the situation. At the same time, he wants to appear unthreatening and harmless so that people will divulge information to him, much in the same way that an adult will talk about an important secret in the presence of a young child. To convince everyone of his madness, Hamlet spends many hours walking back and forth alone in the lobby, speaking those "wild and whirling words" which make little sense on the surface but in fact carry a meaningful subtext. When asked if he recognizes Polonius, Hamlet promptly replies, "Excellent well; you are a fishmonger" (II.ii.174). Although the response seems crazy since a fish-seller would look completely unlike the expensively dressed lord Polonius, Hamlet is actually criticizing Polonius for his management of Ophelia, since "fishmonger" is Elizabethan slang for "pimp." He plays mind-games with Polonius, getting him in crazy talk to agree first that a cloud looks like a camel, then a weasel and finally a whale, and in a very sane aside, he then comments that "[t]hey fool me to the top of my bent" (III.ii.392).Although he appears to have lost touch with reality, he keeps reminding us that he is not at all "far gone, far gone" (II.ii.190) as Polonius claims, but is in fact very much in command of himself and the situation. With his rantings and ravings and his seemingly Pg. 3useless pacing of the lobby, Hamlet manages to appear quite mad. The nave and trusting Ophelia believes in and is devastated by what she sees as his downfall: " O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! / . . . The expectancy and rose of the fair state / . . . quite, quite down!" (III.i.153,5,6). Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are also fully convinced. They are Hamlet's equals in age but are far inferior in intellect and therefore don't understand that he is faking. However, although Hamlet manages to convince these simple friends and Ophelia of his insanity, other characters in the play such as Claudius, Gertrude and even Polonius eve...
