http://grainofsandtheatre.com/hamletreframed

I choice this title because Hamlet tells Horatio and Marcellus to keep the image of his father’s ghost a secret and that he was going to play a madman. Even though he playing a madman he can in fact start to actually become one. The first person he goes to after seeing his father’s ghost is Ophelia. He beings his madness by expressing distraught and pain but he doesn’t speak a word to her. We know this through Ophelia description from her conversation with her father. This can be a part of his plan to play insanity but in part some real distress. She has recently cut all ties with him, the loss of his father, then to come in contact with his father’s spirit, and finds out that his uncle killed him. To top it off his mother’s marriage to his uncle. Any normal human can claim actual insanity.

But as the play continues on, the question comes is he really acting or is the news of his father’s death and the marriage of his mother, unbearable to the point of insanity. Hamlet begins to question if he actual saw his father ghost and what he said had any truth to it. There were many times he could have avenge his father’s death, but the question kept lingering.  He sets up a play to reenact his father’s murder and his mother’s marriage and his secret plan to avenge his father’s death. This he said will be the only way to know for sure if the ghost is in fact the true image of his father or a demon ghost. This show’s that he is contemplating his own sanity and this will be the only way to clear all questions.

“There is a play tonight before the king.

One scene of it comes near the circumstance

Which I have told thee of my father’s death.

I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,

Even with the very comment of thy soul

Observe mine uncle. If his occulted guilt

Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

It is a damnèd ghost that we have seen,

And my imaginations are as foul”

As the death of his father is being reenacted he sees his uncle’s reaction to the play that gives him a clear idea that the ghost was his father’s spirit. His approach to being a mad man completely changes he become more sarcastic and a jokester. We see that it not a matter of him actually becoming mad but actual playing the madman. At the beginning there was a lot of question to him acting or actually becoming mad, but now everything is becoming more clear not only thru the play but thru his uncle own testimony when speaking to himself. But who’s to say that just because it becoming more clearer that he won’t still become actually mad having to except this truth. Well I guess I will only find out once I’m done reading.