at Hamlet is acting, or that he is acting so well that he begins to adapt to the madness and he is actually mad?Queen Gertrude suspected Hamlet went mad because of 'his father's death and [his mother's] o'verhasty marriage' to Claudius. She, of course, doesn't know he is acting, but recognizes the causes of his melancholy with complete exactitude. Although his theory is far from the truth, Polonius just thinks that Hamlet is mad for Ophelia's love, which reflects his intellectual arrogance with which he always thinks he is right about everything, no matter how foolish he seems to others. Finally, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are convinced that Hamlet is mad because his ambitions had been hindered. Ophelia, the character known for going insane in Hamlet, is a frail and delicate girl who, because of her father's sheltering, doesn't have a mind of her own. In Act I, Scene III, Ophelia tells her father, Polonius, "[Hamlet] hath, my lord, of late made many tenders of his affection of me," but immediately gets shot down by her fathers words of, "Affection? Pooh! You speak like a green girl." Polonius then goes on to tell her not to believe Hamlet's vows and that she should not waste her free time by talking to Hamlet. It is revealed later on in Act II, Scene I that she does indeed comply with Polonius's wishes and to Hamlet's love comments being "the very ecstasy of love" by saying, "I did repel his letters and denied his access to me." Although Ophelia loved Hamlet and didn't want to deny him anything, the wishes of her father and brother stood in the way of her freedom to love. In her encounter with Hamlet in the Nunnery Scene (III, i), Hamlet tells Ophelia that he doesn't love her anymore and then begins to rant about the nunneries and the wickedness of women. Hamlet's comments assist the collapse of Ophelia's world. So far in her young life, she had been under continual direction of three men: her lover, her brother, and her fa...
