IS HAMLET'S INSANITY REAL OR FEIGNED?

[DR AKINSIDE was, I believe, the first to assert that Hamlet's insanity is real. See STEEVENS's remarks, p. 147. ED.]

MACKENZIE (1780)

(The Mirror, No. 100, 22 April, 1780.)—The distraction of Hamlet is clearly affected through the whole play, always subject to the control of his reason, and subservient to the accomplishment of his designs. At the grave of Ophelia, indeed, it exhibits some temporary marks of a real disorder. . . . . Counterfeited madness, in a person of the character I have ascribed to Hamlet, could not be so uniformly kept up as not to allow the reigning impressions of his mind to show themselves in the midst of his affected extravagance. It turned chiefly on his love to Ophelia, which he meant to hold forth as its great subject; but it frequently glanced on the wickedness of his uncle,-his knowledge of which it was certainly his business to conceal.

In two of Shakespeare's tragedies are introduced at the same time instances of counterfeit madness and of real distraction. In both plays the same distinction is observed, and the false discriminated from the true by similar appearances. Lear's imagination constantly runs on the ingratitude of his daughters and the resignation of his crown; and Ophelia, after she has wasted the first ebullience of her distraction in some wild and incoherent sentences, fixes on the death of her father for the subject of her song: They bore him bare-faced on the bier,' &c. But Edgar puts on a semblance as opposite as may be to his real situation and his ruling thoughts. He never ventures on any expression bordering on the subject of a father's cruelty or a son's misfortune. Hamlet in the same manner, were he as firm in mind as Edgar, would never hint anything in his affected disorder that might lead to a suspicion of his having discovered the villainy of his uncle; but his feeling, too powerful for his prudence, often breaks through that disguise which it seems to have been his original, and ought to have continued his invariable, purpose to maintain, till an opportunity should present itself of accomplishing the revenge which he meditated.

DR FERRIAR (1813)

(An Essay towards a Theory of Apparitions, London, 1813, p. 114.)—The character of Hamlet can only be understood on this principle [of Latent Lunacy]. He

feigns madness for political purposes, while the poet means to represent his understanding as really (and unconsciously to himself) unhinged by the cruel circumstances in which he is placed. The horror of the communication made by his father's spectre; the necessity of belying his attachment to an innocent and deserving object; the certainty of his mother's guilt; and the supernatural impulse by which he is goaded to an act of assassination abhorrent to his nature, are causes sufficient to overwhelm and distract a mind previously disposed to weakness and to melancholy,' and originally full of tenderness and natural affection. By referring to the book, it will be seen that his real insanity is only developed after the mock-play. Then in place of a systematic conduct, conducive to his purposes, he becomes irresolute, inconsequent, and the plot appears to stand unaccountably still. Instead of striking at his object, he resigns himself to the current of events, and sinks at length ignobly under the stream.

DRAKE (1817)

(Shakespeare and his Times, London, 1817, vol. ii, p. 396.)—In this play, as in King Lear, we have madness under its real and its assumed aspect, and in both instances they are accurately discriminated. We find Lear and Ophelia constantly recurring, either directly or indirectly, to the actual causes of their distress; but it was the business of Edgar and of Hamlet to place their observers on a wrong scent, and to divert their vigilance from the genuine sources of their grief and the objects of their pursuit. This is done with undeviating firmness by Edgar; but Hamlet occasionally suffers the poignancy of his feelings and the agitation of his mind to break in upon his plan, when, heedless of what was to be the ostensible foundation of his derangement, his love for Ophelia, he permits his indignation to point, and on one occasion almost unmasked, towards the guilt of his uncle. In every other instance he personates insanity with a skill which indicates the highest order of genius, and imposes on all but the King, whose conscience, perpetually on the watch, soon enables him to detect the inconsistencies and the drift of his nephew.

T. C. [THOMAS CAMPBELL?] (1818)

(Letters on Shakespeare, Blackwood's Maga., February, 1818, p. 509.)-Most certain it is that Hamlet's whole perfect being had received a shock that had unsettled his faculties; that there was disorder in his soul none can doubt,—that is, a shaking and unsettling of its powers from their due sources of action. But who can believe for a moment that there was in his mind the least degree of that which, with physiological meaning, we call disease? Such a supposition would at once destroy that intellectual sovereignty in his being which in our eyes constitutes his exaltation. Shakespeare never could intend that we should be allowed to feel pity for a mind to which we were meant to bow; nor does it seem to me consistent with the nature of his own imagination to have subjected one of his most ideal beings to such mournful mortal infirmity. That the limits of disorder are not easily distinguishable in the representation is certain. How should they? The limits of disorder, in reality, lie in the mysterious and inscrutable depths of nature. Neither surely could it be intended by Shakespeare that Hamlet should for a moment cease to be a moral agent, as he must then have been. Look on him upon all great occasions, when, had there been

madness in his mind, it would have been most remarkable; look on him in his mother's closet, or listen to his dying words, and then ask if there was any disease of madness in that soul.

