Hamlet

Is Hamlet Mad?

\"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a

handsaw\" (II.ii.369-370). This is a classic example of the \"wild and whirling words\"

(I.v.134) with which Hamlet hopes will persuade people to believe that he is mad. These

words, however, prove that beneath his \"antic disposition,\" (I.V.172). Hamlet is sane.

Under his strange choice of imagery involving points of the compass, the weather, and

hunting birds, he is announcing that he is calculatedly choosing the times when to appear

mad. Hamlet is saying that he knows a hunting hawk from a hunted \"handsaw\" or heron,

in other words, that, very far form being mad, he is perfectly capable of recognizing his

enemies. Hamlet\'s madness was faked for a purpose. He warned his friends he intended to

fake madness, but Gertrude as well as Claudius saw through it, and even the slightly

dull-witted Polonius was suspicious. His public face is one of insanity but, in his private

moments of soliloquy, through his confidences to Horatio, and in his careful plans of

action, we see that his madness is assumed.

After the Ghost\'s first appearance to Hamlet, Hamlet decides that when he finds it

suitable or to his advantage, he will put on a mask of madness so to speak. He confides to

Horatio that when he finds the occasion appropriate, he will \"put an antic disposition on\"

(I.v.172). This strategy gives Hamlet a chance to find proof of Claudius\'s guilt and to

contemplate his revenge tactic. Although he has sworn to avenge his father\'s murder, he is

not sure of the Ghost\'s origins: \"The spirit that I have seen / May be the devil\"

(II.ii.584-585). He uses his apparent madness as a delaying tactic to buy time in which to

discover whether the Ghost\'s tale of murder is true and to decide how to handle the

situation. At the same time, he wants to appear unthreatening and harmless so that people

will divulge information to him, much in the same way that an adult will talk about an

important secret in the presence of a young child. To convince everyone of his madness,

Hamlet spends many hours walking back and forth alone in the lobby, speaking those

\"wild and whirling words\" (I.V. 134) which make little sense on the surface but in fact

carry a meaningful subtext.

When asked if he recognizes Polonius, Hamlet promptly replies, \"Excellent well;

you are a fishmonger\" (II.ii.174). Although the response seems crazy since a fish-seller

would look completely unlike the expensively dressed lord Polonius, Hamlet is actually

criticizing Polonius for his handling of Ophelia, since \"fishmonger\" is Elizabethan slang for

\"pimp.\" He plays mind-games with Polonius, getting him in crazy talk to agree first that a

cloud looks like a camel, then a weasel and finally a whale, and in a very sane aside, he

then comments that \"they fool me to the top of my bent\" (III.ii.369). Although he appears

to have lost touch with reality, he keeps reminding us that he is not at all \"far gone, far

gone\" (II.ii.189) as Polonius claims, but is in fact very much in command of himself and

the situation. With his ranting and ravings and his seemingly useless pacing of the lobby,

Hamlet manages to appear quite mad. The naпve and trusting Ophelia believes in and is

devastated by what she sees as his downfall. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also fully

convinced. They are Hamlet\'s equals in age but are far inferior in intellect and therefore

don\'t understand that he is faking.

However, although Hamlet manages to convince these simple friends and Ophelia

of his insanity, other characters in the play such as Claudius, Gertrude and even Polonius

eventually see through his behavior. Claudius is constantly on his guard because of his

guilty conscience and he therefore recognizes that Hamlet is faking. The king is suspicious

of Hamlet from the very beginning. He denies Hamlet permission to return to university so

that he can keep an eye on him close by. When Hamlet starts acting strangely, Claudius

gets all the more suspicious and sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on him. Their

instructions are to discover why Hamlet is pretending to be mad: \" And can you, by no

drift of circumstance, / Get from him why he puts on this confusion, / Grating so harshly

all his days of quiet / With turbulent and dangerous lunacy\" (III.i.1-4). The reason

Claudius is so reluctant to believe that Ophelia\'s rejection has caused Hamlet\'s lunacy is

that he doesn\'t believe in his madness at all.

When Claudius realizes through the play-within-the-play that Hamlet knows the

truth about his father\'s death, he immediately sends him away to England. The prevailing

piece of