Madness in Hamlet Flashcards
(24 cards)
MADNESS AS A PERFORMANCE VS REALITY:
Madness in Hamlet blurs the boundary between performance and reality, destabilising truth.
Shakespeare presents madness as both a performance and a psychological descent, especially through Hamlet, who famously “puts on an antic disposition.” His madness initially seems controlled, a strategic guise to investigate Claudius. However, as the play progresses, the line between performance and reality fractures. Hamlet begins to speak in riddles, behave violently, and alienate those close to him — suggesting a collapse of self. Ophelia, by contrast, suffers “real” madness following her father’s murder and Hamlet’s rejection. Through their contrasts, Shakespeare explores how madness becomes a mirror for truth, a way to reveal what cannot be openly said. Techniques like dramatic irony, metatheatre, and doubling (between Hamlet and Ophelia) reinforce how madness functions as a liminal space between artifice and authenticity.
“I essentially am not in madness, / But mad in craft.” (3.4)
→ Paradox: Hamlet claims his madness is deliberate, suggesting control. But the phrase “essentially” implies inner turmoil — hinting that the mask may be slipping. This blurs the line between sanity and insanity, performance and truth.
“To put an antic disposition on.” (1.5)
→ Meta-theatrical language: “Put on” evokes acting ( a notion of pretense) , suggesting Hamlet scripts his madness. His “antic disposition” is a role he consciously adopts, but its emotional consequences are real.
CRITIC:
Simon Palfrey: “Madness is a logic of its own.”
→ Suggests madness in the play doesn’t fit neat categories — it’s not a binary of sane/insane. Instead, it operates as its own coherent mode of behaviour, disrupting conventional logic and truth.
CRITIC:
Elaine Showalter (on Ophelia): Her madness is “a product of male oppression,” but also a form of expression.
→ Even “real” madness can contain agency — women like Ophelia may not be performing like Hamlet, but their breakdowns still speak volumes.
PRODUCTION : Robert Icke (2017):
- Hamlet whispers and mutters, conveying internal psychosis over theatrical exaggeration — a performance that feels too real.
- CCTV surveillance blurs boundaries between public/private, scripted/spontaneous — the audience becomes complicit in watching madness as spectacle.
MADNESS REFLECTS POLITICAL DECAY:
Madness becomes a mirror for Denmark’s political and moral disintegration — a personal illness becomes symbolic decay.
Madness becomes a metaphor for Denmark’s moral and political corruption.
In Hamlet, individual madness is never merely personal. Hamlet’s descent into erratic behaviour mirrors the broader moral rot within Elsinore. His madness acts as a symptom of the diseased body politic, as foretold by Marcellus’ line, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Claudius’ anxious surveillance of Hamlet (“Madness in great ones must not unwatched go”) shows how madness threatens the stability of a corrupt regime. Shakespeare uses symbolic language (rot, disease, poison) to link the mental disorder of individuals to national disorder, suggesting that madness is not simply internal but reflects societal corruption. Through Hamlet’s madness, Shakespeare critiques the loss of moral legitimacy in leadership and suggests that chaos within the self reflects chaos in the state.
“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” (1.4)
→ Metaphor of decay: Suggests systemic corruption. Madness, especially Hamlet’s, can be read as a symptom of this rot — a personal breakdown mirroring national breakdown.
“This is the very coinage of your brain.” (3.4)
→ Gertrude dismisses Hamlet’s ghostly vision as mental delusion. But this rejection of supernatural truth shows how madness allows truths to be ignored or denied in political systems.
CRITIC :
A.C. Bradley: Hamlet’s “noble nature unbalanced by grief” mirrors the disorder of the state.
→ He links Hamlet’s mental deterioration with the moral decline of the court — both are nobility undone by corruption.
PRODUCTION : Gregory Doran (RSC, 2009):
Cold, sterile lighting evokes clinical, paranoid state control.
Hamlet’s gestures become more erratic as Claudius’ regime tightens, linking personal collapse to political threat.
MADNESS AND GENDER
Madness is gendered — men use it strategically; women are pathologised and aestheticised.
“Her speech is nothing, / Yet… doth move / The hearers to collection.” (4.5)
→ Oxymoron: Ophelia’s words are deemed meaningless, but they provoke deep emotional response. Madness is both dismissed and revealing — a feminine paradox.
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.” (4.5)
→ Symbolism through flowers: Ophelia uses botanical language to encode grief and betrayal, suggesting a covert mode of truth-telling unavailable in rational speech.
CRITICS
Elaine Showalter: Ophelia’s madness is “the female malady” — a historical term for hysteria.
→ Suggests that female emotion is medicalised and silenced, yet her breakdown also becomes a cultural emblem of feminine suffering.
Janet Adelman: Her madness is born of abandonment — both by Hamlet and her father.
→ Highlights the psychological damage of male control, framing madness as a trauma response rather than illness.
Branagh (1996):
Straitjacket + glass barrier = institutionalisation of female grief, literalizing her silencing.
Icke (2017):
Ophelia’s wig removal = symbolic shedding of performed femininity, a raw exposure of self beneath social roles.
MADNESS AS AN EXPRESSION OF TRUTH
Madness channels forbidden truths — a subversive language for trauma and resistance.
“There’s fennel for you, and columbines.” (4.5)
→ Allegorical floral symbolism: Ophelia accuses Claudius and Gertrude of infidelity, betrayal, and moral decay — using madness as coded speech.
“Words, words, words.” (2.2)
→ Hamlet’s tricolon of repetition mocks the emptiness of language. His madness allows him to undermine language itself while still communicating subtext.
