In Act 5, Scene 2

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In Act 5, scene 2

It was not necessary for Hamlet to act mad in the beginning of the play. If he wanted to take revenge on the king, he could have found another better solution. Hamlet could have killed the king when he had the chance when the king was praying, but he had to think of a different way to take his revenge. Hamlet was metaphorically and psychologically (and perhaps literally) possessed by the warlike spirit of his dead father. (Baskerville: 121)

When he is not "from himself taken away," Hamlet is a rational humanist scholar from Wittenberg. But Hamlet erases that side of himself from the book and volume of his brain and replaces it with the commandment of his warlike father. Thereafter all of Hamlet's soliloquies are really debates between the warring sides of his divided soul. Hamlet is a valiant soldier of the spirit, fighting a desperate internal battle to defend the sovereignty of his soul. (Diyanni: 184)

So when listing Hamlet's character traits you need to distinguish between Hamlet the rational scholar and Prince Hamlet the soldier-son of a warlike king.

In Act One Hamlet declares his intention to "put an antic disposition on", therefore he will fake his madness. Later, in his treatment of Ophelia and the killing of Polonius, he appears to be genuinely, tormentedly mad, so that when he tells his mother that he is "not in madness, but mad in craft", she does not believe it. (Benedetti: 159)

The difference between Hamlet's anger and his madness is that when he was angry, he had more conrtol of his actions. When he transition into his madness, he was focused on taking revenge on the king that he started to lose his main motivation and control of the situation. Hamlet started to lose reality when he attempted to kill the king. Readers may also see that Hamlet goes mad when he sees the ghost, but the guards also sees the ghost as well. Also, he did not know the truth until the ghost told him. Therefor, he did not go mad when he met the ghost. (Alexander: 49)

His main motivation was to act mad to take revenge on his uncle, but he lost control of himself. When he lost control, he was killed and the others as well. His remark was true to the point where he was killed by his madness, but it was also his friend. "Both Hamlet and Ophelia lose their self-control and this ultimately causes their own deaths, and so by the definition of madness as a self-defeating loss of reason, both may be considered truly mad" Dillions Interpretation of Hamlet. His madness helped him go through and support him with his motivation.

If a person in a rational state of mind decides to act crazy, to abuse the people around him regardless of whether he loves those people or hates them, and to give free expression to all his antisocial thoughts, when he starts to carry out those actions, its it possible to say ...
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