Shakespeare’s Hamlet explores the motif of madness through the portrayal of Prince Hamlet and Ophelia; Shakespeare portrays the madness as originating from King Hamlet and Polonius, the two overbearing fathers within the story. The two fathers can be seen as the catalysts for their children’s madness, whether the madness be feigned or not. Ophelia and Hamlet have in them residing a love that they must hold at bay due to the requests by their separate fathers; one father sends his child on a mission of vengeance that leaves no time for love and the other father fears for his child’s reputation so requests that they stay away from their beloved. This love deprivation acts as only one example for the causes of the tragic events taking place thus leading to this conclusion: these fathers bring about madness, which in return secretes tragedy from its wake, rendering every tragic act that takes place on the actions and decisions of King Hamlet and Polonius.
The interesting contrast between Ophelia’s and Prince Hamlet’s madness comes from Shakespeare’s ability in presenting the mental illness. Shakespeare uses Prince Hamlet’s ambiguous characterization to drive the plot of Hamlet; while Shakespeare clearly divulges to Ophelia’s being mad, at the hands of King Hamlet and Polonius, he presents Prince Hamlet’s characterization with more subtlety as to whether Hamlet only feigns his entire madness or actually succumbs to to a mental breakdown.
Shakespeare’s exploration of madness begins with Ophelia’s forced repression of love. According to Robert Burton, “Ophelia suffers from hysteria, a malady often ascribed to upper class women who bide their time in their fathers’ homes while awaiting fulfillment of their culturally mandated roles ...
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...long. When his repression reached its boiling point Hamlet lost control which indicates the very madness he feigns as something more real.
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One of the most emotional and moving scenes in William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet is in Act III, Scene I lines 90-155 in which the title character becomes somewhat abusive toward his once loved girlfriend Ophelia. It is interesting to examine the possible motives behind Hamlet's blatant harshness in this "Get the to a nunnery" scene toward the easily manipulated and mild mannered girl. While watching Kenneth Branagh and Mel Gibson's film adaptations of the play, the audience may recognize two possibilities of the many that may exist which may explain the Prince's contemptible behavior; Kenneth Branaugh seems to suggest that this display of animosity will help the troubled man convince his enemies that he is in fact demented, whereas the Mel Gibson work may infer that Hamlet's repressed anger toward his mother causes him to "vent" his frustrations upon Ophelia, the other female of importance in his life.
The play Hamlet is known for its eccentric plot and warped sense of reality as well as its fanatical characters. Hamlet himself created all the drama in the play with his pretend “madness” and his emotional outbursts, which lead to the destruction of almost all of the characters in the play. The most notable self destruction came from Ophelia, Hamlet’s object of affection. During the play, Ophelia had undergone a lot of stress which lead her character to metamorphous.
Throughout William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet, Hamlet undergoes a transformation from sane to insane while fighting madness to avenge his father’s death. The material that Shakespeare appropriated in writing Hamlet is the story of a Danish prince whose uncle murders the prince’s father, marries his mother, and claims the throne. The prince pretends to be feeble-minded to throw his uncle off guard, then manages to kill his uncle in revenge. Shakespeare changed the emphasis of this story entirely, making his Hamlet a philosophically minded prince who delays taking action because his knowledge of his uncle’s crime is so uncertain.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Prince Hamlet may act like he is "mad north-northwest", but it is his lover, Ophelia, who is truly mad. Both lose their fathers at the hands of others and both have loved ones that seem to have turned against them. Unlike Hamlet, who has revenge, Ophelia ends up having nothing to hold onto. Her sanity breaks and sends her into a downward spiral, while Hamlet's remains intact. In this paper, I will show that it is the manipulation by and loss of the two men Ophelia loved most-Hamlet and her father, Polonius-which leads to her madness.
Hamlet, Ophelia’s lover, accidentally kills her father and “confesses” he never loved her, Hamlet toys with Ophelia's emotions intentionally and unintentionally to solidify his madness. Even though she was the who initiated the “breakup”, her sorrows of the relationship are much more public than Hamlets. Hamlet’s madness scares Ophelia away which he used as a defense mechanism to not be hurt anymore. His madness looks as though he had been "loosed out of hell to speak of horrors" (2.1.83-84) and she "truly [did] fear it"(2.1. 86). His insanity and rudeness suffocated any love she had for him. She admits that their "their perfume [has been] lost" (3.1. 99). This helped Hamlet solidify his insanity by cutting ties with the ones he loves, and having them tell others he is mad. This comes with the cost of discontinuing his relationships: especially with Ophelia. Both have hinted around in the text of an intimate affair. This makes the emotions and breakup even more difficult for both of them. Their relationship was a love, not an innocent crush or courtship. Poor Ophelia initially thought she caused Hamlet's madness due to the abrupt ending of their affair. But because of her naivety, she lacks to see his other internal struggles. Ophelia’s trust in Hamlet left her heartbroken. Hamlet’s agenda of or getting justice for his father occupied his mind more than Ophelia did. Which left her feeling
Perhaps Hamlet truly is sane and has little fits of hysteria as the world seems to stack up against him. His anger and feelings of betrayal overload to explosive outbursts that can be interpreted as real madness. Upon learning that Ophelia has allied herself with Polonius and Claudius, he loses his head and has an incredibly dramatic episode. He is initially honest and open with Ophelia, but his mood quickly changes when he learns they are being spied on. He question Ophelia’s motives by asking whether she is honest and fair. He...
