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 hand…showed first 75 words of 1772 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1772 total…alizes he is being spied on. He reacts the way any hurt young rejected lover would. In the end, it is surprising that he is able to keep up the charade of faking madness for so long, and part of his tragedy is that it doesn't help him anyway; in the end, he avenges his father by killing Claudius not through an act of madness, but as a result of Claudius's own treachery.