Hamlet On Trial

Hamlet may have been a protagonist to Shakespeare, but to any conventional legal mind at the time, he would have to have been judged a murderer. Of course, he spent no small amount of time claiming to be insane, as well, a condition which is occasionally used to mitigate murder charges. This week, as part of Washington, D.C.’s ongoing Shakespeare festival, Hamlet’s case came before “no less a jurist than Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, [as] a jury of Washingtonians deliberated over whether Hamlet was in his right mind when he stabbed Polonius to death.”