Hamlet and Ophelia.

In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, a kind of madness ultimately infects everyone, leading to an ending in which almost every major character is dead. Two of these maddened characters are Hamlet and Ophelia, who also share a love for each other. But though their irrational behavior is often similar and their fates alike, one is truly mad while the other is not.

     Both Hamlet and Ophelia act very strangely. Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, insults everyone around him. He tells Ophelia he never loved her, calls her father a fishmonger, and in subtle ways calls his mother a whore and her new husband a murderer. And Hamlet himself is driven to acts of murder, from the unintentional stabbing of Polonius to the plotting that kills Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to the avenging murder of his uncle the king. Ophelia appear at the castle singing and giving out imaginary flowers. She seems not to even know her own brother.

      The behavior of both Hamlet and Ophelia is a direct result of their fathers' murders. Both love their fathers dearly and readily obey, even when their fathers' orders go against their own wishes or better judgement. Hamlet is shocked when his father's ghost urges him to murder the new king, but Hamlet consents "that I with wings as swift / As meditation or the thought of love, / May sweep to my revenge" (I.5.29-31). When Polonius tells Ophelia to repel Hamlet's advances, she promises to obey. And it is only after their fathers are killed that Hamlet and Ophelia begin to act mad.

Both Hamlet and Ophelia are ultimately destroyed. Hamlet, whose quest was to prove the guilt of Claudius no matter what the consequences, is murdered by Laertes in a plot concocted by the king as he felt himself cornered. Ophelia drowns, perhaps willfully.

But Hamlet's madness is an act while Ophelia's is not. Though Hamlet considers suicide in his grief after his father's death, his madness is part of a plot to snare Claudius for murder. Hamlets tells his friend Horation, "I perchance hereafter shall think meet / To put an antic disposition on" (II.1.171-172). And though Hamlet's behavior is crazy, others see that it is a performance. Polonius notices the "method / in't" (II.2.203-204), and Claudius insists that "what he spake, though it lacked form a little, / Was not like madness" (III.1.163-164). In contrast, Ophelia's madness is real. Her brother, Laertes, mourns that "a young maid's wits / Should be as mortal as an old man's life" (IV.5.157-158) and calls her behavior "A document in madness" (IV.5.174). And though the queen labels her death an accident, her burial in sacred ground is seen by some as a sacrilege.

The play shows the danger of madness, both real and feigned, and how unchecked grief at the death of a loved one can consume those left behind.

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing.   
     5th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Upper Saddle River, N.J.:
     Prentice Hall, 1998. 1244-1347.

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