Not at all. Although Hamlet does pretend to be insane, he does so only with some characters; to others, he is as he always was: thoughtful, articulate, loyal. Therefore, it is almost the reverse -- Hamlet seems to contain even more acting because the actor playing Hamlet must play him in two different ways depending on the scene. Hamlet is not actually insane, something that we can tell, in part, from the fact that he is able to turn the madness on and off at will. Hamlet tells Horatio that he plans to act as though he were mad so as to throw off any suspicions Claudius might have. Further, whenever he speaks to Horatio, he is himself; it is only when he speaks to characters like Claudius, Polonius, Ophelia, or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (people from whom he needs to hide his investigations into his father's murder, for various reasons) that he seems mad. Therefore, Hamlet's apparent madness actually requires a great deal more acting on the part of both the character and the actor playing him, not less.
Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
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