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Exploring The Theme Of Insanity In Shakespeare's Hamlet

549 Words3 Pages

The tragedy of Hamlet, the prince of Denmark is one if not the uttermost famous of Shakespeare's plays. The play is full of tragedies and lots of characters with each character having faced anger, fear, madness. Madness was a recurring theme in this play, but there was one character that displayed it more than any other; it is none other than the plays protagonist Hamlet. While Hamlet’s “mad” behavior starts out as an “antic disposition” according to him, the readers can view how his mental state deteriorates over the course of the play so that he actually ends up becoming insane. In Hamlet by William Shakespeare, the author conveys Hamlets fake madness becomes real madness through Hamlet's way of speaking to Polonius, and the killing of Polonius. …show more content…

However, this very quickly changes as the readers/viewers learn in one of the first scenes; in the scene Hamlet's father who is dead, comes back as a ghost and tells Hamlet that the person who murdered him now holds the crown. Hamlet being a smart teenager very quickly understands that since his uncle is the king he is the one who “holds the crown”. The very next scenes are just about him figuring out whether or not this is true, because not everyone trusts a ghost that is making severe claims. In the end he finds out the he is in fact the one who killed his father as he confesses this while he is making a prayer. What comes next is Hamlet's genius plan to view the demise of his uncle or at least what he believes is; Hamlet says “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/ To put an antic disposition on (I.V)” In here the reader is told that any madness that comes afterwards is all an act. However, for the rest of the play there is various instances where Hamlet's madness is way too extreme to be an

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