According to Harold Bloom, William ShakespeareÆs ôThe Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarkö is said to be his first great tragedy (Bloom 19). "Hamlet" was written sometime between 1598 and 1602 and Bloom asserts that the death of Shakespeare's father and only son around this time, and before final draft of "Hamle" was finished, deepened his understanding and sense of tragedy and loss. He weaved this experience into his retelling of the revenge play about Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark (Bloom 25; Evans 1136). Therefore he was able to create the fully rounded character of Hamlet, with all his strengths and weaknesses, as a hero whose tragedy comes about because of the choices he makes, as well as because of the circumstances in which he lives (Schwartz 231). This essay will prove that Hamlet chose to show himself as mad, although he was in fact sane throughout the entirety of the play and will discuss Shakespeare's reasoning in depicting Hamlet as someone who feigned madness.
The most compelling evidence demonstrating that Hamlet was sane and only feigning madness is in his statement in Act I, Scene V. In this scene both he and the Ghost, who is the former King Hamlet, make Horatio and Marcellus swear to secrecy all that they had seen and heard. Hamlet then tells Horatio and Marcellus that from that time forward he would "put an antic disposition on" (line 172) while he worked on avenging his father's death and setting the kingdom of Denmark to rights (Shakespeare, Scene I, Act V, lines 141-190).
One of the reasons Shakespeare chose to show Hamlet as feigning madness is in the original revenge play itself. Historically, the tale of "Hamlet" was based on Norse legend going back as far as the 13th century (Parrot 670). The character's original name was Amlothi, which had the dual meaning of "desperate in battle" to the point of madness and "simpleton" or foolish. In this original revenge play, the prince
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