We humans are very fond of our tender bodies and our clever brains, which explains a lot about our fears of Death and Madness.  And that statement doesn’t apply only to modern humans, coddled by our sanitized lives and our careful culture.  We’ve had those fears since always.

Shakespeare’s King Richard II exclaims this, in naked terror: “Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.” (III.ii)

Yorik and Hamlet. Billy Howle, Bristol Old Vic, 2023

With equal anguish, King Lear pleads in desperation, “O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; Keep me in temper; I would not be mad!” (I.v)

We recognize Death and Madness as entities that we must necessarily encounter, at least occasionally, along the road of life, while we desperately hope to restrain them when we meet them. But if we are honest, we recognize that Death and Madness are forces of a feral Nature, forces that can quickly slip the leash and run amok, hijacking our intended journeys. So most of us do everything we can to stay safe and stay sane, postponing Death and evading Madness with all the means we can muster.

But here’s the “rub,” as Hamlet so boldly refers to our voluntary encounters with Death. (And we can use that term with equal audacity about our voluntary encounters with Madness.)

Although it is risky business to engage with these daunting forces of Nature, living life in cautious boxes of safety and sanity will distance us from the forms of Truth and Meaning that give purpose and value to our lives. And we’re talking here about the kinds of Truth and Meaning that are personal — Truth and Meaning that come to us, bright and unbidden, like blinding new stars in our firmament. The appearance of Truth and Meaning in these forms will draw us (or more often, drive us) to a new destination in our lives, a destination that is closer to its root term — Destiny. And Destiny is what makes life worth living. Life may still be hard, painful, and scary, but finding a sense of Destiny in our life — a sense of Meaning that is rooted in Truth — makes that new Life worth the price we must pay to live it, including the meaningful Death that will conclude it.

Of course, you probably know all of this, don’t you? Especially those of you who work in the theatre. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be walking the theatre’s tightrope, sliding around on its ice, dancing among its dangers. What you are probably wondering now is how the horrors of Death and Madness can lead us to a personal sense of Truth and Meaning.

Good question.  Let’s ask Hamlet…

It is reasonable to assume that Hamlet has been a seeker of Truth and Meaning since long before we meet him. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have gone to school in Wittenberg, that famous center of philosophical and religious study. Wittenberg was a reasonable place for a seeker like Hamlet to begin his search for Truth and Meaning, just as seekers of the Christian God usually begin their searches in some kind of church. But as the Swami Vivekananda famously advised his students, “It’s very good to be born into a church, but it’s very bad to die in one.” Vivekananda, like many great teachers, knew that the search for personal Truth and Meaning can benefit from a foundational structure, but it must eventually expand into a larger realm, where the universal forces of Nature can guide the seeker in ways that are broader, deeper, and more personal.

A summons to the realm of Nature. From The Ravaged Bridegroom, Marion Woodman (1990)

This transition to the graduate school of Nature may sound inviting, like a lovely walk in the woods. But the role of Nature in this sense is far darker and more dangerous than a day hike. Seeking Truth and Meaning in Nature is an excursion into the uncharted world of the body, and the unconscious, and things that go “bump” in the night. This is where we step out of the realm of what we know, and surrender to the much larger realm of what we don’t know. It is in that undiscovered country — the country where Death and Madness play leading roles — that Truth and Meaning will come to us.

Sometimes the realm of Nature claims us in our nighttime dreams. Hamlet reports this: “I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” (II.ii) Dreams offer us key elements that we don’t consciously recognize about our bodies, our emotions, and the world we inhabit, physically and metaphysically. Hamlet’s dreams probably stink of the rot that is in Denmark…and in his life as he has been living it.

Sometimes the call of the unconscious comes to us through our bodies — through a serious injury or illness, or a new physical practice (successful or not), or a major sexual experience (good or bad). We can imagine that Hamlet and Ophelia may have experienced one of these initiations (good or bad) in the course of their intimacy.

And the unconscious can also claim us in the form of “waking dreams” — that is, the inexplicable events that defy normal definition. These can be as benign as a story (oral, written, or cinematic) that stays with us vividly. Or they can be cataclysmic encounters with Death and deathly energies. In the play, such “waking dreams” would include the deaths of Hamlet’s and Ophelia’s fathers, but most notably, Hamlet’s encounters with his father’s ghost.

When we are led (voluntarily or not) by the sources of Truth and Meaning that come to us from the unconscious realm of Nature, we embark on a journey that has long been known to human beings…and long regarded with a mixture of awe and dread. Only a fool would nonchalantly wander into the undiscovered country of Nature because, as Hamlet wisely observes, “What dreams may come…must give us pause.” In all their forms — nighttime, physical, or metaphysical — the “dreams” of Nature are never to be taken, nor undertaken, lightly. Death and Madness may lead us to Truth and Meaning, but they are nothing to trifle with.

