Hamlet's grappling with revenge and madness

Hamlet Grapples With Revenge and Madness

Revenge and Madness in Shakespeare's "Hamlet" -- Why are the two interlinked?

Even in contemporary society, there are certain crimes whereby the individual does not receive a punishment, because he or she was insane at the time of the offense. The insanity defense means that because the defendant was not him or her 'self,' that he or she cannot be held responsible for the actions that transpired. Madness implies a kind of displacement of identity. The madness, not the perpetrator is to blame. This idea is reinforced at the end of the tragedy that bears his name, when Prince Hamlet says to Laertes, the man whom he has wronged, albeit accidentally, by killing Laertes' father Polonius:

Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? Never Hamlet:

If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,

And when he's not himself does wrong Laertes,

Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.

Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so,

Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong'd;

His madness is poor Hamlet's enemy (V.2).

To paraphrase -- I was not myself when I killed your father, it was my madness that 'did it,' therefore do not take revenge upon me. Because Hamlet claims he was mad, when he mistook Polonius for a rat, and stabbed Polonius behind the arras, he disavows responsibility for his actions, and thus Laertes' responsibility for enacting vengeance for his father. However, in the Elizabethan era, to be an avenger was to take on a new identity, at the expense of one's old identity -- to be an avenger was a necessary, but not a pleasant task, to be a kind of scourge of God (Pennington 23). Thus madness and vengeance is closely allied, and throughout the play it is difficult to determine how responsible Hamlet is for any of his actions, from killing Polonius, to his mistreatment of Ophelia, to his use of cruel and disrespectful words directed towards his mother as well as Claudius.

The events of the murder of Polonius do suggest that Hamlet was in an unbalanced state, particularly because of his reaction towards second sight of his father's ghost. The ghost is not visible to his mother Gertrude, suggesting that perhaps Hamlet is hallucinating. Hamlet seems to have killed the old man in a state of passion, whom he apparently mistook for Claudius. Hamlet clearly feels remorse for his action, even if he called Polonius an old fool, and made jokes about worms eating his corpse. When he and Laertes fight during Ophelia's funeral, he later observes to his friend Horatio: "That to Laertes I forgot myself; / for, by the image of my cause, I see/the portraiture of his." Hamlet adds "the bravery of his grief did put me/Into a towering passion" (V.2).

This suggestion that Hamlet's madness was real contradicts what Hamlet says earlier in the play, after first seeing his father's ghost when Hamlet claimed that he would put on a simulation of madness, as a kind of protection for his vengeful aims, or to conceal his unbalanced state of mind -- or to enable him to critique his stepfather Claudius even more vociferously: "As I perchance hereafter shall think meet/to put an antic disposition on" (I.5, italics mine). However, although this madness is supposed to be assumed, he does not really embrace the shift in his identity very eagerly, from ordinary man to scourge of God, and this seems to truly unbalance his mind: "The time is out of joint: O. cursed spite,/That ever I was born to set it right!" (I.5).

Both by becoming an avenger and a madman Hamlet has become 'not himself. To act in a murderous, vengeful way that is contrary to his true nature, and to assume madness creates madness. At first, Hamlet suggests that vengefulness in a corrupt court is a kind of sanity, when he vows to put on an antic disposition, but he acts in a way that is more and more contrary to his moral nature as the play goes on, rebuking his mother against the ghost's first injunction not to harm her and to leave her to her conscious, killing Polonius on an impulse after sparing Claudius at prayer, speaking harshly to Ophelia beyond what she deserved when he suspects he is being observed, and also claiming to her brother he loved Ophelia more than a brother.

A loss of identity, vengeance and madness are linked in the stories of the other characters in "Hamlet" to a lesser degree. Even Claudius suggests that it was his ambition and his passion that moved him to fratricide, not 'himself' in his ineffectual prayer, and he blames his actions towards Hamlet on the need to avenge Polonius' death without offending Gertrude who "lives almost by his looks," and the Danish commoners who also love her son (IV.7). Laertes repents of his actions before death, and blames the king, not his own will for his vengeful actions towards Hamlet. Finally, it is suggested that the sight of his mad sister Ophelia moves Laertes to become an avenger, and to do things not characteristic of his true nature. Of course, the 'most legitimately' mad character in the play, Ophelia, does harm to herself, not to others, but she does spur on her brother's anger against Hamlet: "Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, / it could not move thus" (IV.5).

The association between madness and revenge in "Hamlet" suggests that both madness and the nature of vengeance displace the individual's true identity and spur him or her on to uncharacteristic actions. When Hamlet tries to assume madness, his first action is to act strangely towards Ophelia, which causes her to run to her father -- but then, without assuming madness, he speaks even more cruelly towards the girl, after musing about the likely lack of a heaven, in his "To be or not to be" speech.