Meisam Ganjkhani - English Language and Literature Department, Allameh Tabataba’i University, Tehran, Iran

Madness has been depicted in numerous non/fictional documents throughout history. Nevertheless, it was not until Renaissance that madness could find a firm framework in the language of drama. Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Hamlet: Prince of Denmark (1599? 1602) and Middleton and Rowley’s The Changeling (1962) both take madness as their central theme. They have been subject to numerous studies but only a few of them have juxtaposed the two in order to show the convergences and divergences in the manner of their depiction of madness. Also, the significance of the female characters’ affliction to the disease within the two plays has usually gone unnoticed. This paper attempts to bring together the characters who either feign madness or truly go mad, in order to depict the dis/similarities in the manner of their treatment of madness, and to emphasize the role that gender plays in their handling of the disease. Ultimately, the paper aims to illustrate how different approaches to madness within the plays lead to the final liberation of the characters, even at the cost of their life.

Isabella, liberation, madness, Ophelia