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Cassidy Whalen
Professor Story
English 102
1 April 2019
Hamlet; Was he a Mad Man?
Hamlet by William Shakespeare has become one of the most famous plays to sweep
across the world. It is being read in schools everywhere, as well as being acted out on places like
Broadway. This play has been deemed as a tragedy in the life of a young man named Hamlet.
His father had just died, and after a few days, say his ghost. Hamlet found that his new father, his
uncle, actually murdered his true father. Because of this fact, he started to plan a revenge plan.
Part of this plan was to act crazy so that the new king would try to send him away. Sometimes, it
got out of hand. From beginning to end, Hamlet showed several signs of being crazy, and just
played it off saying that he was pretending. This pretending act was just used as a lie to cover up
the fact that Hamlet, was in fact mad. He shows the traits of a crazy man starting with being
suicidal and talking about his death all the time, to being crazy around his friends, and even
using his craziness as an apology against Laertes. All of these facts further prove that Hamlet
was mad.
Beginning to the very end of the play, Hamlet is always talking about death. Most of the
time, he is talking about himself dying. Several times he would reference a way that he could die,
or even what he was feeling inside, and how he wanted to escape his inner thoughts. Starting all
the way in Act One, Hamlet said, “Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, /or that the Everlasting
had not fixed/ His cannon ‘gainst self-slaughter! Oh God” (1.2.134-136). What this means is that
he wishes that the Everlasting, or God would not force Hamlet to self-slaughter against himself.
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He wishes that he could just be happy and stop feeling this sense of self-hatred. After this, he
talks about suicide several more times in the play. His last reference is in Act Five when going to
fight Laertes and says that if he dies in this battle, then so be it. The words of self-hatred and
wanting to die are not the words of a sane man, but in fact someone who is not in their healthiest
mind.
The next piece of evidence to prove that Hamlet is in fact crazy, is when he was
apologizing to Laertes in Act 5. Taking a few steps back, In Act 3, Scene 4, Hamlet was yelling
at his mother to look at her soul in the mirror and find the things that she did wrong. While doing
this, she yelled out, and Polonius, Laertes father, yelled back the same words. Because of him
doing this, for some reason, Hamlet thought that there was a rat in the wall. When Hamlet went
to stab the “rat” he actual stabbed and killed Polonius. Fast forward to Act Five, Hamlet and
Laertes are now in a fencing battle. Hamlet takes this time to apologizing by saying, “Who does
it, then? His madness. If’t be so, / Hamlet is of the faction that is wronged” (5.2.250-251). He
legitimately blamed being crazy for an excuse to killing Polonius and said that he, Hamlet, is the
one that has been wronged because he fell victim to this craziness.
The last piece of evidence to show that Hamlet is insane is how his friends tried talking to
him, and how Hamlet responded. Throughout the play, Hamlet was always kind of on edge when
talking to his friends. This is understandable because 90% of the time, the king was using them
to spy on Hamlet. In Act One, Scene 5, Hamlet had just gotten done talking to the ghost of his
father. When his friends tried to figure out what had happened. He started talking crazy and not
making sense. His friend Horatio told him that he speech was “[…] wild and whirling words”
(1.5.148). What this means that he was talking like a crazy person. And this is not the first nor
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last time he was talking about nonsense. Because it means, it just proves further that he is
mentally deranged.
Now, some people might point out that he did say “How strange or odd some’er I hear
myself / (As I perchance hereafter shall think I meet/ To put on antic disposition on)” (1.5.190192) after his father’s ghost had shown up and told him about how he died. What this quote
means is that he is going to purposely be crazy and act strange so that his plan will work. So,
everything he does that is crazy after this should be null and void right? Wrong. Acting crazy is
harder than some people might think, as well as the fact that he took it too far sometimes. For
example, in Act 3, he killed Laertes’ father. After killing someone, you can’t just sit there and
pretend that you are going crazy. His reaction was pure, pure crazy.
With all of this compelling evidence, it is pretty obvious that Hamlet is mad. He was very
suicidal from the beginning as well as talking about death in general. After this, he admitted to
being crazy when Hamlet started fighting Laertes. And if that is not compelling enough, he has
been talking nonsense the first act of the play. Sure, he said he was going to act crazy, but
throughout the entire play, he took it a step too far. A step only taken by a true crazy person. All
in all, it has been seen here that Hamlet is not right in the brain, and that he is in fact, mad.