Throughout the play the entire cast of characters feel the wrath of Hamlet's madness. It effects everyone. His madness drives the play. It brings characters in while cutting some out and even changes characters like Ophelia. After Hamlet kills Polonius, Ophelia goes insane herself.
At first, Hamlet is successful, and society is convinced Ophelia is the reason for his madness, thus granting Hamlet more time to plot Claudius’s murder. This is achieved in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be speech” [3,1,57] when Claudius and Polonius spy on the conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia. During the Act, Ophelia displays traits of dishonesty and Hamlet uses this to his benefit and appears to go insane to convince Ophelia, Claudius and Polonius that Ophelia is responsible for his madness. Hamlet insists his madness is an “antic disposition” [1,5,179] and that “Thou this be madness, yet there is method in it”. [2,2,204] In the play, Hamlet uses his “antic disposition” [1,5,179] to refuse Ophelia’s affections, which is powerfully portrayed when he exclaims to her “get thee to a nunnery.” [3,1,138] By denying Ophelia’s love, Hamlet’s power in the relationship is effectively demonstrated, and it is shown he is in control of their relationship. In addition, this is reflected in Ophelia’s self-destruction, as she has no purpose to live a life without Hamlet or a man. Overall, Hamlet is successful in using his power over Ophelia for the sake of his
The volume of works that Shakespeare wrote over the course of his lifetime was extensive. In that volume are stories that have influenced so many stories written later, stories that have influenced how many define things like love. Romeo and Juliet is perhaps his best-known work and defined western civilization's concept of love for generations. While slightly lesser known, Hamlet has had much the same degree of impact. This revenge tragedy truly defines the genre and opens up dialogues to many things, like madness. It is often the madness of Hamlet that is delved into but Ophelia too went mad in the end. While her father's murder at the hands of Hamlet undeniably contributed to her suicide, it was not the sole cause. Ophelia was driven to suicide by the way the men in her life treated her.
One of the central theme’s throughout Shakespeare’s Hamlet is the question of madness versus sanity. From the first few scenes of the play, one cannot help but question the way that various character’s throughout the play think and behave. In line with Sigmund Freud’s ideas concerning the Id, Ego, and Superego, we see that various characters’ behaviors are clearly defined by these distinct personality structures although not always in the way they are traditionally expected to. Gertrude and Hamlet both find themselves eventually losing control of their lives as they all give way to the Id portion of their personality. It is this downfall that will continually come across as the madness so central and destructive throughout the course of the play.
Hamlet and Lear are the only two of Shakespeare’s tragedies with double plots. [. . .] The story of Polonius’s family works analogously in Hamlet. Each member of the family is a fairly ordinary person who serves as a foil to some aspect of Hamlet’s extraordinary cunning and discipline. Polonius imagines himself a regular Machiavel, an expert at using indirections to find directions out, but compared to Hamlet he is what the prince calls him, a great baby. Ophelia, unable to control her grief, lapses into madness and a muddy death, reminding us that it is one of Hamlet’s achievements that he does not go mad but only plays at insanity to disguise his true strength. And Laertes, of course, goes mad in a different fashion and becomes the model of the kind of revenger that Hamlet so disdains. (125)
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s most famous work of tragedy. Throughout the play the title character, Hamlet, tends to seek revenge for his father’s death. Shakespeare achieved his work in Hamlet through his brilliant depiction of the hero’s struggle with two opposing forces that hunt Hamlet throughout the play: moral integrity and the need to avenge his father’s murder. When Hamlet sets his mind to revenge his fathers’ death, he is faced with many challenges that delay him from committing murder to his uncle Claudius, who killed Hamlets’ father, the former king. During this delay, he harms others with his actions by acting irrationally, threatening Gertrude, his mother, and by killing Polonius which led into the madness and death of Ophelia. Hamlet ends up deceiving everyone around him, and also himself, by putting on a mask of insanity. In spite of the fact that Hamlet attempts to act morally in order to kill his uncle, he delays his revenge of his fathers’ death, harming others by his irritating actions. Despite Hamlets’ decisive character, he comes to a point where he realizes his tragic limits.
Melancholy, grief, and madness pervade Shakespeare's great tragedy, Hamlet. The emotional maladies presented within Hamlet, not only allow the audience to sympathize with prince Hamlet, but also with the tragic lady Ophelia as well. It is Ophelia who suffers at her lover's discretion because of decisions she was obligated to make on behalf of her weak societal position.
The tragedy of Hamlet by William Shakespeare is about Hamlet going insane and reveals his madness through his actions and dialogue. Hamlet remains one of the most discussed literary characters of all time. This is most likely due to the complex nature of Hamlet as a character. In one scene, Hamlet appears happy, and then he is angry in another and melancholy in the next. Hamlet’s madness is a result of his father’s death which was supposedly by the hands of his uncle, Claudius. He has also discovered that this same uncle is marrying his mom. It is expected that Hamlet would be suffering from some emotional issues as result of these catastrophes. Shakespeare uses vivid language, metaphors, and imagery to highlight how Hamlet’s madness influences several important aspects of his life including his relationships and the way he presents himself.
The madness of each individual is not realistic, but the idea that death, grievance, and revenge can drive someone to do things that seem to be mad or make them do things out of their nature. Overall, we see that the theme of madness has a significant impact on the conflicts and overall development of the play as well as the characters themselves and is successfully conveyed. Shakespeare developed a theme that tied the many important emotions and ideas together to make the play what it is. He used Ophelia’s grief and love, Hamlet’s wit and ruminative nature to convey a theme that could be related to more than the one character, and tie all of the conflicts and complications down to one cause.