The two sorts of madness in Shakespeare’s Hamlet are between the Prince Hamlet and delicate Ophelia. The couple fulfills functioning archetypes: the strong-minded man, the weak-minded woman. One faces the risks of avenging a father; the other is lost without one; both conquer self-control to find their satisfaction.
The elaborate purpose of Hamlet’s madness is to cloak his investigation. For Hamlet, madness is a performance. He does it to mystify the other characters, but the weaving of it provides the same message: Hamlet cannot be controlled.
The on-going squabbles Hamlet argues are often to do with women and failed devotion. Because of this, most of the characters from Rosencrantz to Gertrude to Ophelia herself, believe his madness is based on love. As if a man who is strongly unappreciated would burn with insane, screwball anger. Or, in reduced words: that Hamlet is controlled by the conduct of women. The notion provides amply to why Hamlet wishes Ophelia away to a nunnery, and despises his mother’s unexpired passion. If he could cure this female waywardness then that would leave Hamlet to be the sensible fellow he was. But these women no longer guide Hamlet because of their femininity and faithlessness. His hate for them is a rejection, and a freedom. Though Hamlet’s flippant manners toward his mother, and his lover, don’t deny how love can unravel a man’s rationality, there is a stronger reason for his disposition.
Hamlet’s insanity always sobered by dire events. This provides an anecdote for him to be only acting mad but to an end. How he denies himself of murdering Claudius at the confessional is a popular example, as well as his trickery to composing a play to weed out said king’s deceitfulness. The strongest example reigns from his antagonizing of Gertrude only to be leveled down by killing of Polonius. This unplanned act frightens him to reconsider his antics. To appear the better but irresponsible person, he blames the moment it on the miscalculations of insanity. Unfortunately, the repercussion drives harder than expected. Hamlet is sent away because he’s out of order, and upon his return blazes all the more wronged and aware as his procrastinated motives had brought on the death of Ophelia.
The madness of Ophelia is textual, and resides on two very familiar concepts for a heretic: sex and immaturity. One features the shortcomings of a woman with passion. The other spotlights how childlike women are, that they deserve guidance at every turn. The result is an appealing, literary example of how the childish women work against their best interest.
The resounding purpose of Ophelia’s madness is her headlessness. The head of her existence would be her father. Though it is remarked that “everyone loses a father”, in Ophelia’s case, she cannot afford it. What was used as a sobering anecdote is her diving point. What drives another to action, sends her plummeting. The death of Polonius, her moral compass, leaves Ophelia without a stable, level-headed counterpart once she’s forcibly severed from Hamlet. Though she has Laertes, the fierce loyalty of a brother is not enough. With no father to guide her back to piety, and no father figure to be made out of Prince Hamlet, Ophelia drifts and sinks. Henceforth, she congeals in her own distraught, as the fragile woman who is forever young.
The duplicity of madness the play Hamlet is a discussion of self-control. Between the foil and the genuine manners, Shakespeare advocates a sane man who worsens his affairs by ploys. He also elaborates by unraveling a woman who is doted on with tragedy, and losing her sense of the tangible self. The message developed illustrates how a man who outsmarts his purpose brings ruin, then exploits how an insecure woman can never be wholly protected.
Works Cited
Kay, Margarita A. Healing with Plants. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1998. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. 1623. The Oxford Shakespeare
Hamlet. Ed. G.R. Hibbard. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.
