Hamet on Trial

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/cult...e-kennedy.html

"Is the prince of Denmark mentally competent to stand trial for the murder of Polonius?"

"The Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles will present a Jan. 31 mock trial to determine the answer in a program created and presided over by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. . . . Kennedy created "The Trial of Hamlet" in 1994 and has presided over versions in several cities."

Please add your comments here and/or in the LA Time blog.

Here's my comment:
Hamlet was clearly insane both by modern standards and by two definitions popular in the Elizabethan Era. He was "from himself taken away." He was possessed (at least metaphorically) by his father's warlike spirit when he erased himself from the book and volume of his brain and wrote his father to live all alone there. Thereafter, in attempting to regain his sanity, Hamlet was a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul.

In modern terms, he had a split personality or an identity crises, torn between his father's traditional bloody value system and his own humanist values, which were the product of thought and education.

One Elizabethan theory of madness was that it was caused by demonic possession. Hamlet's demon was his father's spirit, which had usurped the sovereignty of his soul.
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Usurp Usurp Your Sovereignty of Reason

Another theory of insanity was that it was caused by the moon. Hamlet's lunacy was due to being like the moon. Laertes had compared him to the moon. Hamlet twice compared his father to Hyperion (the sun god). Hamlet was glowing with the "borrowed sheen" of his father's warlike values instead of shining with his own humanist values.
http://www.thyorisons.com/#Cause_of_Lunacy The Cause of Hamlet's Lunacy