Shakespeare and Insanity

An Analysis of Insanity in Four Plays by Shakespeare

Shakespeare lived at a time when the old medieval Catholic world was splitting apart and giving rise to the new modern Protestant world. In the midst of this real conflict, Shakespeare depicts on stage several different characters that go mad. Some feign madness, some truly lose their minds, and some are bewitched by the maddening charms of love potions. This paper will analyze the degrees of madness in four of Shakespeare's plays and show why each case is unique and different from all the others and yet in a way related to the transforming world in which the playwright found himself.

Hamlet is by no means representative of the kind of insanity that Shakespeare depicts in all his dramas. But there is in a Hamlet, a young man who has just returned home from college, a prototype for...
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