Knowing from the reader's perspective of the story-Hamlet is pretending to be mad and only him and his best trusted friend Horatio knows it well as they know the plan of Hamlet's vengeance of his own father. So this is just an eccentric behavior of his. Perhaps a behavior to only have King Claudius's guard down as the Claudius and Polonius believes his madness is coming from the love he has for Ophelia which means it is consider to be a delusion. As it can be seen from the reader's perspective, Shakespeare creates many twists in the story within the character, Hamlet. Illustrates how one character's actions of a mad man can be interpret to many conclusions yet only the sliest knows the true meaning. Though, the fact how Claudius and Polonius had assumed wrongly of the cause of Hamlet's madness, creates a misjudgment.
The misjudgments that have been created. Leads to the attempts of Hamlet's death as they tried to ship him off to England where he was supposed to be exiled. It failed drastically as pirates-coming out of the blue- saved Hamlet's life (plus the forged letter to kill Rosencrantz and Guildenstern instead of him) and returned back to Denmark where the fight began. Hamlet's actions of madness gave others a wrong judgment as no one knew beside themselves(Horatio and Hamlet) the reason why he had gone mad only created assumptions which lead to strange solutions of exiling or getting rid of as if madness is a disease.
Madness was an act of the play, pretending to have Claudius's guard down in order for him to trust Hamlet and not have any suspicions of him trying to avenge his father by killing Claudius. A Brilliant plan, however, the madness in the end becomes the truth which than reveals everything that was kept hidden.
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