Madness and Mental Instability in Hamlet - Research Paper Example

HAMLET In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, madness and mental instability prove to be a central recurring issue throughout the course of the play. Some of the characters seem to think that Hamlet has lost his mind; others retain their trust for him. Critics and scholars also disagree on this issue: some have argued that Hamlet is in fact acting mad, but underneath remains sane and clever, using madness as a sort of mask to make others overlook him. Others, on the other hand, point towards clues that Hamlet, due to the crucible of his situation, really has lost his mind, and is genuinely insane. Between these poles, there is also the argument that Hamlet may be part acting, and part genuinely mad. It is the contention of the current research investigation, however, that the former pole is the correct one, and that Hamlet chooses to act like a madman, feigning insanity in order to both delay his vengeance on Claudius, and in order to make the other characters take him less seriously as a threat. One of the first instances showing that Hamlet may or may not be mad, is his vision of his father’s ghost at the beginning of the play. This is interesting because the audience could differ in opinion about whether or not the ghost is a figment of Hamlet’s own imagination. One critical discussion remarking of Hamlet’s interaction with his visions states that “the ghost is somehow real, indeed the vehicle of realities” (Mack, p. 196). Whatever the case, the ghost represents Hamlet’s perspective and inner mental state: when he delays too much or starts to move on with his life, the ghost appears to remind him of the injustice that has occurred and that it is his duty to set things right. It is not only Hamlet’s own conscience that is related through his soliloquies to the audience, but also the representation of his father’s ghost that actually takes part in the play, and, when it speaks in the presence of others, it is only Hamlet who appears to actually hear the ghost. This may seem to be proof of his madness. But, by using the supernatural to further what could be called natural aspects of the play, Shakespeare highlights the possible presence of things that are out of the characters’ control, such as fate. The ghost also represents the hero’s internal situation. Hamlet may want to appear insane to some of the other characters, such as Polonius and his mother Gertrude, but he is feigning madness in order in part, to delay his vengeance. Many commentators have remarked on Hamlet’s indecision as one of his main characteristics that makes the play a tragedy. One commentator has remarked that, “Act by act… Hamlet moves from a pathetic, waif-like child to a semi-unbalanced, role-playing adolescent, and finally to the quiet certainty of new-found maturity” (Prosser, p. 27). Even with supernatural intervention and supposed resolve, Hamlet continually delays his plans of vengeance. He pretends to be insane to get proof that Claudius did indeed kill his father, but even when he finds irrefutable evidence that the deed was committed, he still pretends to be insane, and wastes his time at a number of activities that are designed to provoke Claudius. None of these activities do anything but raise suspicion and make the other characters take him less seriously. This may, however, be Hamlet’s plan. If he is not taken seriously, he is more likely to succeed in his vengeance, because no one sees him as a threat. “This is mere madness,/” the queen states, “And thus a while the fit will work on him” (Shakespeare, 1987, V,i,287-8). Hamlet is struggling against his indecision and delay to do what he knows to be right, and this struggle is tragic, because the reader or viewer can see that Hamlet seems to want to get on with his life at points, but keeps being pulled back to this sense of duty. Indecision is not the only tragic characteristic of Hamlet, however. Hamlet’s ideas of right and wrong also drive him to states of disgust with Claudius and his mother’s behavior. He cannot stand that he has to be a witness to Claudius’s wanton behavior and his mother’s sexuality and apparent shallowness disturbs him. The reader or viewer can see that “in Hamlet’s moral sensibility there undoubtedly lay a danger” (Diamond). The danger is that his steadfast version of right and wrong drives him to consider vengeance and then helps him to go through with this vengeance. Hamlet’s morality leads him to a sense of outrage at Claudius for being drunk and his mother for being superficial. His moral compass gives him an unalterable sense of what is right and wrong, and he sees the world in these terms. The audience is likely to agree with him morally, or at least empathize with his moral situation and his apparent unbalance. In other words, the morality behind his feigned madness is something that keeps the audience on Hamlet’s side. The audience would also have been shocked at the fact that Gertrude does not see the ghost, while Marcellus and Horatio have apparently seen it. It is still questionable whether or not the ghost is real when Hamlet has the scene in his mother’s chambers, and this adds to the emotional volatility and spontaneity of the scene. This would be especially interesting for a more superstitious sort of audience involved with an uneasy concept of Christian hell. In the end, Hamlet is sweet to his mother as he drags the dead body of Polonius out of the room, telling her to have a good night repeatedly, even though his intent in the beginning of the scene was to insult and disparage her. As he is a royal, there is little question about the repercussions of the murder. Hamlet addresses his mother confrontationally in the beginning of the scene, and he acts so unstable that she fears he is going to murder