Theme Of Schizophrenia In Shakespeare's Hamlet

“Alas, how is’t with you,/That you do bend your eye on vacancy,/And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?” (Ham 3.4.128-130). Gertrude is the only character to question the existence of the ghost of King Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and, therefore, bring up the topic in the reader’s mind of whether or not Hamlet himself is mentally ill. The play, set in Elsinore, Denmark sometime during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is about a young prince whose father has recently died and whose mother marries his uncle. Under high levels of stress and an unknown state of illnesses running in his family, it is likely that Hamlet may indeed be suffering from one specific mental disorder – schizophrenia. Through the lens of psychoanalysis,

National Library of Medicine, as “severe mental disorders that cause abnormal thinking and perceptions” – that is associated with symptoms that cause problems in the way a person thinks, denotes actions and events, expresses their emotions, moves, and interacts with others (“Schizophrenia”). Schizophrenia can be any mixture of symptoms that cause said problems, including positive symptoms, responsible for sensory illusions and misconceptions, and negative symptoms, such as unresponsive behavior and inability to speak. It is not caused by one lone factor but by a combination of a person’s physiological, hereditary, and environmental state, including family history and extreme stress levels. Considering the actions that Hamlet takes throughout the play, it is quite plausible that he is suffering from positive schizophrenic symptoms, mainly hallucinations and

When Hamlet becomes tired of Rosencrantz’s and Guildenstern’s questioning, he confronts them about their motives. In his confrontation, Hamlet says, “’Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe?” (3.2.354-355). The negative connotation of these words tells the reader that Hamlet does not think highly of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and that he believes that they are spying on him because of some sort of malicious intent. While Hamlet’s thoughts may be reasonable if the reader only takes into consideration that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern betrayed him by helping out his uncle, they prove to be unreasonable when one contemplates the circumstances under which both men agreed to spy on Hamlet. Both men admit to being his friends and both do prove to be worried about him in scenes where they are talking to Claudius or Gertrude. For example, when they are first introduced in the play, Guildenstern says to Gertrude, “Heavens make our presence and our practices/Pleasant and helpful to him!” (2.2.40-41). One could argue that Guildenstern simply makes this declaration because he wants to appear as a loyal and caring subject to Gertrude, the queen of Denmark, but the statement does nothing to explain how