Madness and Insanity in Shakespeares Hamlet - The Sanity of Ophelia Es

The Impact of Madness on Ophelia of village Without question, the role of madness in hamlet is as vital to the game and the plays success as Hamlet himself neither the character nor the play would be able to function without the driving (although somewhat sluggish) force that madness represents. The club of one to the other, of character to condition, is so intertwined and entangled that Hamlet has come to typify the particular form of madness (i.e. melancholy brought about by a humoral imbalance) with which he is afflicted. Indeed, both intelligence of Hamlet would be grossly incomplete without an examination of the madness (or lack thereof) from which he suffers similarly, any discussion of melancholy would, perhaps, border on invalid were it to neglect the obvious club to the worlds most famous literary example. What is overlooked, however, are the effects and the drastically contrastive results of the same condition (or at least, a condition that closely parallels Hamle ts) on the plays second most confounding character, Ophelia. Early in the play (Act 1, pictorial matter 2), during the first of many insightful soliloquies (insightful for us as much for him), Hamlet utters, somewhat offhandedly, a summation of his feelings towards his mothers oerhasty marriage Frailty thy name is woman. criminal offence though the quip may be to women of contemporary society (and any not quite passive women of Shakespeares era), Hamlets comment was, in many respects, declarative of the prevailing attitude, at least among most men, of the time. Although exceptions to the social system were farthermost from nonexistent (Queen Elizabeth being the most obvious example), women were discriminated against to such an extent... ... New York philosophical Library, 1970. Emerson, Kathy Lynn. The Writers Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England From 1485-1649. Cincinnati Writers Digest Books, 1996. Heffernan, sing Falvo. The Melancholy Muse Chaucer, Shakespear e and Early Medicine. Pittsburgh Duquesne UP, 1995. Hoeniger, F. David. Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance. Newark University of Delaware Press, 1992. Lidz, Theodore. Hamlets antagonist Madness and Myth in Hamlet. Vision Press, 1975. Lyons, Bridget Gellert. Voices of Melancholy. New York Barnes and Noble, 1971. Schiesari, Juliana. The Gendering of Melancholia Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Symbolics of Loss in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1992. Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. George Lyman Kittredge. Boston Ginn and Company, 1939.