Hamlet Bipolar Analysis

Hamlet is often revered as Shakespeare’s finest work yet even a four hour long play doesn 't have enough time to explain everything, so we are left with many open-ended questions, such as the true nature of Hamlet’s mental state and how it contributes to his actions and failures to act. It is possible that Hamlet’s behavior could be attributed to him being bipolar. He could be completely mentally sound and using his “madness” as a disguise to appear harmless in order to get close to Claudius and kill him for revenge. Hamlet could be mentally imbalanced and his self-awareness of that imbalance is what is affecting when and how he acts. Most likely, Hamlet’s true mental state is getting more and more unsound and Hamlet knows this, so he doesn …show more content…
A strange time where Hamlet switches gears absurdly fast is when he learns of the players arrival. He just got done explaining the physical manifestation of his own depression (in present tense) and ends with, “man delights not me; nor woman neither,” saying there is nothing in the world that could lift his spirits. Four lines later and Hamlet is recounting how much he adores the players and how excited he is to see them perform, going so far as to attempt to perform over 15 lines of his favorite speech. Now this could be because he is manic-depressive, and it is the chemical imbalance in his brain that is making him act this way. Or Hamlet could be using the turn of events as a chance to fully enact his “oh i am so totally mad” routine in order to throw people off. Hamlet told his mother that he wasn’t actually mad and told her, “bring me to the test, and i the matter will reword, which madness would gambol from.” This would suggest that Hamlet’s “madness” is really all an act. Yet he apologized to Laertes for killing his father, claiming his madness is to blame for