Throughout Shakespeare's Hamlet, Hamlet is either sane, mad, or feigning madness.

	Firstly, when Hamlet is saying his soliloquies, he would have to be sane. This is because it would require sanity to think about the natures of the complex ideas he explores. In Hamlet's fourth soliloquy, he wonders about the consequences of suicide and death, while in his seventh soliloquy, he compares the readiness of soldiers to die for useless land to his inability to take action to avenge his father. A madman would not be able to put these thoughts together.

	Hamlet would also have to be	 sane when he performs many complex actions. For instance, to plan his outing of Claudius' murder and create the play would require sanity. He would also have to be sane to fake the letter to the king of England and work with the pirates.

	On the other hand, there are times when Hamlet is feigning madness. In 1.5, Hamlet himself states to his companions that, “As I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on—“. By this he means that he may act mad and he is telling them to make sure they don't stop him. Hamlet also implies that he feigns madness to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in the 2.1 when he tells them, “I am but mad north-north-west. / When the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”. During the play Hamlet sometimes speaks things that sound like nonsense, and he does this to Polonius, twice. During the first time this nonsensical exchange occurs:

POLONIUS. 		Do you know me, my lord?
HAMLET.  		Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.

 During this conversation he also makes fun of Polonius with insults disguised as nonsense, such as the line: “for you yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab you could go backward“. This is a clever way of saying that Polonius is quite old and will never be young again. In Act III during the second time Hamlet acts mad towards Polonius, Hamlet begins spontaneously talking clouds in the sky and asking Polonius if they look like certain animals. Another time where Hamlet feigns madness is during two of his encounters with Ophelia. During the first encounter in Act II, Hamlet goes to Ophelia's room with his clothes all out of order and grabs her arm and stares. Then he sighs heavily and leaves the room while staring at her. Because this happens shortly after he decides to feign madness in Act I, it is certainly an attempt to establish his madness among the people he knows. The second time Hamlet meets Ophelia is in Act III, and during this meeting he knows he is being listened to because he asks Ophelia where her father is. Because he knows he is being listened to, he exaggerates his madness by saying of men, “We are arrant knaves all; believe none of us.” He also continues this by saying that women are two-faced and turn men into monsters. He also repeatedly tells her that she should go to a nunnery and never marry. He also implies that he knows he is being listened to by alluding to Claudius and Gertrude by saying “I say, we will have no more marriages. Those that are married already, all but one, shall live; the rest shall keep as they are.”. Another piece of evidence that he is feigning madness in this scene is the fact that he fights with Laertes in 5.1 over who loved Ophelia more, even though he makes it seem like he hates her in this conversation. He also talks normally to Ophelia during the play in 3.3 which is after this conversation.

	Finally, there are times when Hamlet is truly mad. For instance, in 1.4 when Horatio and Marcellus try to stop Hamlet from following the ghost, he threatens to kill them if they attempt to hold him back. Another instance where Hamlet is mad is during his angry rant at Gertrude in 3.4. He claims that Gertrude must have been possessed by a devil to remarry to her brother-in-law so fast. He tries to dismiss her claim that he is mad by saying, “ It is not madness / That I have uttered. Bring me to the test, / And I the matter will re-word, which madness / Would gambol from.” This means that if he was mad he wouldn't be able to rephrase everything he just said. But Hamlet is mad in a different sense, he is mad in the sense that he has let his emotion overwhelm his father's orders to leave Gertrude alone. He has let his irrational anger take over and he proceeds to verbally abuse his mother. Shortly afterward in 4.1, Hamlet appears unapologetic over his murder of Polonius. He taunts Claudius and Rosencrantz with jokes and insults when they ask for the body. A truly sane man would be more apologetic over murder. One more time when Hamlet is overcome by madness is when he jumps into Ophelia's grave to fight Laertes in 5.1. He did this because Laertes jumped into her grave at her funeral, and Hamlet took this to mean that Laertes was making a big show of loving her. Hamlet wanted it to be known that he loved Ophelia the most. He says, “I lov’d Ophelia. Forty thousand brothers	/ Could not, with all their quantity of love,	/ Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her?” But it is mad to do this because he let his emotion overcome him and cause him to disrespect Ophelia's memory by fighting in her grave.