Ophelia's Madness In Hamlet Essay

In Shakespeare's Hamlet, people create facades of madness to manipulate others. This is shown by Ophelia being framed as helpless at the expense of her family, and her acting mad in an effort to gain information and justice for her father's murder. Here, madness is defined as a "severe and dangerous state of mind which leads the individual to break rules and societal norms" (Shafer 49).

Ophelia's madness becomes apparent in the scenes following her father's tragic death. She begins walking aimlessly through the halls of the palace while singing parts of songs that, at first listen, have no relation to each other nor the conversations surrounding her. She sings "He is dead and gone, lady, / He is dead and gone; / At his head is a grass-green truf, / At his heels a stone" (Act IV, Scene

She gives out flowers to the King, Queen, and Laertes with meanings that coincide with how she feels about them; "There's fennel for you, and columbines. There's rue for you … There's a daisy. I would give you some violets, but they withered all when my father died" (Act IV, Scene v, Lines 204-209). The fennel and comumbiens combined are an insult to the King's intelligence and loyalty to his family and country. If he could kill his own brother, the old king, he should not be trusted. The rue is an insult directed at the Queen because it points out her willingness to marry her brother-in-law so soon after her husband's death. The violets represent faithfulness, so by her saying that they all died after her father died, she is implying that the King and Queen have more to do with her father's death than they are acting. She wants someone to be held responsible for his murder, and if she did not act mad in the same manner as Hamlet, she never would have been able to get away with saying what the flowers were