Hamlet as the Fool

One of the ways in which Hamlet's character can be read into is as the Fool. The definition of the fool is One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth, someone who deceives or tricks, and to feign or pretend. Hamlet fits into these definitions of the fool in a variety of ways. Throughout the play it can be seen that Hamlet appears to be the moral judge and who primarily decides if what someone is doing or has done is right or wrong. Hamlet gets his point across of what he believes to be right or wrong by making the other party feel inferior to his intellect and revealing what he believes to be a common problem that all of humanity shares. He also feigns what he is doing for most of the play. After meeting the ghost at the end of act one he proceeds to put on a persona of someone who is crazy and has completely lost his mind. He adopts this persona in order to hide his true intentions of what he actually wants to do. He only seems to be crazy instead of him actually ising crazy. He dons this persona in order to gather information on Claudius, lower everyone's guard, and keep others from seeing what he is truly hiding. Hamlet can also be seen as the fool in the fact that he went into the forest and just blindly listened to the ghost and agreed to avenge him despite the fact that the ghost may just be a devil who is attempting to lead him astray. When he goes into the forest and meets up with the ghost instead of it being the ghost of King Hamlet it may just be a manifestation of his subconscious. Before he entered the forest he already had some ideas mulling around in his head but in the forest the manifestation just helps him to affirm himself and clear his thought on what his clear course of action should be. Hamlet also deceives and tricks others along the way of his path of revenge. He gets everyone to believe that he is crazy and has something wrong with himself when in reality it is all just a calculated plan in order to get everyone to lower their guards. He uses tricky language and speech in order to reveal things about others and in order to insult people without them realizing it. Hamlet is also a fool in the fact that occasionally his cold and calculating demeanor gets replaced by one that is clearly over taken by emotion and all rational goes out the door. He utterly drops his calm and collected persona and becomes consumed by emotion and acts solely on that without thinking of the consequences or planning it out ahead of time. Throughout the play hamlet can be seen as the literary fool in a variety of ways which helps to show the depth of his character and how widely it can be interpreted as.