Getting Hamlet

 1) You return from college to attend your father’s funeral.  You loved your father (who you were named after) immensely.  He was your rock, your guiding light....

 Result? Depression.  You probably dream of him…he visits you in dreams; you feel you had unfinished business…that his life was cut short, unfinished.

 2) Two months later your mother (Gertrude) marries  his brother (your uncle: Claudius).  In your youthful, overly idealized vision of love, you always thought your parents were deeply in love; that there was  just one man for every woman etc.  In your youthful, Romantic vision of Ideal love, you imagine knights  who die for their ladies. You write poems to your girlfriend (Ophelia) saying things like “I would die for you” and “If something were to happen to you, I would die” or “I would rather die than live without you” blah blah blah.

 But, instead, your mother is clearly having a blast banging the hell out of your uncle.

 Your girlfriend/boyfriend begins to treat you oddly.  If your ma is a slag, then your honey probably is too, cuz if you can't trust your ma, who can you trust.  Plus, her father (Polonius) works for your dad…and now your uncle, who’s taken over the family farm/business/kingdom, and her brother (Laertes) has been telling her that you're only after her arse .

 You suspect her father is telling her how to behave around you…that she needs to get serious about marriage and it shouldn’t be you.

 Your friends (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) are also acting weird.  …and they work for your family business, too.  They don’t treat you like you are you, but like you are your uncle’s son.

 Result? Deep distrust of those you once trusted most.

 3) You have always been considered really quite brilliant…maybe you are the only one in your family to have gone to college.  You like to read books and are a thinker, but now you find your thoughts turning in on yourself.  You think too much, an obvious manifestation of your depression.

Your dreams of your father begin to seep in to your waking hours.  Your grief turns to hatred…mostly of your uncle, busily banging your ma, who you now find you hate as well.  Slut!

Your depression deepens, causing you to miss sleep and you begin to hallucinate. You hear voices. 

Result? Deep distrust of your own sanity.

4) You dress in black and begin listening death metal and various old school gangsta rap, or, worse, you act like you are French, sitting in cafes until dawn drinking espresso, smoking Gitanes and reading Sartre.  You realize that death renders all things pointless and absurd…no matter how good a man your father was, he died young and everyone forgot him.  You realize no one acts honestly, not just to you but to each other…you begin to wonder whether you have ever acted honestly or whether you are, like them, nothing more than an illusion created to get what you want from others.

5) In short, he has suffered an "existential crisis" and has begun asking the Eternal Existential Questions; this in turn forces him to confront the Postmodern Problem of Subjectivity. 

Who are you, really?

What is death, that "undiscovered country"?  Where has your father “gone”?

Are you losing your mind, or have you stumbled on to the true nature of life itself: that we are all just actors playing our parts, that death renders life meaningless, and that we are, like you, stuck in our little brains and unable to differentiate between our own insanity and the objective truth?

How, given the state of your brain, can you make choices?  Who can you trust? Yourself? Anyone? No one?

But you must make choices.  You must act on those choices.   Your girlfriend awaits your choice.  The fate of your entire country may rest on your choices....

It's too much for you. Maybe you should just blow your brains out....

This is where the play starts.