Hamlet's Madness

Throughout the play, Hamlet displays many characteristics indicative of

madness. At the beginning of the play, Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his
father. Seeing a ghost could indicate that he is already mad. His father’s ghost
tells him that he was murdered by Claudius, which drives Hamlet to want to seek
revenge. This causes him to display erratic behavior, indicating that he has
become mad with his desire to avenge his father’s death. He also becomes quite
melancholic over the death and murder of his father and begins to question life
as a result. While Hamlet feels the need to avenge his father’s death, he also
worries that the ghost may actually “be a devil who will betray his soul,” rather
than the actual ghost of his father (Frye, 12). This makes Hamlet confused as to
what he should actually do in response to seeing the ghost and drives him further
into madness.
Hamlet had a chance to kill Claudius early in the play while Claudius was
praying, but decided that, if he were killed while praying, that Claudius’s soul
would go to Heaven. Hamlet decided that a better revenge would be to wait until
some other time to kill him to prevent his soul from going to Heaven. The longer
Hamlet waits to exact his revenge, the further he descends into madness and
melancholy. A prime example of Hamlet’s melancholic state is his famous “To be,
or not to be” monologue in Act 3, Scene 1. In this monologue, Hamlet seems to
be having an existential crisis as he contemplates the meaning of life and death
and whether or not he would be better off to take his own life. His madness and
melancholy has driven him to the point wanting to commit suicide.
Conclusion
Madness is one of the main themes of Hamlet. Hamlet and Ophelia both display
symptoms of madness, but each become mad for different reasons. Hamlet’s
madness is fueled by his father’s death and his desire to seek revenge on the
man who killed him. Ophelia’s madness stems from her lack of identity and her
feelings of helplessness regarding her own life. While the death of Hamlet’s
father made him angry enough to want revenge, Ophelia internalized the death of
her father as a loss of personal identity. While these deaths both sparked
madness in these characters, they each dealt with their madness in different
ways.