Hamlet: A Sane Man Essay, Research Paper

Hamlet: A Sane Man

Hamlet was indeed a very sane man. He was only feigning madness to further

his own plans for revenge. His words were so cleverly constructed that others

will perceive him as mad. It is this consistent cleverness that is the ultimate

evidence of his complete sanity. Can a mad person be so clever? No, a mad person

cannot. Hamlet is sane and brilliant.

After Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus see the ghost, Hamlet tells Horatio

that he is going to “feign madness”. If Horatio is to notice Hamlet acting

strange it is because he is putting on an act. “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, never shall,/With arms

encumbered thus, or this headshake ,/Or by pronouncing of some doutful

phrase,/As “Well,well,we know,” or “We could an if we/would,”/Or “If we list to

speak,” or “There be an if they/might,”/Or such ambiguous giving-out, to

note/That you know of me-this do swear,/(I,v,190-201).Hamlet states that from

this point forward I may act weird but to ignore my acts of madness for they are

just that, acts, and are in no way a sign of true madness. Only a sane and

rational person could devise such a plan as to act insane to convince others

that he is insane when he actually has complete control over his psyche.

Hamlet only acts mad when he is in the presence of certain characters.

When he is around Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Rosencrantz, and

Guildenstern he acts completely irrational. When Hamlet is around Horatio,

Bernardo, Fransico, the players, and the gravediggers Hamlet acts completely

sane.

When Hamlet and Polonius meet in II,ii Hamlet calls Polonius a

fishmonger and makes strange conversation with him. In IV,iii Hamlet refuses to

tell Claudius were he has hidden the body of Polonius and goes on about how

Polonius is at supper. When Hamlet encounters Gertrude in her closet, an unusual

place, in III,iv. He yells at his own mother. In II,i Hamlet enters Ophelia’s

closet, a highly unusual act, he is dressed badly, and acts very strange towards

her. Claudius and Polonius set up a clandestine meeting between Hamlet and

Ophelia in III,i. Ophelia then tries to return some gifts that Hamlet gave to

her and Hamlet claims that he did not give her any gifts and that he never loved

her at all. During the play in III,ii Hamlet sexually harasses Ophelia in front

of the entire audience of the play. In IV,ii Hamlet refuses to tell Rosencratz

and Guildenstern where he has hidden the body of Polonius. Hamlet has Rosencratz

and Guildenstern, two people that used to be his friends, put to death in

England.

On all occasions when Hamlet is in contact with Horatio, Bernardo,

Fransico, the players and the grave diggers Hamlet acts like a completely normal

person under complete control of his psyche. Only a person that was truly sane

and had a definite purpose behind a feigned madness could pull off such

believable acts of feigned madness.

Even Claudius and Polonius believe that Hamlet is not insane.

“Love? His affections do not that way tend/Nor what he spake,

though it lacked form a little,/Was not like madness. There’s

something in his soul/O’er which his melancholy sits on brood

/And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose” (III,i,176-180).

Claudius states Hamlet’s emotions are not from love. What he does is not like

madness, but it has a higher purpose. Hamlet knows something is amuck and that

he is going to set things right. His madness is part of a plan that he has which

is about to be hatched.

“Though this be madness, yet there is/method in’t” (II,ii,223-224).

This occurs when Polonius and Hamlet are talking and Hamlet is acting unusual

and Polonius clearly states that he believes that there appears to be a reason

behind Hamlet’s actions and that they are logical in nature.

Shakespear gives a definite example of someone who has definitely gone

mad in the play Hamlet. Ophelia is definitely crazy. After being rejected by

Hamlet and the Death of her father she just could not handle it anymore. She

went around dancing, singing about death, erratic behavior, and ultimately her

“death”. She just could not handle everything that had happened to her and gave

up. On the other hand Hamlet is not crazy, he has complete control over his

psyche.

Hamlet tells his mother that he is not mad. “That I essentially am not

in madness/ But mad in craft” (III,iv,209-210). Hamlet states, that he is not

crazy in a sense that he has lost it completely and gone totally insane, but

crazy like a fox. He has a plan to avenge his father’s murder.

Hamlet is not mad. Everything he does has a purpose to it. He is out to

avenge his father’s murder. The facts that support this argument are Hamlet

tells Horatio that he is going to feign madness, Hamlet only acts mad in front

of certain characters. Claudius and Polonius believe that Hamlet is not mad but

that there is a purpose behind his madness, Shakespear gives an example of a

truly mad person, and that Hamlet tells his mother that he is not crazy. These

facts prove beyond a doubt that Hamlet had complete control of psyche at all

times throughout the play.

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