Answer:
Hamlet may already be going mad when the play begins, and his later decision to fake madness may just be a cover for real insanity. The first line addressed to Hamlet is, “How is it that the clouds still hang on you?” (I.ii.): Claudius thinks it’s strange and unhealthy that Hamlet is still grieving for his father. In the same scene, Hamlet tells us that he is wearing “solemn black” and a “dejected ‘havior” (I.ii.), which audiences in Shakespeare’s time would have recognized as signs of “melancholy,” a condition which Renaissance doctors believed could lead to madness.