BOSWELL (1821)

(The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare, 1821, vol. vii, p. 536.)—That the madness of Hamlet is not altogether feigned is, I think, entirely without foundation. The sentiments which fall from him in his soliloquies, or in confidential communication with Horatio, evince not only a sound, but an acute and vigorous, understanding. His misfortunes, indeed, and a sense of shame for the hasty and incestuous marriage of his mother, have sunk him into a state of weakness and melancholy; but though his mind is enfeebled, it is by no means deranged. It would have been little in the manner of Shakespeare to introduce two persons in the same play whose intellects were disordered; but he has rather in this instance, as in King Lear, a second time effected what, as far as I can recollect, no other writer has even ventured to attempt,-the exhibition on the same scene of real and fictitious madness in contrast with each other. In carrying his design into execution, Hamlet feels no difficulty in imposing upon the King, whom he detests; or upon Polonius and his schoolfellows, whom he despises; but the case is very different, indeed, in his interviews with Ophelia: aware of the submissive mildness of her character, which leads her to be subject to the influence of her father and her brother, he cannot venture to entrust her with his secret. In her presence, therefore, he has not only to assume a disguise, but to restrain himself from those expressions of affection which a lover must find it most difficult to repress in the presence of his mistress. In this tumult of conflicting feelings he is led to overact his part from a fear of fall. ing below it; and thus gives an appearance of rudeness and harshness to that which is in fact a painful struggle to conceal his tenderness.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE (Blackwood's Maga. 1828)

(Essays and Marginalia. London, 1851, vol. i, p. 153.)—Let us, for a moment, put Shakespeare out of the question, and consider Hamlet as a real person, a recently deceased acquaintance. In real life it is no unusual thing to meet with characters every whit as obscure as that of the Prince of Denmark,-men seemingly accomplished for the greatest actions, clear in thought, and dauntless in deed, still meditating mighty works, and urged by all motives and occasions to the performance, whose existence is nevertheless an unperforming dream; men of noblest, warmest affections, who are perpetually wringing the hearts of those whom they love best; whose sense of rectitude is strong and wise enough to inform and govern a world, while their acts are the hapless issues of casualty and passion, and scarce to themselves appear their own. We cannot conclude that all such have seen ghosts; though the existence of ghost-seers is as certain as that of ghosts is problematical. But they will generally be found, either by a course of study and meditation too remote from the art and practice of life,-by designs too pure and perfect to be executed in earthly materials, or from imperfect glimpses of an intuition beyond the defined limits of communicable knowledge,-to have severed themselves from the common society of human feelings and opinions, and become, as it were, ghosts in the body. Such a man is Hamlet; an habitual dweller with his own thoughts.

[Page 162.] If it be asked, Is Hamlet really mad? or for what purpose does he assume madness? we reply that he assumes madness to conceal from himself and others his real distemper. Mad he certainly is not, in the sense that Lear and Ophelia are mad. Neither his sensitive organs nor the operations of his intellect are impaired. His mind is lord over itself, but it is not master of his will. The ebb and flow of his feelings are no longer obedient to calculable impulses,—he is like a star drawn by the approximation of a comet out of the range of solar influence. To be mad is not to be subject to the common laws whereby mankind are held together in community, and whatever part of man's nature is thus dissociated, is justly accounted insane. If a man see objects, or hear sounds, which others in the same situation cannot see or hear, and his mind and will assent to the illusion (for it is possible that the judgement may discredit the false intelligence which it receives from its spies), such man is properly said to be out of his senses, though his actions and conclusions, from his own peculiar perceptions, should be perfectly sane and rational. Hamlet's case is in some measure the reverse of this,-his actions and practical conclusions are not consistent with the premises in his mind and his senses. An overwhelming motive produces inertness, he is blinded with excess of light.

[Page 166.] But for wringing the kind, fond heart of sweet Ophelia with words such as man should never speak to woman, what excuse, what explanation can be offered? Love, we know, is often tyrannous and rough, and too often tortures to death the affection it would rack into confession of itself; and men have been who would tear open the softest breast, for the satisfaction of finding their own names indelibly written on the heart within. But neither love nor any other infirmity that flesh is heir to can exempt the live dissection from the condemnation of inhumanity. Such experiments are more excusable in women, whose weakness, whose very virtue, requires suspicion and strong assurance; but in man they ever indicate a foul, a feeble, and unmanly mind. I never could forgive Posthumous for laying wagers on his wife's chastity. Of all Shakespeare's jealous husbands, he is the most disagreeable.

