Shakespeare's Hamlet is a most mysterious and complex character; his mind is the subject of more detailed psychoanalysis than any other character in English literature. It's not often that readers come across a man who fakes madness, and ultimately plunges himself so deep into this artificial madness to a point of total metamorphosis into a new being.
             "I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw" (II.ii.387-8). This is a classic example of the "wild and whirling words" (I.v.133) with which Hamlet hopes to persuade people to believe that he is mad. These words, however, prove that beneath his "antic disposition," Hamlet is very sane indeed. Beneath his strange choice of imagery involving points of the compass, the weather, and hunting birds, he is announcing that he is calculatedly choosing the times when to appear mad. Hamlet is saying that he knows a hunting hawk from a hunted "handsaw" or heron, in other words, that, very far form being mad, he is perfectly capable of recognizing his enemies.
             Hamlet's madness was faked for a purpose. He warned his friends he intended to fake madness, but Gertrude as well as Claudius saw through it, and even the slightly dull-witted Polonius was suspicious. His public face is one of insanity but, in his private moments of soliloquy, through his confidences to Horatio, and in his careful plans of action, we see that his madness is assumed.
             After the Ghost's first appearance to Hamlet, Hamlet decides that when he finds it suitable or advantageous to him, he will put on a mask of madness so to speak. He confides to Horatio that when he finds the occasion appropriate, he will "put an antic disposition on" (I.v.172). This strategy gives Hamlet a chance to find proof of Claudius's guilt and to contemplate his revenge tactic. Although he has sworn to avenge his father's murder, he is not sure of the Ghost's origins: "The spirit that I have seen May be the de...