The Destruction Of Hamlet's Insanity In Hamlet By William Shakespeare

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is the story of the Prince of Denmark who is struggling to deal with the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother to his uncle. After being visited by the ghost of his dead father, Hamlet becomes obsessed with revenge. Throughout Hamlet, the prince is grief stricken by the loss of his father and as the play goes on his thoughts and behaviors grow insane. Hamlet’s insanity began with the death of his father, King Hamlet. This traumatic event is the start of his fall into madness, as he feels grief and a desire for revenge. In Act 1, Scene 2, Hamlet says, “O that this too, to sullied flesh would melt, Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew, Or that the Everlasting had not fixed His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God, God, How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world!”(1.2 133-138). Hamlet’s grief and despair over the death of his father and his extreme thoughts of “ self slaughter”. This way of thinking shows that Hamlet’s thoughts are growing more and more insane.

His behavior is odd and unpredictable, and becomes more unstable as the play goes on. In Act 1, Scene 5, Hamlet says, “How strange or odd some’er I bear myself, As I perchance hereafter shall think meet To put an antic disposition on, That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, With arms encumbered thus, or this headshake, Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, As `Well, well, we know,` Or `if we listen to speak,`or `There be, and if they might,` Or such ambitious giving out, to note, That you aught of me”(1.5 190-201). Hamlet explains his delusional plan to pretend to be crazy, to not make his plan suspicious. This plan does not only show that he is thinking irrationally and showing his