One definition of madness is “mental delusion or the eccentric behavior arising from it.” But Emily Dickinson wrote Much madness is divinest Sense— To a discerning Eye— Novelists and playwrights have often seen madness with a “discerning Eye.” Select a novel or play in which a character’s apparent madness or irrational behavior plays an important role. Then write a well-organized essay in which you explain what this delusion or eccentric behavior consists of and how it might be judged reasonable. Explain the significance of the “madness” to the work as a whole. Do not merely summarize the plot.
This was our thesis:
In Hamlet, William Shakespeare portrays Hamlet as a “mad” character in order to explore the boundaries between reason and madness, questioning whether a person’s actions, even if irrational, can be justified. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles between action and inaction, and this perpetual inability to act ultimately leads to his downfall by rendering him actually mad. Shakespeare uses soliloquies, dramatic irony and dark humor to depict the method in Hamlet’s madness.
Critical Reading Component
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ESSAY: From “The Dramatic Function of the Songs in Hamlet” by Peter J. Seng
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Argument or Thesis -can often be stated as a question or a statement, introduced and elaborated on. Ask yourself the following questions: Why does the author write the piece? What does s/he seek to convey? Does the writer address some kind of complexity?
Look for idea/example pairs, moments when the author introduces an idea and then offers an example that solidifies that idea.
With regard to the author’s subject position, look for identifiable word choices or verb form choices. What assumptions does the author make?
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EXAMPLE: The surface irony detected by most of the commentators—that the ballad relates to the death of Polonius—is not wrong; it simply does not go far enough. The song does, after all, tell of a loved one who has unexpectedly died and who has been buried without loving rights…[But] the next level of interpretation ought to relate Ophelia’s song more closely to its context. Ophelia’s appearance on her entrance confirms what the audience has already known about her, that she is mentally deranged…
Her first question is, “where is the beauteous Majesty of Denmark?” We can echo with Granville-Barker, “Aye, indeed, where is she?” Certainly not in the wretched and haggard Queen confronting the mad girl. In timid words that betray her apprehension Gertrude responds, “How now , Ophelia?” Her nondescript question receives its only answer in [11.1-2 of] the song. It is easy to imagine the Queen’s guilty start, her sudden dread of what the crazed girl may say. We sense it in her appalled question: “Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song?”...[It] clearly imports, among other things, that Gertrude once had a true-love whom she failed to distinguish from “another one.”...[but] “He is dead and gone, lady.” “Nay, but Ophelia—”the Queen interrupts only to be told...that the true-love was one “Which bewept to the grave did not go With true-love showers.” That obviously interpolated negative chides Gertrude for her inadequate mourning for King Hamlet, and perhaps for worse offences as well.
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Does the essay offer “clues” as to the author’s subject position, i.e., with regard to gender, race, class, intellectual orientation? Does it demonstrate how the author intended the essay to be used?
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The incongruity of the song with the task which prompts it—a grave being dug for Ophelia—is a reflection of the disordered moral universe of the whole play. The lives of all the characters seem to have been infected by Claudius’ original crime. First to fall victim to the general moral sickness are those very institutions which were intended in their origins to confer dignity on important human occasions. King Hamlet himself has had no decent period of mourning, since
The funeral bak’d meats
Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables
For the hasty wedding of Claudius and Gertrude. The courtship of Hamlet and Ophelia is next blasted. Polonius dies without dignity behind an arras, and with even less dignity is hastily interred in his grave. The drowned Ophelia receives but “maimed rites”, and these only a few minutes after the gravedigger has been callously singing, and Hamlet bitterly jesting, over her grave.
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Look for examples which support the primary argument; try to determine if they are effective or ineffective. Does the writer use Ethos, Pathos or Logos to develop the argument? Type in FIVE MAIN POINTS (DIRECT QUOTES) RIGHT HERE. INCLUDE THE PAGE NUMBERS.
What do you think are the key passages in the etext? How do they work with the rest of the text to convey the author’s meaning?
*By their nature, academic papers utilize ETHOS, as they build their arguments using other credible sources.
There are a lot of other quotations that would fit within these categories, and some quotations may fight into more than one category.
