feigning feigning

Hal's own phrase for the Hamlet problem the ending turns on. Lying paralyzed on the viewing-room floor in the book's final E.T.A. stretch, he reflects that Hamlet, "for all his paralyzing doubt about everything, never once doubts the reality of the ghost," and never questions "whether his own madness might not in fact be unfeigned" — that is, "whether Hamlet might be only feigning feigning" (p. 900). Madness performed as a performance, and so possibly real: the novel plants the formula just before its close, and readers apply it straight to Hal, whose Year of Glad interior voice is lucid while everyone in the room sees something inhuman.