ABSTRACT
What can we learn from plays about madness? Plays when they portray madness put it into the context of the events and circumstances that have afflicted the person. Also, they identify the significant others in the system of relationships of which he or she is or has been a member. Thus Hamlet’s madness is presented as a consequence of such events as his father’s murder, his uncle’s assumption of the throne, his mother’s remarriage, and what he sees as his rebuff by Ophelia. Among the significant others are his dead father, uncle, mother, Ophelia, Laertes, Polonius and Horatio. The crises in his relationships with them make up the context in which his madness appears. The play, in telling how his madness, feigned or otherwise, develops and recovers, provides a model of madness that is of interest to all those who meet madness in their professional work or their daily lives.
