Shakespeare Explores Insanity

Insanity is defined as “mental illness or derangement” by The American Heritage College Dictionary, but its symptoms are vast and varied from person to person.  Insanity may be marked by signs of guilt, the language used by the individual, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, affected judgment, sleeplessness, loss of reality, close association with ghosts or evil forces, psychopathic behavior, intense anger, and nervous behaviors.  Character behavior and relationships between characters are two principal means to prove that a particular character has gone mad.  Shakespeare’s fascination with the human mind explains why he explores various motives behind insanity and its various manifestations within many of his plays, two of which are Hamlet and Macbeth; through the characterization of Hamlet, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, and Macbeth, Shakespeare is able to investigate and illustrate the nature of insanity in its various forms.

In the play Hamlet, Shakespeare works young Hamlet’s character such that numerous arguments support both ideas that Hamlet is mad and that Hamlet is not mad.  In this regard, Shakespeare might be playing with the duality of a single human mind, in which the person shows characteristics of being both mad and mentally stable at the same time.  Hamlet’s character is probably the most complex to explain in terms of Shakespeare’s fascination with insanity.  Readers and critics can agree that Hamlet is not a “man of action,” but is instead a “man of reflection”—reflection that is concentrated on both himself and the world (Schucking 31).