[bbctol]

I've always read Hamlet as very much about the gap between internal activities and the way they are recorded or remembered. The big joke of Hamlet is that from the outside, his story would have looked like a young prince going insane and impulsively murdering his uncle; it's only the audience that gets to hear Hamlet's soliloquies, and understand him as a sensitive, indecisive, deceptive, and patient person, who's been carefully building a case and means of revenge.

That's why his last lines are all about his fear that everyone will misinterpret what has happened, and regret that he doesn't have enough time to tell Horatio the truth. "O God, Horatio, what a wounded name,/Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!" and "So tell him, with th' occurrents, more and less,/Which have solicited. The rest is silence." and so on. (or, for that matter, his whole speech about "I know not “seems.”")

So I think it's less that we're meant to doubt Hamlet's sanity, and more that Shakespeare deliberately set up a weird scenario so that only the audience can understand that Hamlet is sane.

[sevensor]

That's really interesting! I love how Shakespeare usually has contradictory readings, and I'd like to propose one now: Hamlet's actions really aren't justified, and the play is there to show us how he talks himself into making such a bloody mess out of the situation.

[propertius]

In high school I thought Hamlet was a comedy. All the characters seemed deluded to the point of foolishness. The ending is a perfect comedy of errors. My feeling was good riddance!

I should reread it!

[GauntletWizard]

Comedy and Tragedy are a matter of perspective. I've seen Titus Andronicus performed as a comedy (And also as a comedy cooking show) - what seems dramatic can also seem melodramatic as a matter of portrayal. The darkest of realities can be the lightest of jokes, ever heard a dead baby joke? Likewise, most good comedy has a serious core at it's center. I have no doubt that by changing the stakes slightly, Caddyshack could be a serious statement on the human condition: Make the scholarship the make-or-break for Danny's college chances, put Spackler on the edge of feeding his kids. Comedy and Tragedy are simply how much distance we put between ourselves and the characters.