Hamlet

Insanity or madness plays a major role throughout Hamlet. With contributions from revenge, anger, paranoia, and backhanded-ness, insanity takes on many roles during the play, forming the very crux of what happens over the course of the five acts. However, in the end, the madness that consumed the characters eventually is their downfall, bringing about the grisly deaths at the end of the play.

The insanity begins with Hamlet's "antic disposition." It occurs in the first act, when he meets the ghost of his father, King Hamlet. When the assassination of the king is revealed, Hamlet swears revenge. He plots to kill the assassin: the new king and Hamlet's uncle, Claudius. The "antic disposition" that he plans to put on calls for him to feign insanity. Hamlet plans to act strangely from time-to-time when others are around, making them think that he is beginning to lose his mind. Then, when the timing is right, the others will let their guard down enough around him so that he can make the right move and murder the new king for revenge.

Madness is defined as being as being "the quality or state of being mad or insane." In modern society, madness is something that can be easily diagnosed as just acting what is viewed as "strange." Rather than just say that somebody is acting strange, medicine placed names on each condition. People who are "schizophrenic" hear voices in their head, while people with "bi-polar disorder" switch from a manic state to a state of depression at any given moment. Another type of "madness" is when somebody is emotionally disturbed, or when occurrences in a person's life makes him or her lose all sense of reality or go insane. Unfortunately, there is no way for this problem to be solved without talking or therapy.

Hamlet suffered from the disturbance that follows a bad occurrence, as in when his father died. Obviously distraught over the loss, he is stunned to hear the news of how he died, that Claudius poisoned the king while he napped in his castle orchard. To open the wound even more, Claudius married his brother's widow, Gertrude, the day after the death. Throughout the better portion of the rising action of the play, Hamlet wears black, obviously for the memory of his father. In comparison, his brooding differs greatly from the party atmosphere, and his reluctance to join in the celebrations show how his mind just is "not right." - "A little less than kin, and less than kind" (Act I, Scene ii) is what he says of Claudius.

However, the emotional disturbance in Hamlet may go deeper. It is easy to say that he became distraught and unstable following the death of his father. As the play progresses, Hamlet's instability becomes more and more complex. The motive for killing Claudius switches from revenge for his fallen father to a more personal, deeper meaning. By the end, Hamlet wants to kill Claudius for himself, not for his father. In actuality, it is as if the focus of the murder becomes more about a selfish reason for Hamlet rather than for his fallen father.

Over the course of the play, as his instability became more and more volatile, his obsession for murdering Claudius consumed him more and more as well. His transition from revenge to insane is completed with the scene of the climax, which is the play performed for the king and queen. This play reveals to Claudius symbolically that Hamlet knows about the murder and has figured out his plot. It is also at this point where Hamlet's rage consumes him so much that the rest of the play focuses not on the revenge factor but on the imminent battle between Claudius and Hamlet - "My words fly up, my thoughts remain below. Words without thoughts never to heaven go." (Act III, scene iii).

Hamlet at the beginning of the play is not insane at all. He is merely methodical in his way that he wants to gain revenge for his father. He is mindful of his mother, not wanting to hurt her, as well as of others. He is only concerned with isolating Claudius before going after him. Basically, Claudius has not consumed Hamlet.

Then, everything began to change. Before the play scene, Hamlet slowly becomes more and more consumed by his hatred for Claudius. In one particular scene, Hamlet becomes very angry with his mother to the point where he begins to almost abuse her. Then the ghost of King Hamlet appears once again and just looks at his son. Hamlet is jolted back to reality by that, but his insanity is already taking over.

At the scene where Claudius and Gertrude watch the play, Hamlet decides to begin to make the move that would lead to the final battle. The movie portrayed a very angry and vengeful Hamlet throwing comments that dug into Claudius, and with every comment, the expression of the king continues to worsen and worsen. At this point, the climax of the play, everything shifts. Claudius realizes that Hamlet knows that he is the murderer, and the storyline moves from being Hamlet's quest for revenge for his father to an upcoming final battle between Hamlet and Claudius.

After that particular point in the play, Hamlet is insane. His life has become this quest to murder Claudius. It is obvious that Hamlet is no longer worried about others because people begin to die. His obsession with Claudius leads initially to the death of Polonius, and that one death sets off the chain reaction of others. Claudius, who clearly knows that Hamlet wants him dead, sends him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in hopes of killing him there. Instead, it leads to the death of the two messengers. In the final scene, Hamlet's obsessive madness brings about the death of his mother, his best friend Laertes, as well as himself in the final scene (Act V, Scene ii).

William Hazlett said of Hamlet that he is someone "...whose powers of action have been eaten up by thought, he to whom the universe seems infinite, and himself nothing; whose bitterness of soul makes him careless of consequences." What this means is that Hamlet is somebody who sees himself as nothing. Because of his low self-esteem, he is determined to make himself into something