Hamlet Madness Essay, Research Paper

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk

from a handsaw" (II.ii.376-7). This is a classic example of the "wild

and whirling words" (I.v.134) with which Hamlet hopes to persuade people to

believe that he is mad. These words, however, prove that beneath his "antic

disposition," Hamlet is very sane indeed. Beneath his strange choice of

imagery involving points of the compass, the weather, and hunting birds, he is

announcing that he is calculatedly choosing the times when to appear mad. Hamlet

is saying that he knows a hunting hawk from a hunted "handsaw" or

heron, in other words, that, very far form being mad, he is perfectly capable of

recognizing his enemies. Hamlet’s madness was faked for a purpose. He warned his

friends he intended to fake madness, but Gertrude as well as Claudius saw

through it, and even the slightly dull-witted Polonius was suspicious. His

public face is one of insanity but, in his private moments of soliloquy, through

his confidences to Horatio, and in his careful plans of action, we see that his

madness is assumed. After the Ghost’s first appearance to Hamlet, Hamlet decides

that when he finds it suitable or advantageous to him, he will put on a mask of

madness so to speak. He confides to Horatio that when he finds the occasion

appropriate, he will "put an antic disposition on" (I.v.173). This

strategy gives Hamlet a chance to find proof of Claudius’s guilt and to

contemplate his revenge tactic. Although he has sworn to avenge his father’s

murder, he is not sure of the Ghost’s origins: "The spirit that I have seen

/ May be the devil" (II.ii.596-7). He uses his apparent madness as a

delaying tactic to buy time in which to discover whether the Ghost’s tale of

murder is true and to decide how to handle the situation. At the same time, he

wants to appear unthreatening and harmless so that people will divulge

information to him, much in the same way that an adult will talk about an

important secret in the presence of a young child. To convince everyone of his

madness, Hamlet spends many hours walking back and forth alone in the lobby,

speaking those "wild and whirling words" which make little sense on

the surface but in fact carry a meaningful subtext. When asked if he recognizes

Polonius, Hamlet promptly replies, "Excellent well; you are a

fishmonger" (II.ii.172). Although the response seems crazy since a

fish-seller would look completely unlike the expensively dressed lord Polonius,

Hamlet is actually criticizing Polonius for his management of Ophelia, since

"fishmonger" is Elizabethan slang for "pimp." He plays

mind-games with Polonius, getting him in crazy talk to agree first that a cloud

looks like a camel, then a weasel and finally a whale, and in a very sane aside,

he then comments that "[t]hey fool me to the top of my bent"

(III.ii.375). Although he appears to have lost touch with reality, he keeps

reminding us that he is not at all "far gone, far gone" (II.ii.187) as

Polonius claims, but is in fact very much in command of himself and the

situation. With his rantings and ravings and his seemingly useless pacing of the

lobby, Hamlet manages to appear quite mad. The na?ve and trusting Ophelia

believes in and is devastated by what she sees as his downfall: " O, what a

noble mind is here o’erthrown! / . . . The expectancy and rose of the fair state

/ . . . quite, quite down!" (III.i.152,4,6). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

are also fully convinced. They are Hamlet’s equals in age but are far inferior

in intellect and therefore don’t understand that he is faking. However, although

Hamlet manages to convince these simple friends and Ophelia of his insanity,

other characters in the play such as Claudius, Gertrude and even Polonius

eventually see through his behavior. Claudius is constantly on his guard because

of his guilty conscience and he therefore recognizes that Hamlet is faking. The

king is suspicious of Hamlet from the very beginning. He denies Hamlet

permission to return to university so that he can keep an eye on him close by.

When Hamlet starts acting strangely, Claudius gets all the more suspicious and

sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him. Their instructions are to

discover why Hamlet is pretending to be mad: " And can you, by no drift of

circumstance, / Get from him why he puts on this confusion, [my italics] /

Grating so harshly all his days of quiet / With turbulent and dangerous

lunacy" (III.i.1-4). The reason Claudius is so reluctant to believe that

Ophelia’s rejection has caused Hamlet’s lunacy is that he doesn’t believe in his

madness at all. When Claudius realizes through the play-within-the-play that

Hamlet knows the truth about his father’s death, he immediately sends him away

to England. The prevailing piece of evidence demonstrating Claudius’s knowledge

of Hamlet’s sanity is the fact that he feels threatened enough by Hamlet to

order him killed by the king of England: "For like the hectic in my blood

he rages, / And thou must cure me: till I know ’tis done, / Howe’er my haps, my

joys were ne’er begun" (IV.iii.67-9). In the scene in his mother’s bedroom,

Hamlet tells Gertrude that his insanity is assumed: "[I]t is not madness /

I have utter’d: bring me to the test, / And I the matter will reword, which

madness / Would gambol from" (III.iv.143-6), but even without his

confirmation, the queen has seen through his act. While Hamlet is reprimanding

her, she is so upset that she describes his words as "daggers"

