Term Papers on Hamlet: Was He Mad?

Term Paper Title	Hamlet: Was He Mad?
# of Words	1448
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.79

Hamlet: Was He Mad?

    For centuries, scholars have been debating the issue on whether Hamlet - the
prince of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet - was mad. This question is not
as easy as it sounds to answer; this is due to the fact that there are numerous
arguments to support both sides of the issue. For many reasons, it is easy to
believe that Hamlet was indeed mad. After all, Hamlet's behavior throughout most
of the play is extremely erratic and violent. However, there is another way to
look at his actions; there are indications within the play that there was
actually a method in his madness, suggesting that he was not mad at all.
    One of the major arguments that Hamlet was mad, was his erratic and violent
behavior in many parts of the play. His erratic behavior is especially evident
in his conversation with Ophelia:

          Hamlet: ...I could accuse me of such things that it were better
          my mother had not borne me: I am very proud,
          revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck
          than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to
          give them shape, or time to act them in. What should
          such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and
          earth! We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us...
           * Act 3 Scene 1

One minute Hamlet tells Ophelia that “I did love you once.”1 Then in his next
line he says “I loved you not.”2  This quick change in moods suggests that he
was mad.

          Hamlet: Nay, but to live
          In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
          Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
          Over the nasty sty-
          1 - Act 3, Scene 1
          2 - Act 3, Scene 1
          Queen: O, speak to me no more;
          These words like daggers enter in my ears.
          No more, sweet Hamlet.
          *Act 3 Scene 4

This excerpt is from Hamlet's conversation with his mother after he lays his
trap down on Claudius. He speaks with such anger and wrath that his own mother
fears him and screams for help. Consequently, Polonius who is hiding behind the
curtains screams for help, and Hamlet stabs him thinking that he had caught
Claudius spying on him.

          Hamlet: Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!
          I took thee for thy better, take thy fortune:
          Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger...
          *Act 3 Scene 4

Throughout this whole scene Hamlet seems mad: the rage he expresses towards his
mother, he killed Polonius in a ‘fit of madness', and also when Hamlet seniors
ghost appears to him. This is the point in the play when Hamlet seems the most
mad. In all of the other instances, everyone was able to see the ghost; but in
this scene the ghost can only be seen by Hamlet. When Hamlet starts speaking to
the ghost even his mother thinks that he is mad: “This is the very coinage of
your brain: This bodiless creation ecstasy is very cunning in.”1  When the queen
reports this deed to Claudius, she sates the he was: “Mad as the sea and
wind....”2
    When Hamlet goes before Claudius to confess for the murder of Polonius, he
refuses to tell where the body went, and seems to make a joke out of the whole
thing.

          Claudius: Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?
          Hamlet: At supper.
          Claudius:At supper! Where?
          Hamlet: Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
          convocation of politic worms are e'en at him...
          Hamlet: A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a
          king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.
          *Act 4 Scene 3
          1 - Act 3 Scene 4   2 - Act 4 Scene 1

Even when telling Claudius where the body was, he seemed to take the whole
incident as a joke. “...You shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the
lobby.”1 “He will stay till you come.”1
     Hamlet's madness is not only evident in his actions and words, but
sometimes in his thoughts. During Hamlet's first soliloquy, he expresses deep
anger and resentment aga...

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