The Bard Says: It Wasn’t Me

You might produce some personalized lines from this Hamlet passage if you’ve done something you regret to someone close to you:

Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong; 
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman. 
This presence knows, 
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d 
With sore distraction. What I have done 
That might your nature, honour, and exception 
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. 
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet. 
If Hamlet from himself be taken away, 
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes, 
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it. 
Who does it, then? His madness. If’t be so, 
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d; 
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy. 
Sir, in this audience, 
Let my disclaiming from a purpos’d evil 
Free me so far in your most generous thoughts 
That I have shot my arrow o’er the house 
And hurt my brother.

(Ham.V.2.213-231)

…I would not necessarily recommend, however, taking this position in a situation where something real, like a friendship, is at stake.  Can we truly blame our gravest errors, transgressions, and wrongdoings on our past states of mind as if they were other people, disconnected from our present selves?  It’s comforting to think so.  But saying so may insult the person you’re trying to apologize to.  Instead of saying it wasn’t “you” that did something wrong, I recommend admitting the fault and following with a true apology.