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"I am but mad north – north – west; when the wind is southerly, Consider the figure of young Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, surrounded by a widening hurricane of treachery and blame. We meet him as he returns from school at Wittenberg to a confused and unsavory world, increasingly wrapped in grief and disgust. With his father slain, his mother posted "With such dexterity to incestuous sheets" (1.2.156–7), and his uncle become step-father beseeching him to abandon his intent to return to school, Hamlet’s is a tortured consciousness. The stage is set for madness. Introduced to his father’s ghost, he carefully – if over-zealously – tests the truth of its claim and devises a thoughtful – if clumsy – plan to follow its command to avenge King Hamlet’s murder by killing Claudius. Indeed, newly-throned King Claudius suggests his nephew-cousin-son might actually be heading toward insanity by clinging to his mourning garb of "customary suits of solemn black"(1.2.78) and following his grief "To reason most absurd" (1.2.103). Polonius, influenced by the king’s attitude, asserts Hamlet’s madness in asides, certain that the youth’s obsession with his daughter is its cause. Generating momentum in the speculative transfer of the rumor from character to character, insanity surrounds the Prince as a spider’s web encases an innocent fly. Hamlet’s enraged frustration over "thinking too precisely on th’ event"(4.4.41) is continuously interpreted as insanity, demonstrated by the exchange between Ophelia and Polonius regarding Hamlet’s disarray. Here the convenience of the insanity label is clear. The audience knows Hamlet must have rushed straight from his shocking experience with the ghost to Ophelia’s side, but Ophelia has no context within which to place his appearance. Ignorant of the apparition, the murder, and the vengeance command, she is frightened by Hamlet’s maniacal behavior. Polonius, having already expressed concern over Ophelia’s involvement with the Prince, asserts the invented truth of Hamlet’s madness, providing a deterrent force to keep her safe from his dangers. The Prince would inevitably leave her dishonored and unmarried, although she insists that "he hath importuned me with love In honorable fashion" (1.3.110-1). If the Prince were insane, Ophelia’s tender heart would be spared the pain of rejection and Polonius would be spared the loss of his daughter’s virtue. Hamlet’s own madness would drive him out of their lives with an easily digestible explanation. When Hamlet rejects Ophelia in his disillusion over his mother’s behavior, she blames his loss of reason. Indeed, the stage supports a growing conspiracy against Hamlet’s mental health. In a meeting staged by the conspirators, Polonius wishes to prove that Hamlet "from his reason faln"(2.2.165) so that he can keep him from defiling his daughter. Gertrude wishes to prove that Ophelia’s "good beauties be the happy cause Of Hamlet’s wildness" (3.1.39-40). Claudius concurs, to the end that the Prince be deemed a lunatic, thus silencing his possible interference in the new King’s claim to the throne. Together, they support the fiction of Hamlet’s madness, yet it is Hamlet’s disenchantment, his assertion "that it were better my mother had not bourne me" (3.1.123-4), that drives him to insist that he never loved her. Ophelia may have expected a different response after she "did repel his letters; and denied his access" (2.1.106-7), and the presumption of his madness offers acceptable illustration. Again, not lunacy, but the frightening truth of his mother’s dishonor prompts him to urge that Ophelia seek a sequestered life rather than risk becoming "a breeder of sinners" (3.1.121-2). When his accusations, "like daggers, enter" (3.4.95) the Queen’s ears, she too blames his loss of reason. None realizes nor understands the truth which Hamlet so eloquently speaks: "it is not madness That I have utter’d. . . Mother, for the love of grace, Lay not that flattering unction to your soul That not your trespass, but my madness speaks" (3.4.141-6). Better for each character to mark him a madman over love than to face the painful truth which would shake apart the structure of the kingdom. While sanity is defined as moderated sensibility and Hamlet appears dramatically enraged, his reactions do make sense in his context of dysfunction. The audience witnesses abundant evidence that the environment at Elsinore is less than rational. Polonius operates delusionally, drawing an invalid syllogism when accusing Hamlet of madness based upon lovesickness over his daughter. He presumes, as suits him based upon the King’s assertion that Hamlet might be carrying grief to the point of madness, that the Prince must be mad. Of course, he is relying upon the word of King Claudius, usurper to the throne and a drunkard who fails to earn his nephew-son’s respect when, "as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, the kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his pledge" (1.4.10-12). Hamlet demonstrates his critical grasp on the reality of Elsinore, earning our trust as a reliable protagonist, by the time he converses with the ghost in the presence of the Queen who cannot see it. She again blames his madness while the audience sympathizes with the Prince. Shakespeare stages this scene to reinforce the presumption of the Queen and her court that Hamlet is indeed mad, when the message she is missing is that her new husband is her former husband’s murderer. The audience sides with Hamlet while the Queen deems his vision an hallucination because trust is established in the first scene of the play by the staging of the ghost. Had Hamlet been the only character to see it, its existence and Hamlet’s sanity might be questionable, but in the most wonderfully mad tale of strange-but-true, two officers and a soldier of the court witness the specter first and recognize it as the old King, laying the foundation for Hamlet’s veracity. Perhaps the first audiences of this play would have been fascinated by the employment of the supernatural, as areas North of Britain were still heavily steeped in pagan earth-based faiths, whereas the British Isles had long since endured Christianization. Within the Christian structure, echoes of the Reformation, centered in Wittenberg, likely inspired questioning examination of diversification of religious faith structures. That Hamlet’s attention was divided between Elsinore and Wittenberg places him in a position anterior to the insular world of the kingdom and its all-consuming