awn in his game to win the King's favor. Ophelia tells Polonius that she thinks Hamlet has gone mad. She claims that while she was sewing he came to!
             her looking completely disheveled. Polonius is upset when he hears this, and he concludes that her refusal to see Hamlet anymore has driven the young prince mad. Polonius takes Ophelia to go see the King and Queen and tell them what has happened. The King is not completely convinced that love is the full cause of Hamlet's insanity. He and Polonius decide to put Ophelia into the hall where Hamlet is known to spend hours pacing each day. They plan to hide behind a tapestry and watch what happens. The character of Polonius emerges in this scene not as a fatherly figure giving advice, but as a "self absorbed busybody who regards his daughter as a tool..." (Camden 249). After forbidding Ophelia to see him, Polonius then eagerly delivers his dutiful daughter up to Hamlet, in his publicly acknowledged "turbulent and dangerous lunacy" (3.1.4), in order to prove his loyalty to Claudius, and perhaps to elevate his social status via a royal union. After Ophelia has been verbally assa!
             ulted by Hamlet in the course of Polonius' test, the King and Polonius debate Hamlet's mental state fo
             ...