Why must Hamlet die?

After all of the wonderful presentations on the various interpretations of Hamlet, I must say that I was most moved by G. Wilson Knight ideas about the Shakespearean play. Knight managed to come up with some very meaningful, and relevant renderings of Hamlet that I feel do a great job of answering many of the lingering questions one may have after studying the play.

I agree very much so with Knight in that the play's theme is death, and that the character Hamlet is very much surrounded by the numerous examples of human kind's mortality. Shakespeare also ties in themes of good and evil that make the play equally balanced in terms of thematic differentiations.

In terms of both G. Wilson Knight's interpretation, to which I also sceptically agree, Hamlet must die because he has "soul-sickness." This "soul-sickness" comes from the fact that he is no longer mentally healthy, he has lost his father to murder and his mother to incest, and cannot seem to function properly. This dysfunction creates a Hamlet that is "inhuman" and incapable of thinking much more than of death, it also fills him with meaninglessness so much so that he has really already died. The real Hamlet, the one that we never meet, is no longer there; the Hamlet that the play knows is one that is infected and confused. Hamlet's infection soon comes to effect the whole play and all of its characters, eventually to the point that everyone dies. Thus Hamlet must die because he can no longer live; he cannot live because his life has been ruined, and he has ruined every other person's lives. Hamlet's disease is why he must die, and it is why he is already dead.