Madness is a recurring theme in Shakespeare’s plays, but in Hamlet, madness, the discussion and portrayal of it, directly affects nearly every character as well as driving the plot forward.

Two characters in particular – Hamlet and Ophelia – display outward signs that Elizabethan audiences would have considered madness, but in very different ways, leading to one of literature's greatest and earliest explorations of the human psyche, and what it means to be 'sane' or 'mad'.

IS HAMLET REALLY MAD?

The question of whether Hamlet is truly mad or whether he is simply acting is one that audiences and scholars have enjoyed debating for centuries, and still today brings into question our understanding of what ‘madness’ is.

To a Tudor audience, there were recognisable outward signs of mania, or madness, including: dishevelled dress and appearance, distracted, babbled or nonsensical speaking and behaviour that is out of character, and sometimes violent.

However, Shakespeare pits these against different understandings of 'madness', from grief-induced melancholia to the rejection of social (or natural) norms, to explore what it truly means to be 'mad' or 'sane' in a world where a brother can murder a brother and get away with it.

ACTING MAD, SPEAKING THE TRUTH

Following the discovery of his father’s murder, Hamlet himself tells Horatio (and the audience) that he will feign an ‘antic disposition’ i.e. act mad. In the following scenes he behaves and speaks in a strange manner unlike his usual demeanour, unsettling nearly everybody at court.

Ophelia describes Hamlet before we see him, and true to form, he displays many Elizabethan signs of madness:

To the court, his friends and family, he speaks in riddles that sound like nonsense (though even Polonius recognises that Hamlet is not completely without his senses, saying in an aside, “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.").

But to the audience, Hamlet speaks the truth. The audience is clued in via Hamlet’s asides and soliloquys, which alter in meter and rhythm to his ‘mad’ speech, switching from loose prose to ordered verse. When speaking to the audience, himself and Horatio, he shows a rational understanding of reality, even while he grapples with the need to act and fear or ultimate pointlessness of enacting his vengeance.

So, Hamlet deliberately feigns madness in public, and retains his sanity in private. But why does he do this? While he doesn’t say it explicitly, Hamlet’s perceived madness gives him a kind of free reign to speak truths and perform actions that would be more heavily scrutinised were he visibly sane.

In Elizabethan times, the Clown or the Fool would be well known to speak uncomfortable truths via riddles and get away with it, because of their lowly (and mentally questionable) status. Therefore, Hamlet being seemingly detached from his senses allows him to speak to his mother, the king, Polonius and his friends in supposed nonsense, to distract from his true intentions – to find out whether or not his uncle murdered his father.

ANOTHER KIND OF MADNESS

On the other hand, there are signs that Hamlet does genuinely suffer from other forms of ‘madness’, at least from an Elizabethan doctor's perspective. One of those is melancholia – today, we would call it depression.

From the start of the play, we are told Hamlet is in mourning; both his dress and mood are "inky" and "solemn black". Claudius asks: "How is it that the clouds still hang on you?" and Gertrude says: "Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off" as they try to persuade him that his mourning has gone on for too long, and that it is unseemly behaviour ("’Tis unmanly grief.")

But in his first soliloquy, Hamlet privately expresses his grief, disgust and fury at his father's death and his mother's swift remarriage, leaving his view of the whole world dull and tainted: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable / Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

We also know Hamlet also performs alarming displays of what could be considered mania or delirium (today, psychosis) throughout the play, shown by:

• Hallucinations - he sees visions and hears echoes of his dead father
• Delusions - the conviction that his uncle murdered his father, though this turns out true
• Confused or disturbed patterns of thought and speech

In this speech to Horatio, his words run over each other, repeat and cut off, giving the impression of a frantic babble:

Hamlet also behaves in a violent and cruel way towards his mother and Ophelia, which their reactions suggest is out of character for him, and even kills Polonius in a fit of rage. None of these – save perhaps his interaction with Ophelia – seem to be Hamlet ‘acting mad’, but genuine, if extreme, reactions to trauma.

Hamlet’s supposed ‘madness’ allows for him to both act within and outside of the world of the court, eventually trapping his uncle into a kind of confession. But through Hamlet’s words and actions, Shakespeare explores the complexity of the human reaction to grief, betrayal and mental anguish.

OPHELIA’S MADNESS

Unlike Hamlet, we never see the inner workings of Ophelia’s mind, especially once she descends into madness. But though her madness looks similar to Hamlet's (she is dishevelled and speaks in riddles), we can be fairly certain that her mental decline is not an act, and leads to her death.

Like Hamlet, we hear about her mental state before we see her. A Gentleman of the court describes Ophelia’s behaviour to Gertrude and how she talks about her father:

Through her songs, Ophelia speaks to both the loss of her virginity and Hamlet's rejection of her, and the murder of her father, revealing the dual cause of her anguish.

While Hamlet's ‘madness’ is sometimes performed comically, Ophelia’s madness is usually shown as a tragic mirroring, demonstrating the brutal, knock-on effects of Hamlet’s behaviour on other characters in the play.

Caught in the crossfire of Hamlet's actions, Ophelia's madness and death is arguably one of the most tragic outcomes of the play, as she is shown to have very little agency in life or death, sanity or insanity - a contrast to Hamlet's quest for agency and self-knowledge.

THE MEANING OF MADNESS

Madness is used in many ways in Hamlet - it's used to disguise the truth (Hamlet's true motives) as well as reveal it (the truth in Hamlet's riddles and Ophelia's songs). It is used to compare the rigid order of the court, though riddled with secrets, with the turmoil of a grieving mind.

The presence of madness as an unsettling recurring theme also adds to the overall sense in the play that the natural world is out of sync; that something ‘rotten in the state of Denmark’ will continue to affect everyone, both inside and outside the court, until balance is finally restored.