SARAH: When Hamlet swears Horatio and Marcellus to silence, he tells them that he is going "to put an antic disposition on."

RALPH: Hamlet means that he is going to pretend to be crazy. He wants to make Claudius think that he is harmless, incapable of taking revenge for his father's murder.

SARAH: Hamlet's strategy of feigning madness is an important element of the play; but it's one that bothers a lot of critics.

RALPH: In the original story on which the play is based, Claudius's murder of King Hamlet is public knowledge, but Prince Hamlet is too young to do anything about it. In that situation, Hamlet's feigning madness makes sense — otherwise it's unlikely Claudius would ever let him reach maturity.

SARAH: But in Shakespeare's play, Claudius has no reason to suspect that Hamlet even knows his father was murdered. It seems to make more sense for Hamlet to just act normal.

RALPH: But this potential flaw in Shakespeare's play probably would not have been noticed by Shakespeare's audience.

SARAH: For them, an aggrieved young nobleman who feigns madness to buy time until he can take his revenge and kill the evil king was a common literary plot line.

RALPH: For example, they would have been familiar with the Roman legend of Brutus and the Tarquins.

SARAH: In the 5th century BC, Rome was ruled by the brutal Tarquin family. A young nobleman, Brutus, had particular reason to hate them — his older brother had been executed by the king, and his cousin raped by the king's son.

RALPH: Brutus pretended to be half-witted until he was old enough to secretly plan a rebellion that overthrew the Tarquins and established the first Roman republic.