Was Shakespeare mad?

While the appearance of the ghost has been verified and, indeed introduced by others, it is only Hamlet who sees the apparition in Gertrude’s closet. Hamlet’s conversation with Gertrude at this time is typical of a person in a manic episode as above, so it is possible that, on this occasion, the ghost is actually an hallucination. This would then explain Hamlet’s cavalier attitude towards having murdered an innocent bystander - albeit one concealed behind an arras - as well as the prurient unreason of his interest in his mother’s sex life.

What is amazing about Hamlet in the light of recent psychological knowledge is how the portrayal of madness deviates from the traditional public concept of lunacy which existed when it was written. It is this departure which may partially contribute to it being regarded as a problem text.

To enact madness in early modern times was to portray hysteria or testeria in recognisable forms. The conventional mad person on-stage was “the jilted lover gone demented” (Ophelia) or the ranting religious maniac; and standard actions such as muttering gibberish, and tearing off one’s clothes epitomised madness in the public mind. It is important to remember also that, unlike witchcraft, there was no body or person who could be considered an authority upon madness.

The definition of madness was constantly being renegotiated with regard to questions such as religion, philanthropy (a 19th century English farmer was once confined to an asylum for paying his labourers above the award rate) or passion. Madness was also situational and so could include a new mother with what we now call post partum depression, an attempted suicide or even the topsy-turvy world of Carnival where everyone was expected to go a little mad.

In light of the above therefore, perhaps it is not beyond the bounds of probability that Shakespeare, one of the greatest creative geniuses of English literature, could have been thus afflicted. We know he spent many years apart from his family; he didn’t carouse with his colleagues Jonson and Marlowe; he didn’t commemorate the death of either his father or son in verse as would seem natural to one who expressed himself through his pen; and, while regarded as “gentle”, “honey-tongued” and “sweet”, he left a public indictment of his wife through his will wherein she was only to receive the famous “second-best bed”.

The discovery that he suffered from a mental illness of this kind would help explain the anomalies and confusions that have arisen over the centuries regarding his personality. If nothing else such a theory at least provides food for thought!