Why Is Hamlet Considered To Be Shakespeare's Best Play?

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a masterpiece of all times. There is absolutely no doubt in the greatness of the play. Of four tragedies written by Shakespeare, Hamlet and King Lear are given the same ranking by many of the critics.

As far as the story of the play is concerned, Hamlet does not have anything new to offer to the audience. But the real beauty of the play lies in Shakespeare's art of characterization and the powerful dialogues of Hamlet.

When Hamlet comes to know about the murder of late King Hamlet, the kind of madness that Hamlet adopts is always very difficult for a writer to present on stage. The real difficulty in depicting such kind of a character is that his personality must be represented at three various levels. At one level, he has to be represented as a mad man to rest of the characters of the play. Secondly, he is to be shown as a normal man to the audience n thirdly, the integrity of the character has to be in tact.  So, it is almost impossible to take three folded personality of a character with all the three folds working simultaneously.
This is probably one of thousands of reasons for popularity of this play. I would really love other people to participate into this discussion.