize that he truly becomes mad, or is he so smart and is able to control himself enough to allow his acting mad be just a disguise in order to execute his plan of revenge? Throughout the play Hamlet’s character becomes blurred and is a huge question mark asking is he mad or is he mad? In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, madness is a key element to the story.

Hamlet is the Prince of Denmark and has returned from college to find that his father has died. Naturally he would be sad from the passing of his father but soon after that sadness is escalated into anger when he learns that his mother is to be married to his uncle Claudius just two months after his father’s death. Hamlet then falls into the grieving process in which he begins to seclude himself from the people who live within the castle. He starts spending most of his time alone, but when people of the castle do see him, he is normally walking by himself and talking to himself. From an outsider’s point to view, one would assume that Hamlet is going crazy. What the outsider may not know is that Hamlet has had a life changing experience, his father’s ghost has came to him and told/showed him how Hamlet’s father died. His father did not just die, in fact he was murdered. The breaking point for Hamlet about his father’s murder was the fact that Claudius, his uncle and mother’s new ...

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...lord, he hath importuned me with love in honorable fashion…and hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, with almost all the holy vows of heaven” (I.iii.111-115). As Hamlet’s madness progresses and his actions and feelings towards Ophelia waver. He rejects Ophelia and tells her that he never loved her, but when he fights with Laertes in Ophelia’s grave, Hamlet states, “Forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum” (V.i.250-253).

Due to his drastic changes in character Hamlet gives the reader the illusion allusion that he may have schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a psychotic illness, the person suffering from Schizophrenia usually will seem out of touch with reality, have deranged thoughts, separate themselves from society, and may be angry, aggressive, irritable, violent, and may also have an obsession with death.