The Method to Hamlet's Madness

Tracking madness as a motif isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do in most books; you just need to know the right ones to use. The first on my list will be Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Quite possibly could be considered one of the best known tragedies the play write produced in his lifetime. The way this certain play uses madness is deceiving at first, once the reader begins they are not certain if Hamlet is playing the role of the insane prince or if in fact he does lose his mind once the ghost of his father pushes him to far.
Firstly the thing to consider is that Hamlet in the beginning is very lucid in his ideas and speech even when he is visited by the supposed ghost of his father his response in reasonable. Then when does this cool collected person go once he finds out his uncle is responsible for the death of his father. The visit by the ghost of king hamlet can be confusing to the reader, not knowing whether to believe that a ghost of a father who is trying to communicate with his son or just the projection of a very unstable young man trying to coup with the loss of a father and the apparent betrayal of a mother.
Hamlet is not the only one who deals with the apparent loss of sanity, but due to Hamlet’s ravings another innocent is lost, Ophelia. After dealing with the abuse brought onto her by her supposed crazed love Ophelia herself loses the battle against insanity and her story ends in the most tragic of ways, she ends up taking her own life to escape the pain. This incident then causes a chain of events that leads to the death of most of the characters and the taking over of the kingdom by an invading king. So it is easy to make the leap of faith that due to Hamlet either being crazy or pretending to be crazy he ruins the lives of those that he held most dear to him, that is what the price of insanity was for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.