Hamlet and a Short History of Madness
…untangling the social and physiological aspects of mental illness
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
Akira Kurosawa
Hamlet is probably the most famous character in the history of tragedy. After his father’s death and his mother’s hasty marriage to his uncle, he is, understandably, stricken with grief. But when he encounters his father’s ghost and finds out that his uncle killed his father, his grief turns into something more intense.
Hamlet turns mad.
A big part of the timeless appeal of Shakespeare’s play lies in the fact that we never quite know if Hamlet is “really” mad, or if he only pretends to be.
HAMLET
Excellent well. You are a fishmonger.
POLONIUS
Not I, my lord.
HAMLET
Then I would you were so honest a man.
While Hamlet seems mad, he is also the most authentic, relatable person in the entire play, especially during his soliloquies. His “To be or not to be” is a timeless meditation on life and death, and, as Orson Welles put it, a true madman would never say “what an ass am I” about himself.
While Hamlet is torn apart and seems, at times, really at the edge of sanity, he makes us relate to him, makes us ask ourselves what we would do and feel like in a similarily…