(III.iv.98) and claims, " Thou hast cleft my heart in twain"

(III.iv.158). The words of a madman could not have penetrated her soul to such

an extent. The queen takes every word Hamlet says seriously, proving she

respects him and believes his mind to be sound. Furthermore, she believes

Hamlet’s confession of sanity immediately. She does not question him at all but

instead promises to keep it her secret. "I have no life to breathe / What

though hast said to me" (III.iv.200-1). Even Polonius can see that Hamlet

has not completely lost touch with the world. Although he frequently misses the

meanings of Hamlet’s remarks and insults, he does recognize that they make some

sense. After a confusing conversation with Hamlet he remarks, " Though this

be madness, yet there is method in’t" (II.ii.205). When his theory of

rejected love proves wrong, he becomes very suspicious of Hamlet’s behavior and

offers to test it by hiding behind the "arras" in Gertrude’s bedroom

so that he can listen in on Hamlet’s private conversation with his mother.

Polonius’s suspicions about the legitimacy of Hamlet’s madness lead to his death

when Hamlet stabs the "arras" in the mistaken belief that the

eavesdropper is Claudius. Hamlet’s soliloquies, his confidences to Horatio, and

his elaborate plans are by far the most convincing proof of his sanity.

Throughout the play, Hamlet’s soliloquies reveal his inner thoughts which are

completely rational. In one such speech, Hamlet criticizes himself for not

having yet taken action to avenge his father’s murder: "O what a rogue and

peasant slave am I / . . . the son of the dear murder’d, / Prompted to my

revenge by heaven and hell, / Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with

words" (II. ii. 545, 581-3). Hamlet calls himself a "dull and muddy-mettled

rascal" (II.ii.563), a villain and a coward, but when he realizes that his

anger doesn’t achieve anything practical other than the unpacking of his heart,

he stops. These are not the thoughts of a madman; his emotions are real and his

thoughts are those of a rational man. Even when he contemplates suicide in the

"to be or not to be" soliloquy, his reasons himself out of it through

a very sane consideration of the dangers of an unknown afterlife: "And thus

the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of

thought" (III.i. 85-6). A further important proof of his sanity is how

patiently he devises plans to prepare for his revenge. As he explains to

Horatio, his "antic disposition" is a device to test his enemies. His

mounting of the play-within-the-play is another well-laid plan to trap Claudius

into admitting guilt: "The play’s the thing / Wherein I’ll catch the

conscience of the king" (II.ii.602-3) and even when the play brings him

concrete proof, he is careful not to rush to take his revenge at the wrong

moment. He could easily kill Claudius while he is praying but restrains himself

so that there is no chance of Claudius’s entering heaven. Although Hamlet’s

patience can be seen as an example of his procrastination, I think that it is

rather a sign of rationality. Hamlet shows himself perfectly capable of action,

as well as of rational thought, in escaping the king’s armed guard, dispatching

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths in England, dealing with the

pirates and making it back to Denmark. In addition, the letter Horatio from him

through the ambassador bound for England is clear and precise and shows no signs

of a befuddled mind. Finally, I am convinced of Hamlet’s sanity by his very

normal reactions to the people around him. He is perfectly sane, friendly and

courteous with the players, giving them good acting tips which they appreciate

and respect. When Polonius and Claudius test the theory of rejected love by

"loosing" Ophelia to him, Hamlet acts completely rationally. He greets

Ophelia sweetly, gets a little cold when he remembers that he has not seen her

"for this many a day," is very hurt when she returns his remembrances,

and becomes completely furious, insulting womankind in general, when she lies to

him about her father’s whereabouts and he realizes he is being spied on. He

reacts the way any hurt young rejected lover would. In the end, it is surprising

that he is able to keep up the charade of feigning madness for so long, and part

of his tragedy is that it doesn’t help him anyway; in the end, he avenges his

father by killing Claudius not through an act of madness, but as a result of

Claudius’s own treachery.