Hamlet’s True Intentions

For centuries many people have contemplated the masterpiece Hamlet. They have ravaged it for ideas and plundered it for its true meaning. Many have argued over its themes of madness, incest, isolation, revenge, and etc. Some scholars believe that Hamlet was truly mad; while others think he just feigns insanity. Hamlet isn’t mad. His isolation from love, and his vivid pursuit of revenge might seem to have unhinged his thoughts but he is merely hiding his true intent.

From the first act Hamlet is violently ripped from his loving family setting. His father has died and his mother has remarried, to her brother-in-law Claudius, but this just hurts Hamlet’s pride not his mind.

“Queen- Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off, And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark……..

King – … To give these mourning duties to your father.

But you must know your father lost a father….” (1.2.68-128) In this passage Gertrude chooses the murderous Claudius over Hamlet. This simple act cleaves a deep groove between Hamlet and his mother. This isolating act would cause anyone to become sad, but it wouldn’t lead a person to insanity. “The fact is that Shakespeare never intended to represent Hamlet as mad or half mad or verging on madness. He expressly made him a feigner of madness, and when he wished to represent real madness and to contrast it with feigned madness, he created the real madness of Ophelia, and did it with wonderful truth and skill.” (Stopford Brooke, Pg. 96). Brooke states Hamlet isn’t meant to be insane, even after being isolated from his family and his true love Ophelia Hamlet still puts a cloak of falsehood to hide his true intent. He dose not care about losing love. From Hamlet’s dialogue with Ophelia (3, 1, 55-160) he shoves her away. He isolates himself to achieve his goal of revenge. His isolation and feigned madness are his cloak to hide his true goal of revenge.

Still some scholars believe that this revenge also leads to Hamlet’s madness. “But revenge appears uncongenial to his nature, a kind of ‘Murder most foul, as in the best it is….is’ (1. 4. Pg. 27)” (Matthew Proser Pg. 339). Shihoko Hamada states, “Hamlet becomes especially agitated when his father’s Ghost reveals that he was murdered, prescribing to him the menacing obligation of revenge. Hamlet, shaken to the core, assumes an air of frenzy. His fake madness should be controlled by cool reason, but he is already swayed by violent passion; he is easily taken advantage of by chances, and he becomes truly mad” (Pg. 63). While Jerome Mazzaro writes, “Most agree with A.C. Bradley’s assessment that Hamlet was not far from insanity” (Pg. 104).

All seem to think that revenge is only possible for Hamlet if he is mad, but Proser realizes his mistake and also states that, “The ‘madness,’ thus, is both an instrumentality and defense: a put-on ‘act’ with a grain of truth in it. Hamlet’s antic disposition detaches him sufficiently from the center of his own pain to turn his fear into a cutting edge by which he can slice through the layers of falsity the court so easily accepts as the truth.” (Pg. 340). He still thinks he might be insane, but Proser also realizes that it is also a cover-up for Hamlet’s revenge. Unlike Hamada and Mazzaro, Proser realizes Shakespeare meant to have madness to accompany revenge not the other way around.

Anyway, Hamlet doesn’t ever truly act mad. “Hamlet’s thoughts and reasoning are to clear for him to be insane. He might be depressed but not insane.” (Stopford Brooke Pg. 97). Hamlet is to precise in his revenge. He is able to decide if the time is right to kill Claudius; Hamlet even stalls repeatedly because he is afraid and unsure that his revenge is fitting at that moment (Paul Gottschalk Pg. 157). A truly mad person would act without having to think on such things; he would just do the deed and be done with it. Hamlet even takes the time to condemn the usurper, Claudius, to hell in act 4 scene 3 lines 32-36. Hamlet’s soul might have been blackened with the deed of revenge but his mind and thoughts are crystal clear. Hamlet even reasons out that he is justified in killing Claudius.

Proser substantiates this by saying, “What Hamlet realizes is that his duty to his father is his own private cause, that they are the same cause, and that his father’s assassination has deprived Denmark of its two rightful rulers. Moreover, he sees that he has every reason to kill Claudius because of the usurper’s act.” (Pg. 341). For someone to be able to reason like this they must have their wits about them, and anyone who is swayed by the effects of insanity couldn’t possibly contrive such a situation in their head that is so elaborate. “Hamlet is respectable and cleared of madness; he declares, ‘This is I, Hamlet the Dane!’ (4.1.256-257) and performs his obligation, the revenge” (Shihoko Hamada Pg. 65). In the end Hamlet states himself that he is sane and aware of Claudius’s deeds.

Hamlet never truly is mad. His madness is a clever ploy to conceal his true purpose of revenge; Hamlet’s isolation and superb acting have confused many in their assessment of Hamlet’s mental stability. Many people are still trying to realize that Hamlet always had his head about him, but Shakespeare clearly puts Hamlet in the position of feigning madness so to hide his true intent and to compare madness to the ability to act as if one was insane. Shakespeare gives Hamlet his wit and ability to act out a part because, “These things, in a man to whom the soul is more than sense, who lives within rather than without, are not madness; otherwise almost half the world in which we live is mad” (Stopford Brooke Pg. 97).