I essentially am not in madness, but mad in craft (III.iv) [1]
‘Is Hamlet mad? Ever? Even when he thinks he isn't?’
These are the moments I live for. Interesting conversations with interesting, interested students. Questions that aren’t easy to answer without going away and thinking about it. Thanks for asking, M - here’s my response.
It depends.
Of course it does, which is why English is the best subject of all, and why, for A Level students, context [AO3] is such a key part of their studies, and why being asked for your opinion [AO1] is so gloriously liberating - demanding you to come up with your own answer to the question.
Dictionary Corner
There are two contexts (both alike in dignity?) at play here: the context of when a text was written, but also when it is received or consumed (ie, how we feel about it now). In some ways the most important test begins with definitions, and how they shift over time. This is why decent dictionaries count, people. [A quick side note: in Shakespeare’s era, a ‘punk’ was a prostitute. Later it was associated with homosexuality. Look away, Sid Vicious and Johnny Rotten fans].
To 16th century ‘mad’, then, courtesy of oed.com. [2]
2. c1300– Of a person, action, disposition, etc.: uncontrolled by reason or judgement; foolish, unwise.
3.a. c1330– Of a person: displaying thinking or behaviour considered to be irrational, inappropriate, or dissociated from reality; spec. displaying such thinking or behaviour as a symptom of serious mental illness.
My preference is a blend of definition 2 - a lack of self-control, married with definition 3 - a dissociation from reality.
In Shakespeare, poetic metre is important. I spend large amounts of time explaining how communication is a balance between what the intended message is and how it is delivered. Hamlet (the character - so substitute ‘Shakespeare’s intention) fails test 1 whilst passing test 2. He clearly stays in control but displays ‘madness’ when it suits him (this is all AO2) ...
has the presence of mind to swear Horatio and his fellows to silence once told about his father’s murder in Act1 Sc4;
Speaks in prose all through Act2 Sc2 until the players, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and Polonius have disappeared, and jumps back into Blank Verse (iambic pentameter) for his ‘rogue and peasant slave’ soliloquy;
Manages to deliver the famous ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy in Blank Verse, but in the same scene, descend into Prose for his ‘get thee to a nunnery’ rant at Ophelia (Act 3 Sc1);
Ditto his use of Blank Verse when is on the point of killing Claudius in Act 3 Sc3;
And finally, his various riddling, quibbling exchanges with Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and, of course Polonius, throughout;
In this reading, David Tennant’s performance in Gregory Doran’s production feels the most believable I have seen. [3] Hamlet is an intelligent, calculating, code-switching prince who is fully aware of a panoptic Elsinore where he is seldom alone on stage, and when he is, our view is often mediated via CCTV. In fact, we might say that his judgement is pretty good:
‘The awareness is all’ … and Hamlet is too ‘aware’ of what he is doing to be ‘mad’ ...
So, I'm going to call BS on our Prince when he tries to make his apologies to Laertes in Act V, sc2:
What I have done
That might your nature, honour, and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet.
… which leads me to one of the most interesting and harshest quotations I have read about the Dane:
‘Rubbernecking the chaos and wreckage of the world that surround him while chattering and punning endlessly, Hamlet finally finds himself fatally struck and strikes out impetuously, asking Horatio to sing him a lullaby. What is so heroic about Hamlet’s disgust? Do we even like him?’ [4]
I’m not sure I do!
Madder than Hamlet
Anyway, let’s apply the same tests to other texts, and find characters who are ‘madder than Hamlet’ because they lose their grip on ‘reality’ and lose control of their actions - without any spoilers, if possible!
Patrick Bateman in American Psycho: enough with the recent glorification of the protagonist in Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel. Most of Bateman’s ‘fans’ will have seen the film, which I really enjoyed, to be fair. But not read the book. My sense from speaking to some of them is that they entirely miss the point about his descent into insanity, let alone how grinding the graphic detail in the novel becomes. Patrick Bateman is NOT a suitable role model, people
Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre (1847): by the time we are presented with Bertha - the classic ‘madwoman in the closet’ - Charlotte Brontë has reduced her to a sub-human figure, snarling, biting, and scratching at the world, and looking to bring it all down in flames on her rare escapes. I’m looking forward to interrogating Jean Rhys’s ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ with my A Level tutees this year, to explore if she was actually mad before she married Rochester, or whether some more sinister patriarchal attitude to headstrong women is at play …
King Lear (1606) is, for me, the most ‘insane’ Shakespearean character. Heartbreakingly so. In the 21st century we are keen to diagnose the whole gamut of poor mental health, and I am not an expert. The closest I will venture is to describe a few symptoms - bouts of lucidity are interrupted by irrational decision-making, over-blown emotions, and perhaps above all, narcissism
Frank, in The Wasp Factory (1984) this novel scarred me. Iain Banks presents us with a character who, partly aided by geographical isolation, is able to construct their own reality, utterly alien (I use the word deliberately given Banks’ brilliant Science Fiction novels) to society - not least at the time the book was written
With lots of other candidates in the (secure) wings, my final pick is the unnamed narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ (1892). This short story was one of my degree texts - one a first reading I was relatively unimpressed, but the second time I read it, I honestly still remember the goosebumps I got. This pick is closely related to Bertha Mason. One of my (myriad) interests is the effects of loneliness and social/sensory deprivation on an individual, and Gilman explores this expertly whilst highlighting and critiquing the treatment of women in a male-dominated world.
As I’ve said, there are quite a few literary characters I think might be ‘madder than Hamlet’. But which do YOU think should be in the top 5 … ?
REFERENCES:
[1] All Shakespeare quotations taken from: www.opensourceshakespeare.org
[3] William Shakespeare, Hamlet (ed. Gregory Doran, BBC, 2009)
[4] George Hegel in Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, The Hamlet Doctrine (Verso Books, 2013)
Comments