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Is Hamlet Insane

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There is much speculation surrounding the mental wellbeing of Prince Hamlet of whether he himself is mad, not mad, or a combination of sanity turning into insanity. Throughout the book though there is evidence of Hamlet being sane, and from this it can be drawn that Hamlet is not mad. In the beginning of the played there is a ghost of the late King Hamlet who is introduced and discovered by the guards of the castle at night. The guards tell Prince Hamlet’s best friend, Horatio, of the ghost which in turn leads to him telling Hamlet about the ghost. Hamlet is intrigued by the ghost and wishes to talk to it, but Horatio requests Hamlet be weary of the ghost. Hamlet in the scenes of he talks to the ghost is interesting because his interactions …show more content…

Hamlet decides the best course of action is to act like he has gone mad, so that nobody will be suspicious with his actions with investigating the cause of his father’s passing. “Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, / How strange or odd soe’er I bear myself, / As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on,” (1, 5, 170-173). Hamlet does not want to just go out and commit a crime against his uncle as this would just lead to more family trouble and drama that is not needed. The reason this is important in the play to isolate this part of the scene is because it leads to the basis of whether Hamlet himself is mad or not. Hamlet talks of how he will be pretending to have gone insane, and this is a key role to him in finding out who killed his father. If Hamlet was caught digging around for the actual cause of his father’s death then who is to say that the killer won’t make Hamlet his next target to keep the murder a secret. Hamlet thinks two steps ahead of his actions and make a plan before he carries it out, and during the deceit he stays loyal to the cause the entire time for the sake of his father. A man who has gone mad would not be able to think so well ahead and stay in character for an entire castle, because only a sane person would have the capacity to do

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