her. But it is just an act. The restrictions of the society conflicted this point of view, so he has apparently decided to insult his mother instead, as a way of sort of, perhaps, mentally or verbally killing her. He tells her, “Come, come, and sit you down, you shall not/ boudge;/ you go not till I set you up a glass/ Where you may see the inmost part of you” (III,iv,17-20). Gertrude takes this as a sign that her son plans violence against her, since she was just leaving, not wanting (and it seems only natural) to stick around and be insulted by her own son. She also apparently doesn’t understand exactly what he is saying; this is a frequent theme in the play: Hamlet is very sophisticated and quite abstract in his speech, and seems to take such pride in indeterminacies. His mother takes his words rather superficially in terms of the threat of immanent violence, and cries out for help. Hamlet is slightly shaken up when he finds out that he has killed Polonius, but not enough so that he doesn’t glibly and ironically say at the end of the scene that he is much more dignified in death than he was in life. At this point, though, after killing the tutor, Hamlet goes back to verbally assaulting his mother. He deifies his dead father using Greek and classical allusions before telling his mother that she should be ashamed and graphically imagining her soiled bed, interspersing his imaginings with wild accusations of murder. He also draws her attention to her age, which has always been a concern in the mass media presentation of female guilt over aging historically. This is the height of Hamlet’s feigned insanity, and it produces the desired results. In the end, Gertrude breaks down before this verbal assault and begs for mercy. In the third act of Hamlet, first scene, the reader first sees the perspective of many of the other characters regarding Hamlet’s ostensible madness, and their diagnoses seem shallow when Hamlet himself comes into the scene and delivers a stirring and philosophical soliloquy. The shallowness of the other characters’ prescriptions, when contrasted against the depth of his speech, seems to give more proof that his madness is feigned. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are present at the beginning of the scene, and they provide a report, or rather, under closer scrutiny in terms of context, the lack of a report, to Claudius about Hamlet’s behavior. Gertrude is also present during the cross- questioning, and the duo allows that Hamlet has not given them any proof of the source of his behavior. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dismissed with the instructions to stimulate Hamlet’s interest in the traveling players, which becomes an ironic sort of instruction with the setup of the Mousetrap later in the play when the passage is viewed in a way that pays attention to universal themes. It is clear to the reader at this point that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are acting as sort of agents of the king and queen, sent to learn about the impetus of Hamlet’s strange behavior. Hamlet is thus treated passively by the authority figures, or as someone who must be drawn out to answer, rather than as a character who is capable of taking at least some sort of action for himself. His feigned madness has worked: no one takes him seriously as a threat. The theme of Hamlet as playing mad during such royal scheming is furthered when Gertrude is dismissed and it becomes clear that the king and Polonius have arranged a meeting between Hamlet and Ophelia. “Her father and myself,” says Claudius, “We’ll so bestow ourselves that, seeing unseen,/ we may of their encounter frankly judge,/ and gather by him, as he is behav’d,/ if’t be the affliction of his love or no/ that he suffers for” (Shakespeare, III,i,31-6). A close reading of this passage reveals that Claudius intends to take the sort of action that is opposite to Hamlet’s explicit style of communicating intrigue. As long as the royal family is treating Hamlet like some sort of passive receptacle or toy, he is in the advantageous position of using their authority and surveillance against them: although he may do this indefinitely, it is a sort of doubled game at this point rather than an active realization of the ghost’s demands, which also works to totalize the work thematically. The watchers are party to Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, as is the audience and reader. Hamlet, now removing the mask of his madness, offers many philosophical insights during this speech, as well as commenting on the puzzling meaning of life and afterlife, “The undiscovered country, from whose bourn/ no traveler returns, puzzles the will/ and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of?/ thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (Shakespeare, III,i,80-5). This passage reflects Hamlet’s pathos. The other characters rule out love as the cause of his madness, although Polonius expresses implicitly that he still might be in love with Ophelia. Overall, this research investigation has argued that Hamlet’s madness in Shakespeare’s play is feigned. He uses the mask of madness to fool the other characters, particularly Claudius and Polonius, into taking him less seriously. But he can wear the mask and remove it at will. If Hamlet had really been insane, he wouldn’t have been able to do this, or arguably play the clever game that he did. He wants to delay his vengeance and get information, so he acts crazy, to be seen as less of a threat. REFERENCE Diamond, William. “Wilhelm Meister’s Interpretation of Hamlet.” Modern Philology, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 89-101, 1998. Prosser, Eleanor. Hamlet and Revenge. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Edward Hubler, ed. New York: Signet Classics, 1987. Read More