Asking students to argue directly for or against Hamlet's genuine insanity, rather than exploring the ambiguity more openly, is a popular debate-style prompt that tends to generate strong student engagement. The clear, binary framing makes it accessible, but grading it well requires distinguishing genuine argumentation from simple assertion.

Because this prompt often follows classroom debate or discussion, some students arrive at their essay already committed to a position they defended verbally, which can make written arguments feel more like a recap of talking points than a fresh, evidence-based case. Grading should reward essays that go beyond restating discussion points and instead build a structured written argument.

A useful grading distinction is between essays that simply assert Hamlet's sanity or insanity and essays that define their terms carefully first. What counts as "insane" by Elizabethan standards versus modern psychological standards is a genuinely important distinction, and essays that address it directly tend to be far more sophisticated than those that assume a shared, unexamined definition.

Essays should also be graded on how honestly they handle counterevidence. A student arguing Hamlet is genuinely insane needs to account for the moments where he demonstrates clear strategic thinking, such as staging the play within the play, rather than ignoring that evidence entirely.

Setting Up the Debate Prompt for Strong Writing

Requiring students to define their terms in the opening paragraph, before making their central claim, tends to produce noticeably stronger essays on this topic. This small structural requirement forces students to think critically about the question itself before rushing to answer it.

• Require students to define what standard of "insanity" they are using before making their argument
• Reward essays that address at least one significant piece of counterevidence directly
• Watch for essays that simply restate a position argued in class discussion without new development
• Push students to distinguish between Hamlet's behavior in public versus in private soliloquy
• Encourage awareness of Elizabethan versus modern understandings of mental illness

Grading Fairly Across Both Positions

As with other genuinely debated questions in the play, teachers should watch for personal bias toward one interpretation influencing grades. Sample-grading a few essays from each position side by side before scoring the full set is a reasonable check against this kind of drift.

This is especially important if the essay follows a classroom debate where the teacher may have expressed or implied their own leaning during discussion, since students can sometimes sense and unconsciously cater to a perceived preferred answer.

Using Peer Feedback to Strengthen Arguments Before Grading

Because this prompt lends itself naturally to debate, having students exchange draft essays with a partner arguing the opposite position, and asking them to identify the single strongest counterargument, can meaningfully strengthen final drafts before they reach the teacher for grading.

This peer step also reduces the number of essays that reach final grading with obvious, unaddressed counterarguments, since students often catch these gaps more readily when reading a classmate's opposing essay than their own.

What This Assignment Teaches Beyond the Immediate Grade

Learning to build a case while honestly engaging with the strongest evidence against it is a skill with obvious value well beyond a single Hamlet essay. Grading criteria that explicitly reward this kind of intellectual honesty reinforce a habit of mind that serves students in any future argumentative writing.

Framing the assignment this way for students, as practice in genuine argumentation rather than simply picking a side, tends to raise the overall quality of the writing the assignment produces.