Madness

The Theme in the Work

Madness enters the play as a project. At the end of Act I, Hamlet asks his friends not to denounce the pretense he will adopt, and in scene 1 of Act II the first sign arrives by report: Ophelia tells her father that the prince appeared disheveled, gripped her wrist, sighed, and left without taking his eyes off her. Polonius concludes that it is madness of love.

In scene 2 of Act II, the pretense serves to tell truths to Polonius and to the friends without offending anyone, and Hamlet wrests from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern the confession that they were summoned to probe him. In scene 1 of Act III, the harshness with which he treats Ophelia is enough for Claudius to see that it is not love, and he stops believing Polonius’s hypothesis, which keeps speaking of rejected love. In scene 4 of Act III, before his mother, Hamlet denies that it is madness and proposes a test: he will repeat word for word what madness would be afraid to say.

In scene 1 of Act IV, Gertrude uses madness as a shield and describes her son to Claudius as mad as the sea and wind when they fight, and says that he weeps for what he did. In scene 2 of Act IV, Hamlet answers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in riddles, and calls one of them a sponge that the king squeezes when he needs to. In scene 5 of Act IV, madness changes owners: Ophelia, who had ended up obeying her father, goes truly mad and begins to speak through songs, proverbs and flowers.

The two madnesses work in opposite directions. Hamlet’s is a mask that gives him license to say what he could not, and Ophelia’s is what remains when the mask of obedience falls and there is no other. The one gives voice to someone who chooses to speak, the other gives voice to someone who never had one, and that is why only the second moves the court and only the first deceives it.

Where It Appears

• scene 1 of Act II: Ophelia says that the prince appeared disheveled, gripped her wrist, sighed and left without taking his eyes off her, and Polonius concludes that it is madness of love.
• scene 2 of Act II: Claudius and Gertrude summon two childhood friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to probe the prince, and Hamlet mocks Polonius and wrests from them the confession that they were summoned.
• scene 1 of Act III: Hamlet treats Ophelia harshly and sends her to a convent, and Claudius, seeing that the prince’s ill is not love, decides to send him to England.
• scene 4 of Act III: After killing Polonius behind the curtain, Hamlet reproaches Gertrude before the portraits of her two husbands and sees the Ghost, who reappears visible only to him.
• scene 1 of Act IV: Gertrude tells Claudius that Hamlet is mad as the sea and wind, but that he weeps for what he did.
• scene 2 of Act IV: Questioned by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet answers in riddles: he says he mixed Polonius’s body with the dust it came from and calls Rosencrantz the king’s sponge.
• scene 5 of Act IV: Ophelia, gone mad, sings before Gertrude about her dead father and lost love, and Laertes, who had broken into the castle demanding his father, is shaken on seeing her with flowers and songs.

Passages

Polonius and the bait of falsehood.

The madness that Gertrude describes to the king.

The enigma about the body and the king.

One of the most lucid lines in the play, spoken by Ophelia gone mad.