One of the most controversial plays in Hamlet is whether Hamlet's madness is real or if he is faking it. If his madness is not real and he is faking it, this opens up the idea that he is using his madness as a distraction in order 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 Timone and Pumba provide him with some. Timone and Pumbaa are Hamlet's madness, but instead of Simba being mad himself, it is projected onto others. Timone and Pumbaa help Simba put his father's death out of his mind, help him push thoughts of his own death out of his mind, and help him create a distraction to allow him to realize his destiny of taking the place that returns to him as king. The story of The Lion King and the Hamlet tragedy are parallel stories. Both journeys take the reluctant protagonist through the loss of their fathers and on a journey to discover who was there to seal their fathers' fate. Once the characters learn that said person is one of their own family members, they realize that in order to restore order, they must avenge their fathers' deaths. This decision would not have been made without the madness that Simba and Hamlet face. The tragedy of Hamlet begins about two months after the death of King Hamlet, but in all that time, Hamlet has not evolved. He acts as if his father's death happened yesterday. He can't forget his father's death. Gertrude tells Hamlet that he must move on when she says, "Good Hamlet, cast away thy nocturnal color, and let thy eye be like a friend in Denmark." Do not always look with your veiled eyelids for your noble father in the dust: You I know that it is common... in the middle of a paper... an important piece of Hamlet. Without this madness, Samba would not have been able to overcome the death of his father, would have committed suicide and would not have taken his rightful place as king. Without this madness, the story would have progressed differently. That's why the writers had to incorporate the madness somehow. Their clever use of Timone and Pumbaa as a way to introduce Simba's madness allowed the story to progress in a similar way, without the confusion that the madness of whether Hamlet was truly mad or not was introduced in Hamlet. Harold Jenkins. Hamlet. London: Methuen, 1982. The Lion King. Real. Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. By Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, LindaWoolveton, Time Rice, Elton John, Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones and Jeremy Irons. VHS. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, Inc.., 1994.