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Hamlet's Troubled Mind


Little by little this tragic player falls profoundly into hate and revenge, losing more of himself with each minute that passes. No one, not friends, family or lover can bend him from his path of self-destruction. .
             . Horatio was the first of Hamlet's friends to realize the possibilities of madness in the King's son. Horatio was there when the ghost of the King bid Hamlet to follow. In the play, Horatio pleads with Hamlet not to follow the apparition of the King stating, "What if it tempt you [and assume] some horrible form, which might deprive your sovereignty of reason and draw you into madness"(18). Horatio was foretelling the future. G. Wilson Knight offers this explanation of Hamlet's disaffection toward his own friends, " He is a superman among men. And he is a superman because he has walked and held converse with Death, and his consciousness works in terms of Death and the Negation of Cynicism-(2). Something is now very rotten in the state of Demark, Hamlet's soul. He has begun to separate himself from everyone in his life. The goodly King and Queen try in vain to cure Hamlet of what torments him by sending for his long time friends Guildenstern and Rosencrantz. The royal couple has no suspicion in the beginning that the heir to the thrown of Denmark knows what treachery they have committed. When asked by King Claudius why his nephew seems to display "turbulent and dangerous lunacy," Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern reply, "He does confess he feels himself distracted; but from what cause he will by no means speak. Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, but with a crafty madness, keeps aloof-(41). The Prince of Denmark does confess there is something amiss, but his old friends do not yet see that the thing gone awry is his father's death and not his mind. Hamlet though, has become disillusioned with mankind and slowly slips into the clutches of madness. Madness so deep, that even those closest to him are unable to ease his pain.


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