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

The Impact of Madness on Ophelia of hamlet Without question, the role of madness in crossroads is as vital to the plot and the plays success as Hamlet himself neither the character nor the play would be able to function without the driving (although slightly sluggish) force that madness represents. The connection of one to the other, of character to condition, is so intertwined and embroiled that Hamlet has come to symbolize the particular form of madness (i.e. melancholy brought about by a humoral imbalance) with which he is afflicted. Indeed, any discussion 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 evident connection to the worlds closely famous literary example. What is overlooked, however, are the effects and the drastically different results of the same condition (or at least, a condition that closely para llels Hamlets) on the plays second most confounding character, Ophelia. Early in the play (Act 1, Scene 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. Offensive though the quip may be to women of contemporary society (and any not instead passive women of Shakespeares era), Hamlets comment was, in many respects, indicative of the prevailing attitude, at least among most men, of the time. Although exceptions to the social system were far 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, Carol Falvo. The Melancholy Muse Chaucer, Shakespeare and Early euph ony. Pittsburgh Duquesne UP, 1995. Hoeniger, F. David. Medicine and Shakespeare in the English Renaissance. Newark University of Delaware Press, 1992. Lidz, Theodore. Hamlets Enemy 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.