However, in the case of Ophelia, Shakespeare presents her form of madness as something that is real and tangible. She has a reason to be mad; her father is “dead and gone.” Shakespeare enforces the idea that Ophelia really is mad by having her enter in Act 4 Scene 5 “distracted” and singing a song about the death of her father. Ophelia’s madness is supported by what the gentleman says to Gertrude at the beginning of Act 4 Scene 5 about Ophelia’s state of mind; that she “winks and nods and gestures” and that “her speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection”. Even Laertes is appalled by Ophelia’s madness and wonders “is’t possible a young maid’s wits should be as mortal as an old man’s life?” Ophelia’s actions and what she says causes those around her to doubt her sanity and believe that she really is mad.
There are many words that are used by the main characters to describe Hamlet’s madness. He describes it as his “antic disposition” whereas Polonius calls it “lunacy” and Claudius calls it “distemper” and a “transformation”. Although everyone perceives Hamlet as mad, Polonius and Claudius at one point doubted that Hamlet in actual fact was indeed mad. Claudius had Rosencrantz and Guildenstern spy on Hamlet, whilst when Polonius spoke to Hamlet he thought that “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t”. This shows that madness within Hamlet is not really madness at all, but is just an act; a performance on Hamlet’s part. Shakespeare adds this doubt to Hamlet’s madness whereas in Ophelia’s case there is no doubt about her state of mind to those around her.
It is believed that mad people have a tendency to have suicidal feelings. In Hamlet’s first soliloquy, he desires that his “flesh would melt” and would have killed himself had not “his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter”. In his first soliloquy, he says “to be or not to be, that is the question”-in this line, Hamlet wonders whether or not to commit suicide. These suicidal feelings beg the question “had Hamlet actually gone mad?” I, like many others believe that Hamlet was not mad, as even though he displayed suicidal thoughts, he did not carry those thoughts out, signifying a sane state of mind.
Ophelia however ended up committing suicide by drowning herself in a lake while “she chanted snatches of old lauds as one incapable of her own distress”. This seems to indicate how fragile her state of mind actually was and how she was driven to madness by her father’s death and Hamlet’s actions. The gravediggers in Act 5 Scene 1 thought that Ophelia committed suicide and “if she had not been a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o’ Christian burial” as suicide is considered as an unholy crime. Shakespeare seems to want to show us that Ophelia really was mad by having her act, speak and behave in a way that was not seen as ‘normal’ to Elizabethan society as well as society today.
It also seems that Shakespeare, maybe unwittingly, shows us that women were weak-minded individuals whereas men were the stronger sex, mentally as well as physically. Even though Hamlet is knocked with strong emotional surprises, such as finding out that his stepfather killed his father, Claudius, Hamlet still remains strong in public. This is a very sharp contrast to how Ophelia behaved when she suffered acute trauma due to the sudden death of her father. Whilst Hamlet remains strong, Ophelia transcends towards madness as her fragile state of mind had shattered. Maybe, this was the way Shakespeare viewed both sexes or maybe those were the views of Elizabethan society as a whole.
Shakespeare presents Hamlet’s “antic disposition” as something very different to how Ophelia’s madness is presented to us. Shakespeare presents Hamlet as a strong character who has the ability to deal with emotional trauma, whereas Ophelia was portrayed as weak and symbolised what Hamlet once remarked: “Frailty, thy name is woman”. Shakespeare presents Hamlet and Ophelia in contrasting ways to show us the differences between an “antic disposition” and actual madness. By using these contrasts, Shakespeare seems to be reflecting on the attitudes and views of Elizabethan society and also seems to be offering us his definition of madness.
