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Mental Instability In Hamlet

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Everyone at some point in their life sets a goal that they wish to accomplish for some reason or another, and in William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, the goal of the main character is to avenge the death of his father who was killed by his uncle, Claudius. Furthermore, when achieving these goals, people are willing to go to the extreme to make sure that these goals are completed. In Shakespeare’s play the main character, Hamlet, falsely portrays himself as mentally unstable which adds a crafty element to the storyline because his false derangement allows him to undertake rash decisions without consequence to achieve his ultimate goal.
Shortly after Hamlet’s father comes to him in ghost form explaining that he wants Hamlet to avenge his death, the prince goes straight to his friend, Horatio, to explain that all of his future actions of madness are false (Shakespeare I.5.169-174). This textual evidence clarifies that Hamlet is actually …show more content…

The most apparent form of sanity exists in the relationships between Hamlet and the other characters. When Hamlet is conversing with his close friend Horatio, he never behaves inappropriately, and he never voices anything that would offend his friend; therefore, the audience is forced to believe that Hamlet is able to control his madness which leads the audience to believe that his mental instability is crafty rather than insane (Bali 4). On the other hand, when he is with someone who is opposing his plan, such as Polonius, he tends to act in a peculiar way by saying and doing things that easily offend him; although most of what he is saying during these encounters makes sense, he phrases it in a way that causes the audience to believe that he has lost his mind. An example of this arises during the scene where Hamlet converses with Polonius in the hallway and calls him a fishmonger (Shakespeare

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