HAMLET CRAZINESS PROGRESSION ANALYSIS
	Throughout the Shakespeare tragedy, it is evident through literary analysis and character introspection that the protagonist’s sanity is a varying and fluctuating, creating the dynamic character that readers view Hamlet as.  At the beginning of the play Hamlet announces that as part of a scheme of revenge against his uncle he is going to put on an act of craziness.  It is not until taking on this role that Hamlet’s true craziness comes into play.  Shortly after playing mad, the true “meaningful” behaviors and thoughts of Hamlet begin to change into a form similar to that of his act.  Suffering cognitive dissonance, Hamlet relapses into a psychological state of insanity after acting as a mad man.  In the beginning, his crazy words and phrases had meaning; there was a tactic to his craziness. His sanity oscillates between the fine line differentiating sane and insane.  But it is when Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius, thinking the man is Claudius, that the audience realizes that Hamlet has a true mental problem.  Having no regard for the man he just killed (his girlfriend’s father, also a nobleman), dragging the body around the castle, yet still trying to put on the act of craziness demonstrates how the simple act of craziness percolates into the soul and transformed Hamlet into the insane being he was.  As the tragedy unfolds, in the final moments of everyone’s lives, it appears as if Hamlet’s insanity weakens in intensity (He is still obviously insane, yet not as bad as previous), as he is even able to identify his mental condition and use it as defense against Laertes.  In the end he ends up dead, mental condition unknown, such that no one will ever really know if the entire insanity scene was simply a manufactured story or the psychological state of insanity.  One thing for certain though, whichever it was, Hamlet seemed pretty insane.