Hamlet's Madness
 

“HAMLET’S MADNESS”
THE problem of madness is perhaps the most maddening problem in Hamlet.Before the play begins Hamlet is clearly a sensitive and idealistic young man.He is a scholar, a philosopher and a poet too.He is a noble man who conceives the finest thoughts and has a high intellectual quality.We get a vivid picture of Hamlet as he was in the words of Ophelia:

“The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion, and the mould of form,
Th’ observed of all observes”

This shows that Hamlet was once a master of his own self and had full command over his mind and sense.But we do not see the normal Hamlet in the course of the play, just as we do not see the normal Macbeth in the course of that tragedy.After his mother’s hasty marriage and the Ghost’s revelation, Hamlet’s “noble and most sovereign reason” is all out of tune and harsh.
Some critics are of the opinion that under the pressure of these two circumstances____his mother’s hasty marriage ,and the Ghost’s revelation___ Hamlet lose his reason.We agree with “Deighton” when he says:

“In every single instance in which Hamlet’s madness is manifested , he has good
reason for assuming that madness: while, on the other hand , whenever there was no need to hoodwink anyone, his thought, language and action, bear no resemblance to
unsoundness of intellect”

He talks rationally and shows great intellectual power in his conversations with Horatio.
He receives the players with kind courtsy and his refinement of behaviour towards them shows that he is not mad.
In the first act we are told by Hamlet himself that he is going to feign madness to carry out his entrusted task of avenging his father’s death successfully.

“As parlance hereafter shall think meet,
To put an antic disposition on………..”

In his talk with Polonius, where he calls him a “ fishmonger” and insults him further with satirical remarks, Polonius observes:

“Though this be madness,
yet there is method in it”

However, as he is fool he is deceived by Hamlet’s feigned madness and he comments:

“How pregnant sometimes his replies aare:
A happiness that often madness hits on,
Which reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of “

Then there is Claudius, the shrewd man, who suspects the authenticity of Hamlet’s madness. When Polonius reveals the very ecstasy of love’ as the cause of his madness, Claudius after observing Hamlet says:

Love? His affections do not that way tend;
Nor what he shake, though it lack’d from a little,
Was not like madness.”

So Claudius strongly suspects, as we all do, that Hamlet’s madness is feigned and not real.The next to suspect the real nature of his madness is his own school fellows Guildenstern and Rosencrantz.Guildenstern finds crafty madness in him and Hamlet himself reveals the truth to them:

“I am but mad north-north west:
when the wind is sourthely I know a hawk from a hand saw”

Hamlet enacts the ‘Mousetrape’ play to confirm Claudius’ guolt.This does not sound like a man’s action but that of normal man.Only a man of wisdom could plan everything systematically and arrive at the expected conclusion.Granville Barker points out that:

“When he is alone, we have the truth of him , but it is his madness which
is on public exhibition”

Hamlet loved Ophelia before the Ghost’s revelation of his father’s murder. In his rebellion against nature and his want to escape the burden of life, he rejects Ophelia and tells her to go to nunnery.When he learns that Ophelia has met with a tragic death, his true feelings come to life and provoked by Lertes’ action,too helps into her grave and admits his love.So these incidents cannot account for his madness being real.

Conclusion:
To solve this controversy one shall have to restore toBradley who goes to the root of the matter and says that:
"Hamlet is not mad , he is fully responsible for his actions.But he suffers from melancholia
a pathological state which may develop into lunacy.His melancholy accounts for his nervous excitability, his longing for death, his irresolution and delay”