Hayanny SilvaCoach HansenBrit Lit13 December 2013Shakespeare Hamlet Insanity VS SanityThe Tragedy of HamletIn the tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, by William Shakespeare, Hamlet, an intellectual prince passes from sanity to madness throughout the entire play. You can see that throughout the play, when the madness seems right, he takes on an "old-fashioned disposition" (IV173). However, when sanity proves to be the answer, Hamlet returns to being logical. Hamlet claims to be "mad north-north-west" (II.ii.376), meaning that he is sometimes mad and other times sane. Therefore, to achieve his goals, Hamlet goes from sanity to madness. In the poem, Hamlet turns to madness to reach some of them. its objectives. Hamlet uses his madness to overcome his obstacles. Hamlet is mad only towards his enemies and his enemy's allies. For example, Hamlet attacks Gertrude verbally and physically because she is a hindrance to Hamlet. Furthermore, Hamlet kills Polonius and assures him Polonius is "dead, for a dukedom, dead" (III.iv.25). When Hamlet kills Polonius he feels nothing, neither sympathy, nor pain, nor fear, madness has overwhelmed him to the point that he would have killed someone without mercy or feelings. Hamlet gradually harms Gertrude with his mad words, while he kills Polonius with his madness. All of these two people, Gertrude and Polonius, are allies of Claudius, and by harming Claudius' allies, Hamlet is harming Claudius, who is Hamlet's goal. The death of his father [Hamlet] caused an error in Hamlet's logic, and that error forced madness upon him. Hamlet believes that Gertrude, his mother, had an affair with his uncle and actually contributed to the massacre of his beloved father. In addition to this, Hamlet... in the center of the paper... ideas that Hamlet is mad and that Hamlet is not mad. Readers and critics can agree that Hamlet is not a “man of action,” but is instead a “man of reflection,” a reflection focused on both himself and the world (Schucking 31). I believe it is Shakespeare's anger towards corruption and religion that causes Hamlet to fall into madness. “To find in real life the character of a person gifted with so much delicacy as to border on weakness, with a sensitivity too exquisite to permit determined action” (Sylvia 13). While it is difficult to pinpoint the exact cause in Hamlet's life that led to his madness, one thing is certain; he has gone mad, and madness has done to him what it does to everything that contains madness; it destroys everything it touches. Madness in The Tragedy of Prince Hamlet on enhanced sanity which concludes that the entire play revolves around madness