Shakespeare, Madness, and Music

Shakespeare's three political tragedies- Hamlet , Macbeth , and King Lear -have numerously been presented or adapted on film. These three plays all involve the recurring trope of madness, which, as constructed by Shakespeare, provided a wider canvas on which to detail those materials that could not be otherwise expressed: sexual desire and expectation, political unrest, and, ultimately, truth, as excavated by characters so afflicted.