Hamlet: Crazy or Sane?

Hamlet: Crazy or Sane?

The question as to whether Hamlet is crazy is a matter of personal interpretation. Critics take sides on this issue with strong reasons and supports. A modern audience cannot possible be certain what Shakespeare had intended. Modern productions are always interpretations of the play, and each director, or each reader will form a unique conclusion.

Part of the question of whether Hamlet is crazy is made problematic by the fact that Hamlet deliberately decides to act crazy on purpose. By seeming crazy, he can put his mother and stepfather off the track of thinking he is trying to expose his uncle as a murderer. So there is part intent to appear crazier than he perhaps is. However, we must consider what Hamlet does. First, he sees his dead father, perhaps a delusion. Second, he considers suicide. He also sends his friends off to die, is at least in part responsible for Ophelia’s death, and murders Polonius by accident. Lastly, he kills his stepfather/uncle. From these actions, we must consider whether these qualify as insanity. Clearly they do. One could perhaps discount the murder by accident. However, suicidality is a mark of insanity, and Hamlet is clearly laboring under severe depression and guilt. His world has been turned upside down by revelation of facts by his dead father. Everything he has perceived as good and correct in the world, like his love for Ophelia, and his relationship with his mother are suddenly questionable. In the end Hamlet kills his stepfather, is this vengeance or craziness? People who are sane look for means to apply justice that do not end up killing themselves, and the majority of their family. When someone kills, the term sane is generally lacking as a description of his actions.

Some critics argue that Hamlet begins as sane, but by “playing crazy” he becomes so. Others see Hamlet as simply playing crazy the whole time. However, when Hamlet’s behavior crosses the line into murder, play-acting clearly does not quite describe Hamlet’s behavior. He is certainly inwardly tortured by his reflections on the death of his father, and suspicions about his mother. From his mother’s behavior he infers