Bipolar Disorder And Schizophrenia In Hamlet By William Shakespeare

Most humans, when born, are completely healthy both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, “most” is not “all”. Some unlucky people are dealt deficiencies at birth. Two such diseases, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are mental diseases that slowly eat at one’s psyche. Bipolar disorder affects roughly 2.6% of adult Americans and it only affects around 1% of adolescents. Fortunately, schizophrenia is less prevalent, affecting less than 1% of all humans. In the magnificent play “Hamlet”, crafted by William Shakespeare, the titular character appears to suffer from bipolar disorder and his struggle with it is one of the main subplots of the piece. In Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, characters suffering from schizophrenia are present.
One of them is unusual talkativeness. Hamlet exhibits this symptom often throughout the play, saying at point “what bad luck, my good friends, has brought you here to prison?” (Shakespeare 113) and many more nonsensical statements. Another symptom is partaking in activities with dangerous consequences, without care for punishment. Hamlet shows this by repeatedly questioning “To be or not to be, that is the question” (Shakespeare 142). Hamlet exudes another symptom, irritability, by killing Polonius for little to no reason at all. Yet, he justifies it by saying that Polonius was being “too inquisitive” (Shakespeare 193) and that “puts you in danger” (Shakespeare 193). Bipolar victims feel “that everything is hopeless” (Gale 1). All of this points to Hamlet suffering from bipolar