Hamlet's Antic Disposition - Is Hamlet's madness real or feigned?

[Ray Eston Smith]

Feigning madness:

HAMLET
How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself,
As I perchance hereafter shall think meet
To put an antic disposition on,

HAMLET
Sir, I cannot.
GUILDENSTERN
What, my lord?
HAMLET
Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased:

True madness:

However, he was also truly mad - he was "from himself taken away." In modern terms, it might be called a split personality or an identity crisis. He was struggling to reject his father's warlike value system so that he could be true to himself - a peaceful scholar from Wittenberg. In Elizabethan times, Hamlet fit two popular definitions of madness. He was mad because he was possessed (at least metaphorically) by a demon - his father's warlike spirit. He was also a lunatic (under the influence of the moon) because he had compared his father to Hyperion the sun god and Hamlet himself had been compared to the moon, which glows with "borrowed sheen," reflecting his sun-god father's values instead of shining with his own values.

http://www.thyorisons.com/#Usurp Usurp Your Sovereignty of Reason
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Cause_of_Luna… The Cause of Hamlet's Lunacy
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Voice The Voice of Denmark
http://www.thyorisons.com/ Be All My Sins Remembered - Essays on Hamlet
Essays on motifs, symbolism, & themes in Hamlet.

[xman]

I have always appreciated this interpretation of Hamlet's mental state. It makes for very interesting playing choices.