“Spectre of nature”: the unnatural, spectrality and madness in Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear

Concentrating on the connection between “nature” and “madness” in threeShakespeare’s tragedies – Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear, this thesis examines theunnatural and how it contributes to the development of the characters’ madness. Fromtransgressive actions such as murder and betrayal to the supernatural beings and thenatural settings, the various forms of the unnatural permit an intricate interlacement ofthose that are similarly categorized as contrary to the natural – the “unnatural”, the“natural”, and the “supernatural”. As it displays how different ideas and meanings of“nature” are at play when its contraries are mentioned, this interlacement unveils thelatent ambivalence of “nature” from which the “specters of nature” emerge. Forced toacknowledge the complex ambivalence of “nature”, the characters’ encounters withthe “specters of nature” throw them into confusion since their previous worldviewsare challenged. Still, the characters are unable to correctly recognize that ambivalenceand accept their own limitations as human beings which prevent them from doing so.Haunted, these characters are engulfed in doubts, anxiety and fear. Findingthemselves in hopeless situations, they descend into madness which leads them totheir tragic ends.