act 2

• Later, in Act 2 when Hamlet is evaluating a play performed to him by a group of actors, he is eventually left alone, and he once again begins another soliloquy that contrasts the actors emotional response to the sufferings of a fictional character from the Trojan war with his own failure to deal with the real situation in Denmark.
• P 1

  "Oh, what a rogue peasant slave am I!"

  
  

  Here, we can certainly see that Hamlet is having internal difficulties, as he wishes for self-destruction, and he begins with with insults and self accusation - he’s accusing himself of being lazy, and when he calls himself a slave, he’s meaning that he’s not taking any initiative, like a free person can and should.
• "I am mad but north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw"

  • He is only "mad" at certain calculated times, but he is certainly confused and upset, and his confusion translates into an extraordinarily intense state of mind suggestive of madness. The acute and cutting observations he makes while supposedly mad, though, support the view that he is only pretending.