Is Hamlet’s madness real or assumed? This one simple question has Shakespear fanatics around the world completely befuddled. It is not often that a writer is able to tell a story in its entirety without revealing the truth of the character, yet Shakespeare, being the proficient writer that he was, was able to do this in his play Hamlet. Leaving the audience to decipher whether Hamlet’s afflictions truly led him to insanity or if something more cunning was going on. Promptly after beginning the story you learn that Hamlet’s father has passed, due to what was believed to be a deadly snake bite, this though was not Hamlet’s underlying source of grief. In a hasty manner his once devoted mother remarried the brother of Hamlet’s deceased father,
…show more content…
The reason I have included these two illnesses together is because they often treated with the same medications and show shared symptoms such as, in Hamlet’s case, irritability or explosive anger, personality changes, and even thoughts of suicide or death (“Depression”). Hamlet even directly tells the audience, “Ah, I wish my dirty flesh could melt away into a vapor, or that God had not made a law against suicide. Oh God, God! How tired, stale, and pointless life is to me.” (1.2.129-134), which shows he has considered the thought of taking his own life. From the start of the play you are able to see that Hamlet is struggling to come to terms with his current situation and it is obvious that it has place a heavy burden on his mental and physical state, this becomes quite apparent when Hamlet professes, “Neither my black clothes, my dear mother, nor my heavy sighs, nor my weeping, nor my downcast eyes, nor any other display of grief can show what I really feel.” (1.2.77-83), it is at after hearing this statement that I feel it is safe to diagnose Hamlet with general anxiety disorder and clinical depression.
I have also come to believe that Hamlet may be suffering from a mild case of Schizophrenia, due to the fact that in act one, scene four he claims to have came into contact with
The reason I have included these two illnesses together is because they often treated with the same medications and show shared symptoms such as, in Hamlet’s case, irritability or explosive anger, personality changes, and even thoughts of suicide or death (“Depression”). Hamlet even directly tells the audience, “Ah, I wish my dirty flesh could melt away into a vapor, or that God had not made a law against suicide. Oh God, God! How tired, stale, and pointless life is to me.” (1.2.129-134), which shows he has considered the thought of taking his own life. From the start of the play you are able to see that Hamlet is struggling to come to terms with his current situation and it is obvious that it has place a heavy burden on his mental and physical state, this becomes quite apparent when Hamlet professes, “Neither my black clothes, my dear mother, nor my heavy sighs, nor my weeping, nor my downcast eyes, nor any other display of grief can show what I really feel.” (1.2.77-83), it is at after hearing this statement that I feel it is safe to diagnose Hamlet with general anxiety disorder and clinical depression.
I have also come to believe that Hamlet may be suffering from a mild case of Schizophrenia, due to the fact that in act one, scene four he claims to have came into contact with