Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

I should have been mad! Death, madness, and lies are the perfect themes to make up an ideal tragic story. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, madness steals the spotlight as the ultimate character within itself. Madness took hold of two important characters: Ophelia and Hamlet. Hamlet is only acting as though he is mad, whereas Ophelia is truly driven mad. Hamlet goes through some very troubling situations which he seems to act in an insane manner. He is convincing though that he was "…not in madness, but mad in craft"(3.4.108). Hamlet is the prince of Denmark. King Hamlet, his father, died recently. Shortly following King Hamlet’s death, Gertrude, the mother of Hamlet, married the brother of her dead husband. Claudius, the brother of Old King Hamlet is now the King and husband of Gertrude. Hamlet returned home to for both the celebration of his mother’s wedding to his uncle and for the funeral of his father. Hamlet was bombarded by many situations at the start of the play which his psyche had to deal with. The quick marriage of his mother was upsetting and disgusting, he best expressed as: "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears had left the flushing in her galled eyes, she married. O, most wicked speed,