William Shakespeare s Hamlet - 1441 Words

Renee James English Final Essay F. Rampello Due: May 9th 2016 In the beginning of Hamlet, Hamlet tells Horatio, â€Å"I perchance hereafter shall think meet / to put an antic disposition on† (Act I, Scene V, lines 190-192). Hamlet decides to fake his insanity, but does his insanity become his reality throughout the play? Hamlet s madness only manifests itself when he is in the presence of certain characters. When Hamlet is around Polonius, Claudius, Gertrude, Ophelia, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he behaves irrationally. When Hamlet is around Horatio, Bernardo, Francisco, The Players and the Gravediggers, he behaves rationally. His mood and attitude changes abruptly throughout the play leading one to believe that his madness became a†¦show more content†¦Hamlet poses the problem of whether to commit suicide as a logical question: â€Å"To be, or not to be,† that is, to live or not to live. He then weighs the moral outcomes of living and dying. Is it nobler to suffer life, â€Å"the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,† passively or to actively seek to end one’s suffering? He compares death to sleep and thinks of sleep as the end to pain and suffering. Hamlet speaks of the uncertainty of the afterlife, which essentially prevents all of humanity from committing suicide to end a painful life. This soliloquy really expands the quality of Hamlet’s mind and what is really going on inside of it. Hamlet works furiously to find a solution to end his misery. Hamlet himself is more subject to apprehension than to action, which is why he delays so long before seeking his revenge on Claudius. Hamlet is mainly upset about his mother and uncle’s quick marriage. He constantly has violent outbursts towards his mother throughout the play. As Hamlet talks to his mother, Hamlet tells Gertrude that he is not crazy but he asks her to lie and tell Claudius that he is in fact mad. As we can see here, Gertrude tells the king that Hamlet s as mad as the sea and wind (Act IV, Scene I, Line 2). Why does she do this? Is she trying to protect her son or does she really think Hamlet has gone mad? Hamlet alone sees his father s ghost in his mother s chamber. Every other time the ghost appeared someone