Madness is the mental incapacity caused by an unmentionable injury, and in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, the protagonist exhibits a duplicitous, almost insane nature. Hamlets father is murdered by his uncle, Claudius, the new king. After much grief, Hamlet starts to plot his uncle's death, and due to the stress some think, "Alas! He's mad" (3.4.107). The pressure of vengeance are too much for Hamlet and his constantly trying to determine what is real and what appears to be real leads to the collapse of his mind.
            
             The initiating incident that sends Hamlet's mind spiralling downwards is when his father is murdered and the events around it. The loss of his father leaves him grief stricken however his pain is soon turned to rage when his father's ghost visits him; telling him that the man his mother has remarried is his killer and brother and now the new king. His dead father demanded, " Revenge [for] his foul and most unnatural murder" (1.5.25), so Hamlet committed himself to restoring honour to his meeting and hearing what happened to his dead father's apparition was too much for anyone person to handle. He then realises how his mother, "...post[ed] with such dexterity to incestuous sheets" (1.2.156-57), and was most likely involved in the assassination of her husband and child's father; all of this is a lot of secrecy and burden for the prince to bear. His next dilemma is to determine whether or not the ghost is speaking truth or is a demon sent to poison his mind. After he sees Claudius's reaction to the play Hamlet puts on depicting the events around the murder he decides that the ghost was telling the truth and plots the new king's death. Unfortunately Hamlet waited almost two months before doing anything, let alone committing himself to the murder.
            
             This long procrastination period is only one of the few stresses's that Hamlet's mind has to bear. Once he does start to plan Claudius's murder he begins to push himself to the extr...