Hamlets Madness Essay, Research Paper

Hamlet the young Danish prince is possibly one of the most complicated

characters in English Literature. Shakespeare created a

three-dimensional and multifaceted individual, whose constant

vacillations and “pregnant” soliloquies ask the most significant

questions that life has to offer. Hamlet has the reader in a constant

guessing game trying to decipher whether or not Hamlet is truly

insane. Why does Hamlet feign madness? Is he truly even feigning? If

he is mad, was Polonius accurate in saying that there was a “method to

his madness”? Hamlet’s speech is the portal into his soul, in which we

find the answers to all our questions about him. Both in his

soliloquies and in his heavy dialogue he gives us clues to his

intentions, his purpose, and the strongest enemy: his self. “How

strange or odd some’or 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 such ambiguous giving out, to note that you know aught of me – this

do swear…”