Hamlet (Shakespeare): “Mad,” “Sane,” or “None of the Above”? Essay

A form of theatrical representation, metadrama (Danner), revealed villages convictions closely the behaviors and character of his mformer(a), set out, step-father, and, to the toweringest degree importantly, himself (Shakespeare). Metadramatic techniques reveal to the listening that characters in a variation themselves are aware they are in a play and are providing additional information that the audience can accept as truthful (Danner).While these characters hit no motivation to be deceitful, they may demonstrate to the audience their ability to deceive themselves. Most nonably, in crossroads, the audience can accept information in particular soliloquies, the play-within-a-play, and from the specter of critical points father as accurate representations of villages and plain the vestiges let informations. Why would any self-respecting ghost return to earth separate than to reveal the truth? And why would settlement choose to lie to us through a soliloquy?However, closely importantly, we have an opportunity to witness Hamlets own unknowing self-deceptions. In using examples of these techniques to evaluate Hamlets mental go over, sanity was non conceptualized as a categorical variable with two levels, in his right mind(predicate) or mad. Creating madness in a fictional character in a literary masterpiece (e.g., Ophelia in Hamlet) does not impose the difficulties encountered when severe to differentiate between those who are leg all toldy mad vs. bad (Emery & Olt earthns 429-433) or when trying to form two discrete diagnostic categories (Emery & Oltmanns 3-14).Regarding the question of whether Hamlet was mad or sane, in the analysis presented below, he has been conceptualized as pathetic in having characteristics that did not match the particular demands needed for the unusual component part of his life and also in having the facility for self-deception that pr as yetted him from recognizing the futility of nonetheless persevering.At th e beginning of the play, Hamlet was a young man grieving avocation the death of the father he apparently still had worshipped as young boys not infrequently do, until they learn what is and isnt cool. Hamlet, of course, evidently for worse preferably than for better, actually had that all-powerful father, strong, courageous, respected and also love by all. Not prompt for his fathers death, Hamlet was even less prepared for his mothers fast re- jointure to her brother-in-law.Magnificent meter is no less magnificent if it amazes from the mouth of someone too uninitiated to have learned the difference between the kinds of painful events that characterize world existence and those that will always get our own or or so anyones attention, for example, the difference between our recently widowed mother having depend on with the village idiot and her world sent to Hitlers gas chambers. The saturation and obsessive nature of his unsafe depression alone would have permitted a dia gnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSDAmerican Psychiatric Association manual, as cited in Emery & Oltmanns) O, that this too too solid flesh would Melt, and cut wrap up itself into a dew Or that he Everlasting had not fixd His cannon gainst self-slaughter O God God How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world (Hamlet 10).Interestingly, more than than two centuries before Freuds birth, Shakespeare had dramatized the kind of card on which the latter based psychoanalytic theory (as cited in Shaffer). First, in the soliloquy cited above, Hamlet did not yet even know that the realize of his fathers death was homicide and would not himself have accepted that his suicidal depression was caused not by his fathers death moreover by his mothers sexual betrayal (in Hamlets descry) of his father, when she went with to the highest degree wicked speed, to post With such dexterity to incestuous sheets (10).Without acknowledgment for violating on e of the many dictates of the politically correct (PC), the dictate never to follow the name Freud without including the phrase sexist (Bowers & Farvolden), it does not even seem feasible to avoid imagining Dr. Freud, while ragbing his whiskers thoughtfully, concluding that while Hamlet had resolved his fear of paternal retribution for his Oedipal desires by closely identifying with his father, his stoppage of the Oedipal stage was incomplete because, regarding his mother, in wording compatible with Hamlets revered Bible, he still was lusting in his heart and, rather than unholy his mother as an individual, he instead (innocently and blissfully untroubled todays PC) blamed womens nature, Frailty, thy name is woman (10).His ambiguous view of his mother was perhaps not unlike children who blame their mothers for all that is revile with their lives and the world, yet for whom the phrase your mother, in themselves, are fighting words. To reinforce the doubts he already had well-n igh Gertrude (noted above), Shakespeare gave him the ghost of his father who simultaneously condemned and forgave her, in prepare setting her up as a target for both excusable rage and self-restraintClaudius won to his shameful lust The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen (20) and Hamlet should Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest. But, however, thou pursuest this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother (21). The ghost of Hamlets father encouraged what already was his simmering attribution of blame, not to a fault concerned about the fairness of Gertrude sharing Claudius guilt. In fact, we know that plurality distort their own perceptions and memories in a direction consistent with their beliefs (Schacter), explaining how Hamlet managed to interpret the ghosts condemnation of Gertrude as strong decent to warrant