 When studying the play Hamlet, you need to be familiar with key themes relating to Hamlet, the other characters and as well these themes are related to general ideas that Shakespeare wishes to explore. Remember that the human mind is deeply explored in Hamlet, okay? It's actually the tragedy of Hamlet is this idea that Hamlet was ultimately unable to make up his mind on whether he should act on his father's instructions. So his father appearing to him as a ghost and he was unable to make up his mind on whether he could and should act on his father's instructions or whether he should believe his uncle Claudius, okay? And of course the tragedy is that he acts too late because he ponders for too long, okay? So his mind is working and pondering for too long rather than being a man of action. However, the other element of the mind that's explored within this play is when the mind is pushed to its brink and to its limit. And it descends into madness. Now, Shakespeare deliberately leaves it a little bit vague as to whether when Hamlet feigns madness or when he pretends like he's mad, whether he actually does at one point have elements of madness because this is of course reflected in his speech. However, what is not left beyond doubt is Ophelia. She experiences madness and of course this madness in her perspective is shown to be a result of this very restrictive society which restricted her as a woman in terms of her choices in terms of who she could marry. And ultimately it was a sense of powerlessness that drove her mad, okay? So the theme of madness is really powerful. It's illustrated and explored in lots of depth within Hamlet but of course it more broadly ties into how the mind is explored within Hamlet by Shakespeare. So this theme is very important and hence if you're writing about this theme or about especially the characters of Hamlet, Ophelia too. And of course even you can argue, you know, Claudius at some stages experiences a feeling of madness when he realises what he's done beyond redemption. Laertes in a fit of rage once he realises that his sister has died also experiences a brief sense of madness, okay? So there's lots of different characters you can relate to but of course the main two characters you want to consider are Hamlet and Ophelia, okay? So as you can see behind me I have selected the main quotations you can consider if you're writing about the theme of madness and what word level analysis you can do, okay? So let's begin with the first one. And this is when Hamlet tells Horatio initially after the ghost has told him how his father died. So of course this is the ghost of his father. It's told him that Claudius is behind why he died. And Hamlet decides that he's going to feign madness. He's going to act like he's mad and he reveals this plot to Horatio. He states, I perchance shall ellipsis put an antique disposition on, okay? Now the word level analysis you want to do here is firstly focus on the assonance of A in perchance shall an an antique. And of course antique disposition means he's going to act crazy. And also in terms of structure this is what we call a declarative sentence. Remember declarative sentence is a sentence that states a fact feeling or mood. Now here what we can see is Hamlet is going to use madness as a way to lure Claudius into maybe showing whether he is guilty or not for his father's death, okay? So madness is used by Hamlet at this stage as a tool in order to discover whether his uncle is guilty. However, of course we could also argue that in this case Hamlet feigning an antique disposition, him feigning madness could be just a way of him procrastinating on making a decision which is entirely clear to him which is killing his uncle, okay? Now the second quotation which ties into madness is of course when Hamlet is speaking in what seems to be riddles, okay? So this is when he's acting like he's mad and at some stages it's not entirely clear to us as the audience whether he does descend a little bit into madness, whether his language and his word play actually reflects the words of a mad person or whether this is just very clever word play on his end, okay? And the quotation you can tie this to is when he states to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I am mad but mad north-northwest, okay? So this is when he is talking about being crazy and he's using language, okay? So he's using lots of clever word play. Now here some people would say that this is a good illustration of Hamlet using superior language in order to act like he's mad. However, there have been lots of critics and lots of people who have argued that actually his word plays too complex and actually this is showing that Hamlet because of the pressure of having to act an adventurous father is slightly descending into madness, okay? But it's deliberately left vague for us as the audience. Now the word level analysis you want to focus on is firstly the repetition of the word mad, okay? Which emphasises of course he could be mad, he could be crazy, he's using all of his language or he could be actually very good as a wordsmith. Also the words north-north and the word west belong to the semantic field of direction, okay? So here Hamlet is being deliberately of truths, okay? So he's speaking in ways that are very, very vague. However, it's unclear to us as the audience whether he's doing this in a really clever way or whether he's actually descending slowly into madness. The next quotation tied to the theme of madness is when Ophelia actually descends into madness. This is after she discovers her father's being killed by Hamlet. She also has been left by laertes and she feels incredibly restricted. Now Ophelia actually does descend into madness and it's interesting because when she descends into madness she's able to sing, she's able to speak openly and critique the society that she's part of, okay? So it's actually this madness that gives her the opportunity and also to some extent we can apply this to Hamlet. This madness gives her the opportunity to really be upfront and not only criticising the society that's excessively patriarchal it controls her too much, okay? But of course also we can see through her madness just how restrictive life was for a woman and this was of course enough to make them go crazy, okay? So she wasn't allowed to pick who she loved. She wasn't allowed to basically do anything, even think for herself, okay? And then when these structures, these foundational people in her life were gone then she descended very quickly into madness, okay? So it's really, there's no question as to whether Ophelia becomes mad, she does and she states and this is when she is singing to the queen, Queen Gertrude, she states he's dead and gone, lady, dead and gone. Now here, within this song, it's not clear who she's talking about. However, you could argue that when she's speaking like this she's either talking about King Hamlet, okay, him being dead and gone but equally she can be talking about her father and because he's dead and gone this has triggered her descent into madness, okay? She realises that she's really, she has nobody to lean on