The Theme of Madness in Shakespeare's Hamlet

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is still regarded as one of the greatest works in his rich oeuvre. However, what I really intend to examine today is a recurring theme in Shakespeare’s plays: madness and the portrayal of it. Madness is a central and compelling theme in his plays, particularly Hamlet, in which we explore the human psyche, morality, and the line between reason and madness. Although theme affects nearly every character in the play, two characters in particular—Hamlet and Ophelia— embody the emotional and psychological spectrum of madness in strikingly different ways.

Hamlet’s sanity is perhaps the most debated element of the play. Following his father’s death and his encounter with the ghost, Hamlet learns the regicide committed by his uncle Claudius, who has since become the king afterwards. Yet, Hamlet’s erratic behaviour might be a response to the king’s murder and his mother Gertrude’s later marriage to his uncle.

Here, as before, never, so help you mercy,

How strange or odd some’er I bear myself

(As I perchance hereafter shall think meet

To put an antic disposition on)

He is telling his plan about behaving as a madman to Horatio. This suggests, at least initially, that his madness is a conscious performance and a mask to uncover his true intentions, which is to bring justice for his father. He even uses riddles to provoke people around him, like the time when he sarcastically calls a ‘fishmonger’ to Polonius. However, as the play progresses the thin line between sanity and madness blurs, and there are moments when he cannot control his impulses, such as when he kills Polonius.

As the play progresses, Hamlet’s ambiguous madness becomes not just a strategic disguise but also a mental struggle. His soliloquies capture his thoughts and his mind grew darker, as he was also struggling with the questions of existence, mortality, and justice. It is not only the death of his father, but the very nature of world and justice.

To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause—there's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,

The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action.

Still, Ophelia’s gradual madness is a tragic form of expression and genuine rather than a conscious act like Hamlet’s. Her sanity is often associated with female fragility and the vulnerability of the ‘other sex’. Silenced by his father and brother and cruelly rejected by her lover, Hamlet, Ophelia becomes a tragic emblem of innocence. The contrast between the genders, Hamlet and Ophelia, exposes the dynamics of power in Hamlet. Deprived from the ability to voice her own words and feelings and the death of her father by Hamlet, Ophelia perhaps has become the victim of an inevitable death.

Both Hamlet and Ophelia illustrate how emotional trauma, societal pressure, and moral disintegration can lead to madness, although the portrayal of characters differs profoundly. In the end, Shakespeare does not merely depict madness as illness, but as a powerful narrative tool that reveals the nature of human and power.