Tony McGown
             English IV AP
             6 October 2000
             Hamlet's Sanity
             The question of the sanity of Shakespeare's Hamlet has been argued for hundreds of years. Shakespeare's critics believe Hamlet's portrayal of a madman is so convincing that his sanity is lost from the very sight of his father's alleged ghost. While it is true that Hamlet murdered his own uncle, the cause for his malicious crime is the unarguable topic. However, Hamlet was completely sane, otherwise he would have murdered Claudius, his uncle, earlier in the play and committed his pre-meditated suicide. After Hamlet discovers the truth about his father, he goes through a very distressing phase, which is interpreted by readers and characters as madness. With the death of his father and the hasty, incestuous remarriage of his mother to his uncle, Hamlet is thrown into a suicidal frame of mind that is he unable to escape. Hamlet certainly displays some degree of mania and instability throughout much of the play, but his "madness" is far too purposeful for one to assume that he actually loses his mind.
             To every tragic hero belongs his tragic flaw. In Hamlet's case, his irresoluteness and unconscious self-excuses result in his inability to wholly complete his revenge. His inability to complete any task he sets out for is what proves Hamlet's sanity throughout the play; an insane person would have no conscience to delay. Action would be swift and impulsive. Hamlet, however, was melancholy. Bradley defines melancholy as: "the melancholy, once established, displayed, as one of its symptoms, an excessive reflection on the required deed." It is the state of being which kept him bound from doing anything. The revelation of his mother's adultery and father's murder demands him to arise and act (Bradley, 1): "The time is out of joint! O cursed spite/That ever I was born to set it right,"(I,iv,210-11). Thus, Ha...