The basic question that can be placed about the play 'Hamlet' is whether Hamlet, the character, was actually mad or not. There is really no easy way or a thin line that divides the two extremes of insanity and sanity. Who is to say that there is such a distinction? In fact, Shakespeare probably didn't even mean it in the way where you can point your finger to Hamlet and declare him mad, because the tragedy did not lie in whether he was sound of mind. What the tragedy is about is that the high soul that was him was brought down to dregs and ruined. The play actually begins with a murder and the end of the play is not a happy one either since it ends with a massacre. In fact, Hamlet has been presented by Shakespeare as a man who is not of an ordinary kind, someone with no ordinary wit or intellect but one who has been touched with the gift of finer issues. A reader, a scholar and a man of fine intellect who loved the stage, is suddenly faced with a task. This task is his requirement to avenge the murder of his father. The other tragic part is the court that he belongs to. The court of Elsinore is filled with people who are quite ordinary and those who absolutely do not understand him. Therefore, he finds himself completely alone. This is something that is constantly running through the course of the play, the stark differences between Hamlet himself and the environment that he finds himself in. Hamlet, as a play, is in fact most valued for an internal struggle within the character himself and the importance that Shakespeare gave to the mysteries of the internal character and its dealings.