Analyzing Hamlet's Sanity in the Play
Analyzing Hamlet's Sanity in the Play
Hamlet and his sanity can arguably be discussed. Two ways that this could be so are discussing the possibility of "his loss of control in his actions or his ability of dramatic art" (Hamlet's Madness). When we first met Hamlet he is in a state of despair. He is an emotional young man who is struggling with the death of his father .At this point; his entire life is consumed by depression. This to me is presumed as normal, for a person who as suffered a lost, of someone dear to him or her, as was his father.
Now with the death of his father, comes his mother's, Gertrude, second marriage. "She married. O, most wicked speed dexterity to incestuous sheets"(William Shakespeare; Hamlet Act I. SC.II, lines 162-163). Hamlet simply need look at his mother and Claudius and get a feeling of disgust and repulsion. Hamlet had aspired to be like his father, the king, in all ways. This included taking his father's place in his mother's affection. But seeing that Claudius had that place and on top of it, a member of the same family, bothered him greatly. "Without his being the least bit aware of these desires…he is reduced to the deplorable mental state he himself so vividly depicts"(Ernest Jones; Hamlet and Oedipus). Yet still Hamlet is seen as a stable individual. "But regardless of how grief stricken he might outwardly appear, his appearance cannot hold a candle to how miserable he feels inside"(Emotional Young Hamlet). Claudius comments to Hamlet that he is taking his father's death to extremes:
To give these mourning duties to your father; But you must know, your father lost a father; That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound/ in filial obligation for some term to do obsequious sorrow(William Shakespeare; Hamlet I.ii.94-98)
The Claudius tells him that death is a part of the natural order of things and he should get over it. Hamlet is obviously depressed. He clearly shows it in two of his soliloquies. On starts off with a reference to disease and decay: "Oh that this sullied flesh would melt/Thaw, and resolve itself into a dew," (Act I.ii.129-130). Here Hamlet makes his first reference to suicide. He also expresses an enormous dissatisfaction with...