Activity 1.7

Hamlets transformation into a madman is one that at first sight seems to be very excessive yet this is due to the fact that Hamlet is simply a good actor (He even gives a speech on how to be a good actor which shows the extent of his acting ability). His transformation is one that is more external, this meaning that it was more of a physical madness more than anything. Mentally, Hamlet remained slightly the same character throughout the play, there were smaller alterations seen in his mental state than in his physical form. I actually seem to have gained respect for Hamlet as the play progressed because he used his logic against everyone. He put on a show and everyone believed he was simply mad, outrageous, and ludicrous!
Hamlet utilized many basic human activities as his main source for showing his madness. First of all, his speech greatly changed throughout the play. He went from being a well spoken, good natured man into someone who could be clinically diagnosed as being insane. He demonstrates this in one scene when he is taking to his mother and he witnesses his father’s ghost. The severity of the description given by Hamlet of the ghost he see’s is simply stunning:
On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares!
His form and cause conjoined, preaching to stones,
Would make them capable. –Do not look upon me,
Lest with this piteous action you convert
My stern effects. Then what I have to do
Will want true color; tears perchance for blood.
(Act 3, scene iv, 126-131)

Once again, Hamlet is simply using his logic and education to make everyone believe he is crazy. Secondly, his actions are also a good reflection of his supposed ‘madness’. He kills Polonius simply out of fright. It’s not like Hamlet murdering Polonius was pre-meditated, but Hamlet still used this as an opportunity for him to look mad. He used the body as a kind of focus point when talking to Claudius. Claudius kept asking Hamlet where he put the body but Hamlet would simply mock him, making him all the more look crazy as he is laughing at death. Furthermore, Hamlets thoughts can also be looked at as a reflection of his transformation into madness. As the play progresses his soliloquy’s become more and more random, sinister and vivid, this sparking madness all around him. He constantly questions what mankind really is, this provoking thought to be put into how mad Hamlet actually is. Hamlets appearance also changed accordingly. At the beginning of the play, he simply looked like a man who was grieving the death of his father:
Good Hamlet, cast thy knighted color off,
And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.
( Act 1, scene ii, 68-70
As the play progresses, the people around Hamlet begin to believe that he has gone completely mad. There is a transformation in the way people perceive Hamlet; this being what Hamlet wants everyone to believe.
heavy deed!
It had been so with us, had we been there.
His liberty is full of threats to all,
To you yourself, to us, to everyone.
Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answered?
It will be laid to us whose providence
Should have kept short, restrained, and out of haunt
This mad young man.
(Act 4, scene i, 12-19)

This is the king’s impression on what Hamlet has turned into. It is a very dark and vile description of a man who appears to be insane (although not at all). Hamlets feelings are also indicators that he had been theoretically transformed into a madman. At the beginning hatred was something Hamlet was not quite accustomed to. As the play went on, Hamlet and hatred soon became best friends. Hamlet often acknowledged his hatred towards his uncle and it would remain this way until the death of this uncle. All in all, Hamlets intents at becoming a madman proved successful.
The people around Hamlet were good indications that Hamlet was successful in becoming a madman. His mother didn’t want to believe that Hamlet had gone mad. She simply believed that he was mourning the death of this father and this was his own way of doing so. Further on in the play, she also acknowledges the fact that Hamlet’s madness may be derived from her re-marrying very quickly after her husband’s death, especially to her deceased husband’s brother. Claudius believes that Hamlet has become completely mad and will not believe otherwise. Hamlet is stirring up some trouble in paradise and Claudius doesn’t like this so he plots to kill Hamlet. It is hard to determine whether or not Ophelia actually believed Hamlet was mad because she herself is mad. It seems as if she took Hamlets madness, combined it with the grieving process she is going through over her father and simply went crazy herself. Horatio is the seemingly the only one who is actually in on Hamlet’s transformation into a madman. Hamlet uses Horatio as his side kick in the whole plot and Horatio goes along with this and explains it indirectly to everyone at the end of the play. Even Hamlet’s supposed best friends: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern aren’t even aware of Hamlet being crazy. They act as henchmen for the king and they themselves end up dying because of Hamlet. Could a madman really devise an ingenious plan to put two people who were burdened with the task of killing him, to death? I think not!