Hamlet went through various emotional states because of different unfortunate
circumstances that confronted him. Yet Hamlet never went so far over "the edge" so as to
not come back from reality, yet for reasons psychological, he procrastinated actions that
he should have taken, until it was too late. I will first discuss Hamlet, the origins for his
queer behavior and if it twas feigned or not.
In the first act we see that Hamlet is a sort of idealistic man coming back to
the world from university in Wittenburg. Coleridge described Hamlet in this point of the
play as a "Renaissance" man, who has never really come in contact with the dark side of
humanity. In the very beginning of Act 1 scene i the guards dialog reflect that "there is
something rotten in the state of Denmark". It is full of corruption, deceit, passion,
ruthlessness, and ambition that Hamlet is not used to (Lidz, 71). His mind temporarily can
not handle his situation because, as I will mention later, his mother is at the center of it.
He has to try to find meaning, direction and a stable identity in the midst of all the evil
We clearly see that Hamlet is quite upset by his mother's quite hasty marriage to is
uncle, and this causes some deep seeded emotional problems for Hamlet. I can not talk
about Hamlet's emotional state without also going into the fact that Hamlet already
suspects the King of killing his father, before the ghost tells him so (Leavenwoth, 34).
First I will go elaborate on how Hamlet, at certain times, was clearly not feigning
insanity, but that insanity only lasted for brief periods of time because of the emotional
I and many literary folk believe that Hamlet suffered from a Oedipus complex.
Freud described this as a desire for a young boy to kill his father and become sexually
involved with his mother. Now that Hamlet's father is eliminated, he believes th
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