Many psychologists (or more specifically, psychologists who love the literary arts) will agree that William Shakespeare was the first artist to explicitly describe and depict the portion of Nature’s undiscovered country that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung later named “the unconscious.” Shakespeare has this to say, for example, in Midsummer Night’s Dream (V.i):

The Disenchantment of Bottom. Daniel Maclise (1860)

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell can hold:
That is the madman. The lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to Earth,

from Earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown. The poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination
That, if it would but apprehend some joy,
It comprehends some bringer of that joy.
Or in the night, imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!

Mind you, it is one task to describe a wild thing as an object of study. (Although Shakespeare was clearly placing himself in this portrait of madness by including “the poet” among the afflicted.) But it is quite another task to enter into that wild realm and compose its shape from the inside, through a variety of evocative characters. It is this second achievement that has earned Shakespeare the amazed admiration from those of us who seek to treat the many woes that we metaphorically call “madness.”

What is madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? ~ Theodore Roethke ~

In Hamlet (and many other plays), Shakespeare gives us characters who depict various forms of what could broadly be called “madness.” (And this is in addition to his descriptions of “normal” human behavior that drift into veritable lunacy.) Sometimes Shakespeare’s characters seem to be hijacked into forms of psychosis that disconnect them from what a psychologist would call “consensual reality.” The pairing of Bottom and Tatiana would be a comedic example of this form of madness. In other cases, his characters are following a path of compulsion, intrigue or circumstance that leads them into a psychological wilderness from which they cannot escape. The doomed Lady Macbeth would be one of these sad souls. In every case, Shakespeare displays his genius for perceiving and depicting the human psyche, which is particularly impressive in his descriptions of psychological disorder, because such portrayals had never before been created (nor, some would say, never since created so artfully).

Ophelia (Mariah Gale). Royal Shakespeare Company, 2008

In Hamlet, Ophelia appears quite lucid at the beginning of the play, but after a number of severe emotional shocks, she enters a hyperactive state that compels her to speak in metaphorical terms (primarily referring to flowers) that are only vaguely comprehensible to others. Eventually, Ophelia dies under disquieting circumstances that could be construed either as intentional suicide, or as the kind of unintentional suicide that can result from extreme psychotic disorientation.

And then there is the remarkable character of Hamlet, who declares his intention to simulate madness in order to unmask his father’s murderer and (possibly) his mother’s complicity in the murder. Hamlet’s charade is convincing enough, but Shakespeare eventually expands Hamlet’s pretense of madness to the point that its possible status as a true psychosis has become a matter of debate for over four centuries. But there is no need for us to solve that puzzle here. Psychologists now know that pretending to be psychotic can, if the pretense is pushed far enough by a loosely bound personality under extreme stress, lead to something that becomes very similar to psychosis, or even becomes an actual psychosis itself. The human psyche can be elastic, creative, and robust, but just like the human body, it is vulnerable to the slings and arrows of excessive misfortune.

What happens to Ophelia and Hamlet during their periods of madness — authentic or assumed? The immediate outcome is that both of them appear to receive some of the benefits of madness that have been reported by insightful observers for many centuries. Specifically, when a person enters the state that is commonly called “mad,” they are liberated from the rules of social conduct that we normally obey. Whether or not this liberated conduct is socially condoned, it is understood that when we are mad, we will do and say things that people don’t normally do or say. Under these circumstances, we are free to speak and enact our Truth. And sometimes we find elements of Truth in this state that we didn’t know existed, inside or outside of ourselves.

In Ophelia’s case, it is quite conceivable that the truths that she speaks in her madness (albeit in a floral metaphor) are things she already knew and had contained for a long time. But in Hamlet’s case, it seems likely that he finds new elements of truth as he explores the previously undiscovered country of his “madness.” New feelings, new values, new truths, a new sense of meaning, and eventually, a new course of action — the combination of these finally surpass the “conscience-made cowardice” that has previously immobilized him. Ophelia’s madness leads to her tragic demise, but Hamlet’s leads to his liberation. Death does come to Hamlet, but not through the existential defeat of inaction.

