Hamlet's Insanity

Hamlet's sanity has been questioned by critics of the play for centuries: is the Dane merely acting in order to fool the spies following him around the castle? -- or does he actually lose his mind? Part of the difficulty is that both seem possible (Davis 629). The other part is that critics tend to think it an either/or proposition -- as in, either Hamlet is acting or Hamlet is insane. The play, however, provides all the evidence one needs to assert that Hamlet is indeed acting insane initially (feigning madness) but that as the drama unfolds, his grasp on sanity and reason becomes looser and looser until he himself admits that he knows not what he is doing (and his actions essentially become mad). This paper will show how Hamlet is proven to be insane by both referring to the text and to the opinion of scholars.

The descent into madness for Hamlet does not occur suddenly (as it does for Ophelia). Hamlet's descent is slow and tortuous and occurs over a period of time. At first he seems to be in possession of himself -- even when he is encountering the ghost of his dead father. Hamlet argues within himself, logically, as to the veracity of the ghost's claims; he even wonders whether the ghost is a devil in disguise seeking to ensnare Hamlet's soul -- "Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned" (1.4.43) -- although he does not act according to his own logic (which, one would assume, would mean to proceed with caution since there is no clear way of knowing whether the ghost is from Heaven or from Hell). Hamlet, however, asserts: Thou comest in such a questionable shape / That I will speak to thee. I'll call thee "Hamlet," / "King," "Father," "royal Dane." O, answer me! / Let me not burst in ignorance, but tell / Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death,

/ Have burst their cerements . . . ." (1.4.46-51). In other words, immediately after pronouncing that the ghost's appearance is questionable at best -- i.e., that the ghost's origins are not known -- Hamlet instantly assumes that the ghost is after all the spirit of his dead father. He is judging on appearances and emotion. His emotion is in fact evident in the manner of his speech. The young prince who has been so taciturn and terse through the beginning scenes of the play now bursts out with so many words that his mind is in danger of becoming unhinged from its moorings. This is the first crack in Hamlet's reason, so to speak -- his willingness to pursue a flight of fancy and give more credence to the ghost than the ghost deserves.

As Simon Blackmore notes, "Hamlet as a Christian knew that evil spirits may at times assume various forms, the better to beguile to evil, and, therefore, he doubted [rightly] whether this spectre-like form of his father were really his ghost or a demon" (130). The problem that Hamlet runs into is that he does not pursue a line... He immediately believes the spirit to be that of his dead father, and swears the other men present to silence. Hamlet even goes so far as to brandish his sword at his friends, who, fearing Hamlet's safety, attempt to keep him from following the ghost. The prince grows impassioned and inflamed and his threat of violence is not the reasoned discourse of a rational man but rather that last, desperate act of a mind that is already beginning to drift. At the same time, Hamlet has not lost his reason -- he can still speak coherently and with logic -- but the appearance of the ghost so shatters Hamlet's peace of mind (or at least what peace he had, knowing that his mother has married his uncle immediately his father has died) that he has begun down the slippery slope towards insanity. At the end of Act 1 he is not, however, completely insane. As further scenes reveal, he is struggling with his mind and attempting to find some support.
Horatio is some support, but Horatio's own rationalistic bent is not what Hamlet needs. Hamlet has no problem using reason to justify a position; his problem is that reasons are insufficient. He seeks love's supports, but Ophelia is in the hands of her father, who is a spy for Hamlet's new step-father (suspicious of his step-son's behavior). Without Ophelia's love, Hamlet is left to fend for himself and his mind is not strong enough to withstand the stresses that he is facing. Hamlet even knows that he is being spied upon and deliberately adopts a crazy persona to throw off his spies and his uncle -- he states that he will "put an antic disposition on" (1.5.172) -- but the sheer fact that he feels this will somehow work out in his favor is further evidence that his mind is being lost. Indeed, his "antic disposition" ends up leading his uncle to give him a death sentence (which Hamlet craftily eludes in his post-madness -- at least, for a time). Hamlet even tells his mother "I essentially am not in madness / But mad in craft" (3.4.187-8) -- which is really an equivocation on Hamlet's part, as his irrational and unthinking slaying of Polonius in the same scene bears out the fact that Hamlet has indeed lost control of his mind. His mother even cries out, "O me, what hast thou done?" when Hamlet thrusts his sword through the arras -- and Hamlet responds, "Nay, I know not. Is it the king?" (3.4.26-27).

In other words, Hamlet, who has been refraining from action for so long now acts impulsively and without thinking -- i.e., he acts like an actual madman and may be said to be insane at this moment. After all, he confesses that he does not know what he has done. Alexander Crawford argues that Hamlet's madness is feigned -- "there can be no doubt" -- but as Hamlet's actions in Act 3 show the prince is indeed acting insanely. He may have started out only pretending to be mad in order…