Acting insane, or actually insane?
There is a lot of controversy on this topic, some say that Hamlet is just a very convincing actor, and couldn’t have gone insane for real because everything he was saying was very strategic, smart, and witty. Others, on the other hand say that he snapped in Act III, scene iv while talking to his mother. This scene is very strange because Hamlet acts on impulse, which we haven’t seen at all so far in the play, and he seems to lose his grasp on proper judgement. I mean this is only my understanding, but Hamlet had just seen the King Claudius praying, and rushed from there, to his mother. How could Claudius be behind the curtain, if he had just seen him praying elsewhere? Also, after he kills Polonius “accidentally” (I have suspicions) he is the only one thats able to see the ghost of his father. Before everyone was able to see the ghost of the dead King Hamlet, here, only Hamlet can. Is this because he’s gone mad? Or is there another explanation?
While Hamlet is not the definition of stability - he’s morbidly depressed after all - I would hesitate to call him truly mad. He’s aware of his surroundings and has control over his actions. He “knows a hawk from a handsaw.” I’d say his haste in killing Polonius was an attempt to make up for his earlier inaction. He finally resolved to kill Claudius after the Mousetrap, but hesitated when he saw him praying. “Not here,” he decided. “Not like this.” So then he hears what he thinks is Claudius and he thinks “perfect. I’ll do it now, when he is here in his wife’s room.” (What might Hamlet think he’s there for…?) This time he acts quickly, because he is aware that if he thinks about it too much he’ll end up talking himself out of it. Other people know this about Hamlet too. After Hamlet’s outburst at Ophelia’s funeral, Gertrude says “and thus awhile the fit will work on him. Anon, as patient as the female dove when her golden couplets are disclosed, his silence will sit drooping.” His periods of action are brief, and he thinks himself back into melancholy soon after. I do think killing Polonius was an accident. He didn’t feel badly about it, but he did think it was Claudius behind the curtain. The ghost thing is where it gets iffy. We know the ghost in the first scenes was real. The ghost in the closet though… it could go either way. It’s possible that the ghost chose only to reveal himself to Hamlet that time because he did not wish to alarm his wife overmuch. He “ might not beteem the winds of heaven visit her face too roughly” after all. This is the interpretation I like, but I do not have more of an argument for it than that. Alas. Alright, so to wrap this mega-paragraph up: I think Hamlet did have control over his own actions, and a grasp on reality. (with the possible exception of the ghost in he closet scene, but I think not) He was deeply depressed, with brief periods of mania (this was brought on by the trauma he experienced from his father’s death onwards) but instability does not equal madness in the way I define it. He was too calculating, too full of thought, and frankly too funny to be out of his mind. Everything he said meant something - his words were not the ravings of a madman.
