Beginning of Essay
"Your noble son is mad — ‘Mad' call I it, for to define true madness, What is't but to be nothing else but mad?" (Wells and Taylor, 665) In Act two, scene two of William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, Polonius uses these words to inform Hamlet's parents of their ....

Middle of Essay
.... madness is feigned—a cover for internal conflicts, rooted not in thwarted affection, but rather in desire to avenge his father's murder. Hamlet even goes so far as to say his apparent madness is an act when he says "I am but mad north-north-west; when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw"(667). Shakespeare often used madness, either feigned or actual, as a teaching tool or vehicle to advance his plot. Sometimes this madness was feigned, as evidenced by Hamlet and Edgar (the legitimate son of Gloucester in The Tragedy of King Lear), but other times it was genuine insanity. Ophelia and Lady MacBeth are obvious examples of Shak ....