Amleth's Deception In Hamlet

Hamlets plans to avoid attention impacts several events throughout the play up until act 3. Hamlet fools his family and friends into thinking he has gone slightly mad, in order to withdraw attention from himself. Character deception Is a common feature in any Shakespearean drama, and often this deception acts as a catalyst for events that happen throughout the play whether it be tragedy, history, or comedy. This essay will focus on how hamlets deceptive actions unfold the events that happen in the play and discuss hamlet's reasoning behind his plan.

Although hamlet never clearly justifies his reasoning behind acting like a madman, the clear correlation between Hamlets staged madness and the 13th century Danish tale ‘Amleth’ offers suggested reasoning. In the play ‘Amleth’ the main character similarly pretends to be mad after his …show more content…
However, some could argue that although he attracted more attention, he has distracted Polonius, Ophelia, Claudius and Gertrude bye making them focus on the discovering the reason for ‘Hamlet's transformation’ Gertrude and Claudius's curiosity leads them to hire hamlet's friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him and integrate him on why he is behaving in such a bizarre manner. Hamlet's madness also involves Polonius who is convinced that his daughter Ophelia is causing him go crazy, is belief is made evident in act 2 scene 1, line 100 ‘this is the very ecstasy of love’ . This then results in a second plot of Claudius and Polonius spying on hamlet in hope to discover answers for his behaviour. One could argue that one clear impact of Hamlet's deceptive plan leads to more tension and hatred between Hamlet and Claudius. Claudius’s plans to find the root of hamlet's troubles leads to hamlet being even more upset the fact that his two friends and ophelia would betray him and work for claudius behind his