but also she's not necessarily lived a life that's of her own choosing and the person that's chosen how she should live has now died, okay? However, it's entirely clear to us that Ophelia has descended into madness and we should see her descent into madness as almost a way to criticise society and how society at the time, Elizabethan society had excessively restricted the lives and roles of women, okay? The next quotation which ties in again to Ophelia so this is tied to her St. Valentine's song and this talks about the deceit of love, okay? So she sings about a man who meets a maid he seduces her, he lets her come into her room and of course there's the hint that he has sex with her he deliberately leads her to give up her virginity but then he never marries her, okay? And then she's not a virgin and again remember in terms of society at the time if a woman was an unmarried woman and she wasn't a virgin she was seen as a fallen woman she was seen as no longer good enough for marriage, okay? It was almost like the death stamp for a woman, okay? in terms of her value. Now Ophelia illustrates this and she shows the deceptive nature of love and this is when she's still mad, okay? So she's openly talking about how love can be incredibly deceptive. She states, heroes and ellipses let in the maid that outer maid never departed more, okay? So of course here the idea that outer maid the maid who entered the room where this man seduced her in she didn't leave a maid. Of course she basically went in as a virgin and she didn't leave as a virgin and she was betrayed by this man, okay? Now the one level analysis you want to focus on here is the repetition of the words maid, okay? Remember maid has connotations of virginity, purity, okay? A woman especially at the time was seen as a maid until she married, okay? And the hyperbole never departed, okay? And again here what we can see is Ophelia's madness is interesting in the sense that it gives her the ability and the voice the cover of her madness, okay? So she becomes mad and actually this is what gives her the voice to criticise these society norms these norms that really excessively resorted the roles that women can play and also made women really have such a limited participation in society that this sometimes could drive them crazy, okay? Now the next quotation relating to the theme of madness is when Ophelia's father, Polonius, notices that Hamlet appears so this is when he's starting to feign his anti-disposition, he appears like he's mad but he feels like there's a method to it so at first he's not entirely convinced and he states, though this be madness yet there is method in it, okay? So Polonius states, though this be madness yet there is method in it. Now here the word of an asset you want to focus on is a literation of M in madness and method and this is a part of when we we can make the argument that maybe Hamlet wasn't entirely mad when he was feigning his anti-disposition, perhaps the way if Polonius saw him in terms of there's a strategy to how he's acting crazy he doesn't seem to be completely mad he seems to be speaking in a way that there's a lot of word play and so there's a method in his madness, what is he trying to do, okay? So this you could use as an argument as to whether maybe Hamlet wasn't entirely mad he was just using it as a cover in order to discover whether his uncle and even those who he didn't entirely trust whether they were being authentic or not, okay? So here we can see that Polonius is kind of planting the seeds into our minds as the audience as to whether actually Hamlet was he really mad, okay? However, he then later decides oh no no no Hamlet is mad but he's mad because he's in love with my daughter, okay? So this kind of as that comedic element Polonius is shown as being totally clueless and he's really really kind of obsessed with this notion that Hamlet might make his daughter the next queen because he's really in love with her, okay? So then he theorizes oh no no yes he is mad he is far far gone ellipsis in my youth I suffered much to accept extremity for love, okay? When he says I suffered much extremity for love he's basically saying oh yeah yeah I think Hamlet is mad because even when I was young and I fell in love with a woman I actually would also do really crazy things I'd also go mad for you know for how much I love this woman, okay? So here of course we can see that Polonius now believes that Hamlet is mad but the reason for his madness is because he's in love with Ophelia and he's you know Ophelia is denying this love to him, okay? So Ophelia has acted on what Polonius has asked her to do which is ignore Hamlet and now Polonius believes that this is what's driven him mad, okay? Now the word love analysis you want to focus on here is the repetition of the words far far gone, okay? Now what this is of course illustrating is that he's gone, his mind is totally gone Also the verb suffered this idea that Polonius believes that Hamlet is crazy because he loves Ophelia so much of course it's not because of that we as the audience know that it's because of it whether Claudius is the true killer of his father and finally the hyperbole much extremity for love, okay? And what this hyperbole does is it just adds a bit of comic relief around the character of Polonius and it establishes him as very pompous, very clueless, okay? Now the final quotation and this is now Claudius Claudius was not always convinced that Hamlet was mad, okay? He kind of feels like Hamlet was using this as a strategy and this is illustrated when Claudius says what he's fake though it lacked form, a little was not like madness, okay? So it says and this is referring to how Hamlet spoke, okay? So he's saying yeah, he spoke a little bit funny but I don't think it was madness, okay? Again, this is obviously casting doubts into our minds as to whether Hamlet at any stage was actually mad or whether he was pretending that he was mad, okay? So repeating once more, Claudius says what he's fake though it lacked form a little was not like madness Now the word level analysis you want to focus on here is firstly the verb spake which means spoke and also the literation of L in Latin and little, okay? So here what this is doing is obviously building the argument as to how some of the audience believe Hamlet was never mad throughout the play, okay? So again there's two distinct schools of thought, there's this notion on the one hand and people theorise that Hamlet just uses very clever wordplay in order to uncover whether Claudius was his father's real killer, whether the ghost was honest however on the other hand there's still people who believe initially whilst Hamlet did try to feign madness so he tried to act like he was mad, he did at some points become mad, okay? He was driven by the pressure of having to act by the pressure of having to avenge his father and this was too much and this caused his mind to snap at some stages and become actually mad, okay? So that's really it when it comes to the main quotations you should consider if you are writing about the theme of madness in Hamlet. Thank you so much for listening.