his own conclusion, O most pernicious woman (22).Indeed, pack who have suffered misfortune frequen tly do seek out other race to blame. We do not like to believe we are at the mercy of random inexplicable accidents or that there is no nitty-gritty to account for the occurrence of adverse events or that we do not have immortal souls. Thus, while Claudius most certainly was guilty of committing murder most foul (20), what did Gertrude actually do to warrant her sons embraceulance? When does she ever show us the loathsome side of herself we have come to expect?Regarding her husband, she, in fact, does not seem guilty of anything more than being naively trusting, when as a recent and lonely widow, she was human in being receptive to the sexual overtures of a man she believed shared her own grief. Despite what her son and her husbands ghost indignantly protested, for centuries, marriage between even blood relatives might be considered a theme European sport (Coontz).Regarding Hamlet, her crimes seemed no more than being overly kind of his disrespectful treatment and overly suppor tive to the extent of being his cheerleader in what she failed to recognize was not a game but a deadly battle with Laertes Hes fat, and scant of breath. Here Hamlet, take my napkin, rub thy brows the queen carouses to thy fortune (Hamlet, 99). In her exuberance, she drank poison from the cup her husband had prepared for Hamlet.It would seem that Hamlets fatal flaw was less his softness to exact revenge from Claudius than his facility at finding and deceiving himself into believing about any possible excuse, thus preventing him from accept himself for not being the man of action expected of the son of a great king. Under other circumstances, differing from his father regarding physical accomplishments might have led to no more than the timeless struggle between, for example, the father who had been single quarterback in high school and the son who was in his fathers eyes the star high-school nerd.It was Hamlets incredible myopia regarding the excuses he was making for weakness to act that led inexorably to a tragic bloodbath in the end. Hamlet, it turned out, like J. Alfred Prufrock, was not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be (Eliot line 111). Had Hamlet a chance to grow old (line 120), he might have recognized his own nature in time to avoid becoming an concurrence lorddeferential, glad to be of use (lines 112, 115).However, he too had wept and prayed (line 81) and rather than finding the strength and courage to force the moment to a crisis (line 80), he found unless excuses for failing to act. Indeed, Hamlet seemed to sincerely believe he would have been able to end his torment through suicide had his religious belief not prohibited self-slaughter (Hamlet, 10).These excuses included an odd need for evidence that the ghost was truthful (53), failing to act after the play-within-a-play elicited the demonstration of guilt Hamlet sought from Claudius (surprisingly, since the sociopath of Hamlets description would not be likely to even feel guilt and after a stunningly convincing description of his own conscience, why did Claudius not have in mind this conscience after again Hamlet failed to kill him?) because of his mistaken perception of Claudius being in the act of prayer. Ironically, as Claudius was acknowledging that his offense is rank it smells to promised land It hath the primal eldest curse upont, A brothers murder. beseech can I not (64), Hamlet, echoing the ghost of his father at the beginning of the play, could not kill Claudius because if killed while in prayer, he goes to paradise this is not revenge (65). At this point, he failed even to question the referee of a religion that rewards a minute of remorse with heaven and punishes anyone misfortunate enough to die suddenly with hell. Hamlet never did run along what his father might have done so that he was cut off even in the blossom of my sins (21).Was Hamlet mad? He was not mad unless the pronounce is consistently used to describe anyone demonstrating self-de structive patterns of thought. For that matter, if we describe Hamlet as mad, there would be no reason for excluding the millions of people who fit, to varying degrees, even one diagnostic description in the American Psychiatric Association manual (as cited in Emery & Oltmanns).Is Hamlet sane? The label again would fit only if it also were used to describe nigh all of us who demonstrate any of the subjective qualitys of distress expound in the same manual. The text of Hamlet did not even append enough information to form a reliable conclusion about his thoughts and behaviors prior to his fathers death. He might have been feeling distressed his entire life because of experiences such as the death of his pet flea or a stubbed toe.The genuine tragedy of Hamlet was that the eloquence and stunningly brutal clarity with which he expressed the universal human condition in his most famous soliloquy did not prevent his convict and, indeed, might have been so brilliant that he would have been blind had he not turned away a condition where the only escape from the whips and scorns of time is into the potentially worse undiscoverd country that makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of (48). kit and caboodle CitedBowers, Kenneth, & Farvolden, Peter. Revisiting a Century-old Freudian Slip From Suggestion Disavowed to the Truth Repressed. Psychological Bulletin, 119 (1996) 355-380.Coontz, S. Marriage, a History From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage. New York Viking, 2005.Danner, Bruce. utter Daggers. Shakespeare Quarterly, 54 (2003) 29-62.Eliot, T.S. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Retrieved 17 May 2009, from www.bartleby.com/1981.html.Emery, Robert E., & Oltmanns, Thomas F. Essentials of unnatural Psychology. Upper