land rights battles. Shakespeare’s attention to Hamlet’s already suspicious frame of mind (1.2.103-128) and his wisecrack remarks founded in obscure details of his critical thoughts (2.2.361-2) add another layer to the cycle of madness the audience enjoys. The Prince is an intriguing character, steeped in conflicting ideologies, delving deeply into the idea that "There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out" (2.2.350-1). When the Queen and her son stand divided by the spector and then by Polonius’ murder, it becomes clear that Hamlet is sane but misguided by his hyper-cognition while Gertrude remains ignorant and dependent upon the madness myth to justify her position at Elsinore. Even as we learn from Marcellus that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (1.4.90), Hamlet, braving the potential wrath of an angry ghost, follows to learn what, specifically, that rot is. When planning his visit to the night-watch, Hamlet protects the secrecy of the vision, then follows it, angry yet respectful; open yet inquisitive, and fully aware that "all is not well," (1.2.255). Horatio’s warning to Hamlet as he follows the apparition reveals the potentiality of insanity, as the ghost may "assume some other horrible form Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness" (1.5.73-74). These lines and the staging of Hamlet trailing behind the dead king like a rat behind the piper engage the action in a prophecy cycle of imposed insanity. Horatio, before seeing the ghost, "says ‘tis but . . . fantasy" (1.1.23), but he embraces its reality after witnessing the apparition himself. A doomsday omen – harbinger of evil deeds – the spirit is, Horatio reasons, an ill-willed devilish manifestation. Ideologically grounded in the theological precedence of his explanation, he anticipates the Prince of Denmark’s madness, laying a foundation for the believability of the invented insanity thrust upon Hamlet by the royal court. In his "to be or not to be" (3.1.55-89) soliloquy, the Prince reveals his self-torment over the choice between enduring and opposing injustice, postulating that only the sleep of death may end the heart-ache of life’s consciousness. Further tormented by this line of thinking, Hamlet later exclaims, "What is a man, If his chief [concern]. . . Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more" (4.4.33-5). Revealing the inner workings of his contemplative mind to none but the audience, he demonstrates his clarity and the irony of its ineffectiveness against the projected madness within the court. Were he to act without pause, without thought, forsaking "godlike reason . . . [for] Bestial oblivion" (4.4.37-9), he might complete his revenge, perpetuating the time-honored tradition of the violent execution of justice, a tradition Laertes demonstrates when he vows to avenge his own father’s death. "I dare damnation. . . Let come what comes, only I’ll be revenged Most thoroughly for my father" (4.5.131-4). Vengeance might not be sanctioned in Shakespeare’s world, but it is neither unexpected nor insane. Laertes also illuminates the distinction between anger and insanity when he witnesses Ophelia’s insane grief, calling his sister "A document in madness, – thoughts and remembrance fitted" (4.5.174-5). Should we then call Hamlet a buffoon for accidentally, overzealously, killing Polonius, mistaking him for Claudius? For hesitating over securing revenge? Likely not, for Hamlet is a man acting out of grief and dire thoughtfulness. He hesitates in killing Claudius so he may analyze the relative correctness of action, exercising his god-given power of reason. That the playwright twists fate to let him decide to act out his vengeance in a way that leaves Polonius dead speaks to the irony of thoughtful apprehension. The relative inconsequentiality of the entire matter is made poignant by Hamlet’s graveyard reflections upon the brevity of life and anonymity of death, which in its inevitability, makes humanity serve only to feed the worms. Whether a hero like Alexander or a jester like Yorick, we are mastered by death, which quiets us, levels us, and returns us to dust. Such realizations perpetuate the young Prince’s tormentedness, driving him more deeply into his grief over the horrible truths when he learns that his beloved Ophelia is dead. Thus does madness swirl all about our hero, Hamlet, but leaves him grievously sane, prepared, in the next scene, to discuss matters of state and treason with Horatio. And so must end this masterpiece in horrific tragedy. Hamlet’s heroic mission, driven by his father’s spirit, is ultimately fulfilled when Claudius perishes at the thrust of Hamlet’s poisoned blade. Following this narrow thread through the intricate tapestry of this play, we may conclude that the Prince is indeed a hero, demonstrating the power to communicate fearlessly with the spirit world, to expose Claudius’ treason, and to avenge his father’s death even as his last breaths escape him. Laertes begs, "Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Hamlet" (5.2.312), and absolves him of responsibility for his own and his father’s deaths. As Hamlet bravely dies, imploring Horatio "in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story" (5.2.331-2), he is restored to laudatory honor. Horatio speaks of his "noble heart" (5.2.342), and Fortinbras commands that H amlet be borne as a soldier, "for he was likely. . . To have proved most royally" (5.2.380-1).
In the end, when people die and truths be told, the madness dissolves and Hamlet’s clarity of reason is restored to public favor. But why would the bard have created such devastating loss of life when our hero has proven his command of reason, fulfilled his heroic mission, and perished in an atmosphere of noble respect? Perhaps to show the inevitability of ruination in the unraveling of lies. Ending his play in disaster, Shakespeare sardonically celebrates the destructive power of miscommunication and misinterpretation. The characters of the court create Hamlet’s madness because they need it to explain away the truth. But truth, painful and destructive as it can be, ultimately prevails. Beyond assassination plots, lost loves, ruined friendships, and senseless battles, Hamlet is a drama of ironic woe, "for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so" (2.2.246-7). |
For more insight into Hamlet, try these sources:
Hamlet, The Prince of Denmark: Complete Enotes
Enjoying "Hamlet" by William Shakespeare (Ed Friedlander, M.D., Brown University)
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© Wendy M. Blake 2000