It is not death that a man should fear; he should fear never beginning to live. ~ Marcus Aurelius ~

Now let’s talk about the role of Death in the discovery of Truth and Meaning. It is common for us to assume that our ancestors’ shorter lifespans and the historic prevalence of disease in their time made Death less impressive to them. But the records left by Shakespeare and many other writers makes it clear that Death was as powerful a presence in prior ages as it is now. Indeed, some psychologists have postulated that the combination of our mushrooming global population, our inundation in global death statistics, and our infinite choice of distractions have combined to make us less distressed by Death than our ancestors were.

But let’s put aside comparisons between the relative impact of Death on persons in the past and the present. Shakespeare makes it crystal clear that Death has a devastating impact on Hamlet and Ophelia. We can only guess at the impact that the absence of Ophelia’s mother (presumably by death) has had on her in her patriarchal world. What we can see is that the death of Polonius, added to the metaphorical death of her relationship with Hamlet, bring anguish greater than the container of Ophelia’s mind can withstand. She is plunged into a Truth/Meaning miasma leading to Madness, and she soon plunges even farther — by intent or accident — into Death.

This is the unflinching style at which Shakespeare excelled, and in the story of Ophelia, he makes clear the stakes that are involved when one finds Truth and Meaning in the realm of Nature. Madness and Death are honest instructors, but their lessons and methods can be brutal. And the fact that a sense of Destiny can be derived from Truth and Meaning does not imply that finding one’s Destiny ensures old age and easy living. A discovery of Truth and a sense of Meaning may grant fulfillment, but they do not guarantee a long or leisurely life.

With this cautionary image close at heart, Shakespeare pitches us immediately into the crescendo of Hamlet’s encounters with Death. Those encounters began when Hamlet agreed to step into the realm of the not-known, where his father’s undead ghost was haunting the castle ramparts. Once Hamlet assents to that entry into Nature’s domain, it seems that many forces collaborate to organize his repeated visits to the realm of Death.

Hamlet promotional photo. David Carl, 2016

Not only does the ghost of Old Hamlet exhort Hamlet a second time, after which Hamlet narrowly escapes being murdered on the boat to England, but the young prince is confronted unexpectedly with the spectacle of 20,000 soldiers who will soon die for nothing, which he interprets as a message that his inaction must quickly come to an end. Soon after, Hamlet has a reunion with the skull of his childhood friend Yorik, as well as the bones of others long departed from their mortal coil, before he finally witnesses the sad and secret memorial of the newly dead Ophelia.

Whatever can be learned from Death, Hamlet is given ample opportunity to learn it, and at the end of his encounter with the 20,000 doomed warriors, he pronounces a verdict on his Destiny: “O, from this time forth, my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!” (IV.iv) And thus Hamlet embarks on his path of Meaningful action. In the end, his consciousness, if not his “conscience,” has given him the courage that he lacked.

We all know how this story ends, of course, as we have known its ending for over 400 years. Destiny does not grant immortality. It only grants a sense of purpose and place in what the poet Mary Oliver has called “the family of things.” Hamlet has found his purpose, his place, and his course of right action — Truth and Meaning are his treasures from his terrible encounters with Madness and Death. Nature’s tools of synchronicity and devilish details — the chemical and human “collaborators” of Death — provide the concluding theatrics in the play. But the challenge of Destiny has already been met by Hamlet’s courage and tenacity. There is a sense that it doesn’t matter whether Hamlet lives or dies, because he has claimed his destined role in life against nearly insurmountable odds. By that standard, Hamlet is a hero. One feels sure that flights of angels will answer Horatio’s summons to sing the brave Prince to his well-earned rest.

Hamlet, Metropolitan Opera. Simon Keenlyside, 2010

Our indiscretion sometime serves us well
When our deep plots do pall; and that should learn us
There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.  (Hamlet, V.ii)

Author’s note: The term “madness,” as I am using the word in this essay, is not a technical term in the field of psychology. It is an archaic term that has been used in reference to a vast array of what psychologists now call “mental/behavioral disorders.” Historically, as in Shakespeare’s works, “madness” referred to everything from quirky mannerisms, to acute and chronic mood disorders (anxiety, grief, depression, etc.), to the symptom of florid psychosis that can be triggered by emotional trauma, physical trauma, clinical dementia, ingested substances, schizophrenia, or neurologic disease. In other words, “madness” is a clinically useless term because it is so uninformative, as well as being culturally pejorative. But as a metaphorical term for a state of psychological dysfunction, it is still a useful reference in this literary context, because we have a felt-sense of what Shakespeare and other historical people were talking about when they spoke of “madness.”  Therefore, that is the sense in which I will use the term “madness” in this essay, keeping in mind this crucial cautionary note.

This article was written by Barbara Hort, PhD, Psychodramaturg on Hamlet