But, surely, the brave, the noble-minded, the philosophic Hamlet could never be guilty of such cruel meanness. Nor would Shakespeare, who reverenced womanhood, have needlessly exposed Ophelia to insult if some profound heart-truth were not developed in the exhibition. One truth at least it proves,-the fatal danger of acting madness. Stammering and squinting are often caught by mimicry, and he who wilfully distorts his mind, for whatever purpose, may stamp its lineaments with irrecoverable deformity. To play the madman is hypocrisy against the devil.' Hamlet, in fact, through the whole drama, is perpetually sliding from his assumed wildness into sincere distraction. But his best excuse is to be found in the words of a poet, whom it scarce beseems me to praise, and who needs no praise of mine :—

'For to be wroth with one we love

Doth work like madness in the brain.'—S. T. C.

Hamlet loved Ophelia in his happy youth, when all his thoughts were fair and sweet as she. But his father's death, his mother's frailty, have wrought sad alteration in his soul, and made the very form of woman fearful and suspected. His best affections are blighted, and Ophelia's love, that young and tender flower, escapes not the general infection. Seemed not his mother kind, faithful, innocent? And was she not married to his uncle? But after the dread interview, the fatal injunction, he is a man among whose thoughts and purposes love cannot abide. He is a being severed from human hopes and joys,-vowed and dedicated to other work than

courtship and dalliance. The spirit that ordained him an avenger, forbade him to be a lover. Yet, with an inconstancy as natural as it is unreasonable, he clings to what he has renounced, and sorely feels the reluctant repulse which Ophelia's obedience presents to his lingering addresses. Lovers, even if they have seen no ghosts, and have no uncles to slay, when circumstances oblige them to discontinue their suit, can ill endure to be anticipated in the breach. It is a sorrow that cannot bear the slightest show of unkindness. Hamlet, moreover, though a tardy, is an impatient nature, that would feel uneasy under the common process of maidenly delay. Thus perplexed and stung, he rushes into Ophelia's chamber, and, in amazed silence, makes her the confidant of his grief and distraction, the cause of which she must not know. No wonder she concludes that he is mad for her love, and enters readily into what to her appears an innocent scheme to induce him to lighten his overcharged bosom, and ask of her the peace which unasked she may not offer. She steals upon his solitude, while, weary of his unexecuted task, he argues with himself the expediency of suicide. Surprised as with a sudden light, his first words are courteous and tender, till he begins to suspect that she, too, is set on to pluck out the heart of his mystery; and then, actually maddened by his self-imposed necessity of personating madness, he discharges upon her the bitterness of blasted love, the agony of a lover's anger, as if determined to extinguish in himself the last feeling that harmonized not with his fell purpose of revengeful justice. To me, this is the most terrifically affecting scene in Shakespeare. Neither Lear nor Othello are plunged so deep in the gulf of misery.

GEORGE FARREN (1829)

(Observations on the Laws of Mortality and Disease, &c. London, 1829, p. 12.) -It is not maintained in this essay that Hamlet was uniformly deranged, or that his malady disqualified him altogether for the exercise of his reason, but that he was liable to paroxysms of mental disorder. The death of his father, the marriage of his mother, and the consequent overthrow of his royal hopes, all these suddenly acting on a mind predisposed to gayety and to youthful follies, impart a tinge of melancholy to it, which speedily but imperceptibly produces an instability of intellect; and, by brooding over the Ghost's commandment, he nourishes a malady which at first he intended merely to feign. All Hamlet's words and actions before he resolves to feign insanity may be considered as those of a free agent, and it is by these that we are to decide whether or not he has from the start a perfectly healthy mind. Now, before he had any suspicion of his father's murder, and of course before he intends to feign insanity, we find him deliberating on suicide, and intolerant of life, -sure indications of mental disease. His mind was therefore affected from the first, and it is to be further noted, that whenever Hamlet is alone the true state of his mind reveals itself in melancholy soliloquies; furthermore, FARREN asks, whether the assumption of the rôle of a madman be not, under the circumstances, a clear act of insanity? So far from aiding his design, it was the very way to thwart it, as, in fact, it did. 'Madness,' says Claudius, in great ones must not unwatched go.' Hamlet's contumelious sarcasm' in reference to the dead body of Polonius, and the 'language of defiance' that he 'hurls' at the King, ' must force the conclusion that he was a senseless and abandoned miscreant, if charity and a nicer estimate did not urge us to the commiseration of a masterless infirmity.' Again [p. 25]: If Hamlet be considered as not really mad, but merely feigning, his unmanly outrage on Laertes