Shakespeare's Hamlet: Investigating Hamlet's Insanity

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of forced breath,
No, nor the fruitful river in the eye,
Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage,
Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief,
That can denote me truly: these indeed seem,
For they are actions that a man might play:
But I have that within which passeth show;
These but the trappings and the suits of woe.”(1.2)

Here Hamlet shows his unstable mind. He is screaming at his mother telling
her how his actions are honest and he is not pretending to grieve, but that
he is truly saddened by his father's death. He has become offended by his
mother's inference that Hamlet is not actually upset by his father's death..
She uses the term "Seems" which pushes Hamlet to this rage.
Hamlet is so saddened by his father's death that he begins to think
of suicide. "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt / Thaw and resolve
itself into a dew!”(1.2.129-130). He is wishing that his flesh would melt
away or “Or that the ...

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the
ghost, he is given an instruction to remember. Hamlet begins his obsession
with revenge here:

“ I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,
That youth and observation copied there;
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmix'd with baser matter”

Hamlet vows to himself that he will think of nothing but his task till it
is complete. He will wipe his memory of everything in his life and the only
thing dwelling within will be his task given to him by the ghost. "I
perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on"
(1.5.171-172), ...

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