Hamlet The psychological deterioration of the title character is the cornerstone of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Consumed by a desire for revenge, Hamlet loses his already tenuous grip on reality. Starting the play with a scene in which Hamlet sees a ghost Shakespeare shows that Hamlet might not have been psychological stable to begin with, and that the emotional strain of losing his father at the hands of his uncle, and losing the love and respect of his mother too, might have been too much for the delicate prince to handle. Coupled with Hamlet's lack of ability to sincerely court Ophelia, his emotions related to his family issues eat away at him until he behaves in criminal ways. The madness of Hamlet is a central theme of the play, naturally contributing to the essential meaning of the work as a whole. As he succumbs to madness, Hamlet becomes a classical tragic hero.

Hamlet's devolution from a seemingly rational heir-apparent to a totally irrational man begins with his seeing the ghost of his father. Madness is presented as the antithesis to reason. Horatio advises Hamlet to not allow himself to be too lured by the message of the ghost or too tempted on the quest for revenge, lest the "toys of desperation…draw you into madness," (I, I, 707). Horatio's metaphor of descent into the sea parallels the descent of Hamlet into the pits of despair that torment him and cloud his judgment. The imagery of "descent" into madness is again used by Polonius" Thence...

The play itself is character-driven, its primary theme the knowledge that obsessive desire for revenge can lead to the disintegration of reason.
Yet at first, Hamlet's desire to take revenge on Claudius is understandable, and audiences easily sympathize with the hero because of the righteousness of his cause. His initial determination to exact revenge seems like a perfectly rational response to the death of his father, even if prompted by an irrational event: the sighting of a supernatural creature. The audience soon learns that the ghost speaks the truth, and that Hamlet is certainly justified in ensuring justice for Claudius. Because Hamlet does not seem motivated by his own personal quest for power, the audience feels doubly sympathetic. Hamlet's desire to avenge his father's death stems more from a sense of moral righteousness than from lust for the throne.

The psychological deterioration of Hamlet is mainly witnessed and described by others. Hamlet does not reach awareness of his condition on his own until the end of the play and he reaches rock bottom, first dealing with the death of Ophelia and later, facing his own death. Yet the audience is prompted to view Hamlet's growing obsession with revenge as a form of mental illness. Polonius at one point tells Claudius, "Your noble son is mad. Mad call I it, to define true madness. What is't but…