Dwight Tucker
March 11, 2013
English VI
Ms. Morrell
Hamlet Research Paper In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, prince of Denmark has been interpreted in numerous ways. Throughout the play Hamlet takes on different roles, making it hard to define him as only one character type. Hamlet gave off the image he was insane at times when his mind was really at ease. Though it seems Hamlet is insane, there is evidence showing he is not a mad man. Hamlet says he is not mad almost throughout the whole book, shearing his feelings and emotions with just about anyone that means something to him. On the other hand even the ones that are close to him think otherwise. As a reader I could understand why they thought such ways about him. Hamlet is very angry at the fact that his mother married his father’s brother, right after his own death. Those actions triggered anger within hamlet that was only toward the ones that was after him. Mostly at King Claudius, but there is reason behind it all as Hamlet said “I am but mad north-north-west, when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hand saw.”(II.ii.378-379). Hamlet means that when a certain situation happens, or when certain people are around, he can be mad. For example when he was talking to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern right before the play starts, they were thinking of what Hamlet meant so they can transfer the message to Claudius, but the message was too confusing for them to send. As said before there is method behind Hamlet so called madness, it’s all a part of a plan that him and King Hamlet strategized on top of the roof. Hamlet could easily obtain himself he states “It is not madness that I have uttered. Bring me to the test. I the matter will reword which madness would gamble from” (iii.iv.143-146) Hamlet is explaining that madness is not what he’s suffering from. If it were to come down to something that tested him, he would prove that he isn’t mad. Also to only have revenge on the murderer of his father on his mother new husband. He also tells her to stop seeing his uncle by saying “that aptly is put on refrain tonight” (iii.i.200). That’s the only way that Gertrude is going to see what she is doing wrong, and that is by stepping away from the situation. Hamlet is also pretending to act as if he is insane to fool King Claudius. So Hamlet begins to seek for information about his father death. Hamlet has met with his best friend Horatio and he tells Hamlet that he has seen his father as a ghost and he has requested that he want to talk with him. After the meeting between Hamlet and his father, he feels that its only right to put on an act. Hamlet says “As I perchance here after shall think meet to an antic disposition on” (i.v.172-173) after the conversation that his dead father had changes his attitude, which made him, put on an act to bother some of the people that were involved in his father death. As said by an outside sources “Hamlet pretends to be mad in order to deflect his uncles suspicion; his ruse is a complete failure, as indeed it logically open to a secret murder” (Greenblatt, 219) not only do Hamlet notice that it’s a secret murder the readers do to. Hamlet dislikes Claudius because of all the things that transpired with him and his mother. Because of this, Hamlet is very emotional and his hate toward Claudius just gets miscounted as “madness”. The hate toward him gets stronger, “O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! My tables- meet it is I set it down that one may smile and smile and be a villain. At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark” (i.v.166-167) this is hamlet moving into the phase of anger at his father’s killer. The repetition also shows that he is really serious about this.
Everything that’s done by hamlet is meaning behind it, there is logic, an explanation for majority of his actions. Not speaking for everything that hamlet has done he has thought about, but for the things he planned to do and mapped out. I find hamlets