One of the most controversial pieces of Hamlet is whether Hamlet's madness is real or whether he is faking it. If his madness is not real, and he is faking it, it opens up the idea that he is using his madness as a distraction to draw attention away from his true actions of killing Claudius. In The Lion King, Simba doesn't have his own madness, but his friends Timon and Pumba provide him with some of theirs. Timon and Pumba are Hamlet's madness, but instead of Simba himself being mad, it is projected onto others. Timon and Pumba help Simba put his father's death out of his mind, help him put the thought of his own death out of his mind, and help him create a distraction so he can fulfill his destiny: taking his rightful place as king. The story of The Lion King and the tragedy Hamlet are parallel stories. Both journeys take the recalcitrant protagonist through the loss of his fathers and on a journey to discover who was there to seal their fathers' fate. Once the characters learn that that person is a member of their family, they realize that to restore order they must avenge their fathers' deaths. This decision would not have been made without the madness that both Simba and Hamlet deal with. The tragedy of Hamlet begins about two months after King Hamlet's death, but in all this time Hamlet has not moved forward. He acts as if his father's death had happened the day before. He can't let go of his father's death. Gertrude tells Hamlet that he needs to move on when she says: Good Hamlet, cast away thy night-colour, and let thy eye look like a friend upon Denmark. Do not forever search for your noble father in the dust with your veiled eyelids: you know he is common... middle of paper... a major piece of Hamlet. Without madness Samba would not have been able to overcome his father's death, would have committed suicide, and would not have taken his rightful place as king. Without the madness, history would have gone differently. That's why the writers had to incorporate the madness somehow. Their clever use of Timon and Pumba as a way to introduce Simba's madness allowed the story to progress in the same way, without the confusion introduced in Hamlet on Madness as to whether Hamlet was truly mad or not. Works Cited Shakespeare, William and Harold Jenkins. Hamlet. London: Methuen, 1982. The Lion King. Directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. By Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, Linda Woolveton, Time Rice, Elton John, Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones and Jeremy Irons. VHS. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc., 1994.