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Ethos: “Coleridge alone, among commentators on this song, seems to have divined the memories that may underlie it in Ophelia’s deranged mind. In his lectures on Shakespeare he called attention to the conjunction in her songs of ‘two thoughts that had never subsisted in disjunction...’” (Seng 218)
Pathos: “For Ophelia, as for Hamlet, Denmark has become a prison, and she is all alone at Elsinore. It is the realization of this fact, coming on top of all the earlier horrors, that destroys her sanity.” (Seng 218-219)
“But the critics who are so concerned to salvage her innocence tend frequently to forget that it was not Hamlet alone who sullied it. Ophelia’s father and brother have had their share in the spoliation of her mind’s purity and her childlike trust.” (Seng 220)
Logos: “In the light of such a background the ‘true-love’ of the ballad is now seen to be Hamlet. He has gone across the seas on a mysterious voyage whose important is unknown to her...the song that she sings...explains to her the mystery of his disappearance, illuminates in her deranged mind the few paltry facts she possesses. Hamlet has left Elsinore to make a pilgrimage to Walsingham—he has reason enough to do penance…” (Seng 219)
“It may be argued that Laertes and Polonius are merely exercising the prudent judgement of men of the world...Yet those critics...will be hard put to defend him a few scenes later when he tells Claudius that he will ‘loose’ his daughter to Hamlet for purposes of entrapment; and how is Polonius to be defended at all for the role of agent provocateur that he suggests Reynald take with Laertes’ friends about the son’s sexual morals?” (Seng 221)
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Is the essay persuasive? Does the argument and points of support as a whole make sense? Does it support, challenge, unseat what you know about the topic? Write a paragraph answering these questions.
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I found this criticism persuasive, due to the detailed analysis of the lyrics of Ophelia’s ballads and her mental state. I had previously thought that the funeral dirges only related to Polonius’s death, never thinking that they might be a foreshadowing of Hamlet’s ‘true-love shower’-less demise. This does supports my previous conclusion that Ophelia’s madness is actually very well-reasoned, and that these songs disclose her shrewd insight about the intricate conflicts of the royal court. In addition, I had never really understood why Shakespeare devoted so much of the play’s beginning to Laertes and Polonius warning Ophelia about her relationship with Lord Hamlet, so Jeng’s analysis shed light on Shakespeare’s reasoning, showing that these wrongheaded accusations startled Ophelia out of her artlessness and paved the way for her eventual madness.
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Here is a journal entry from Hamlet's point-of-view about the criticism:
I always knew Ophelia was a clever girl. I discovered recently that even when her wit was diseased, she spoke with such irony and insight as would make her seem even more intelligent, when deranged, than when she was sane.
She sang several funeral dirges to Laertes, Claudius and my mother, particularly repeating the lines “He is dead and gone, lady.” (4.5.29), while I was en route to England. We had always assumed that she merely meant her father, Polonius, lamenting his hasty burial, but fresh analysis casts a new light. She seemed to have sung this to my mother, who was made uncomfortable by Ophelia’s singing because she understood Ophelia’s import. Ophelia lamented that this wretched subject of her song “bewept to the ground did not go/With true-love showers.” (4.5.39), chastising the Queen for her overhasty marriage with Claudius.
But it also seems that in this song Ophelia was rationalizing my exile to England on a mysterious voyage; she knew not the meaning of it. But she worried for me, prophesying that I was also “dead and gone” (4.5.29) and would not be coming back. I know now that the “nightmare delusion which assail[ed] the poor girl’s mind [was], in fact, the very reality which Claudius had intended.” (Seng 219).
I also know now that I certainly do not regret slaying Polonius. Ophelia’s madness had been seeded long ago by him and Laertes. I loved Ophelia; “Forty thousand brothers/Could not with all their quantity of love/Make up my sum.” (5.1.248-251) Yet before Laertes left, he and Polonius counseled Ophelia, without any basis, of being naive, and badmouthing our relationship. “The very diction in which he couch[ed] his warning [was] a slander.” (Seng 221). They told her she could “lose [her] heart, or [her] chaste treasure open/to [my] unmastered importunity./” (1.3.30-31). How little they thought of me! Poor Ophelia’s innocent trust was thus damaged from the start.
I wish that I had confided in Ophelia before any of this had happened. Her wisdom and understanding would have aided me, and perhaps saved her from her premature death.
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