“How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses in the world!”
The audience learns that Hamlet feels very strongly about his mother’s recent marriage, and how he cannot believe how quickly she got over her previous husband’s death:
“A beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn’d longer.”
Hamlet blames his mother for his depression, but realises he must keep his opinions to himself. It is the gradual build-up of storing his emotions inside that eventually brings about his downfall. As the play progresses, Hamlet decides to act mad in order to find out more after hearing from his father’s ghost that his father was murdered by the new king.
Hamlet uses his ‘antic disposition’ to pretend to be innocent when he sets a trap for Claudius further on in the play. He divulges to his friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, that:
I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is
southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”
He plots to have a group of players act out ‘The Murder of Gonzago’, a play very relative to the murder of Old Hamlet, to see what his uncle’s reaction is to prove that it was him who killed his father. The forces within Hamlet come through when he admits he is a coward, but he will avenge his father’s death and kill his uncle, but than changes his mind and decides he cannot do it. Hamlet’s descent into real madness is shown when he contemplates suicide again:
“Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.”
When Ophelia, Hamlet’s girlfriend, enters, the extent of Hamlet’s real inner madness is portrayed. He begins to insult the young woman the old Hamlet used to love, upsetting her, telling her:
You jig and amble, and lisp, you nickname God’s
creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance.”
At this point in the play, Act 3 scene 1, the audience see a hugely changed Hamlet and are given a clear idea of what he is thinking. It is not definite whether his behaviour towards Ophelia is still a pretence or not, but she is deeply hurt by his words, yet is convinced he is mad. Hamlet’s true madness from within is further shown when his mother, Gertrude, asks to see him in private to discover the cause of his apparent madness. When she asks him as to why he “hast thy father much offended”, Hamlet loses control of his inner anger and allows his emotions to decide his actions. He talks back to her, hurtling insults at her, such as, “you have my father much offended”. When he mistakes Polonius for the king when he is behind the arras, Hamlet stabs him, and appears not to care that he has just killed the wrong man, stating:
Take thy fortune:
Thou find’st to be too busy is some danger.”
This behaviour shows the drastic actions