Hamlet, the Crazy One

     I hope for everybody's sanity's sake that their lives are nowhere near as bad as Hamlet's. He has every bad thing coming after him, and it's not even the end of the second act yet. To outline every problem he has so far:
-His girlfriend, Ophelia, has sworn to her father that she won't see him anymore because her father, Polonius, thinks Hamlet is using her and/or he's a bit creepy.
-His father, King Hamlet, just died.
-He was not given the crown; his uncle Claudius became king.
-His mother remarried to--guess who?--king Claudius.
-He was denied the opportunity to go to school by the king himself.
-He knows his father's killer--it's Claudius.

I think that covers everything…so far. Can you imagine a modernized version of this type of situation? Putting this all in a scenario, you are a 20-something year old man whose girlfriend unexpectedly stopped talking to you a mere month after you lost your father, who had owned a company with some type of inheritance plan. This inheritance plan doesn't include you, but in fact goes to his sketchy uncle who has the hots for your mom. And, despite your former belief that your mom only had her heart set on the man she married (your father), she happily jumps into marriage with this uncle less than a month after your dad dies. But somehow, you manage to get into contact with your father, who reveals that the true killer of his mysterious death is the evil uncle, and he places the sacred duty of vengeance on your small, young shoulders.

This is where I hit a small speed bump.

The use of the ghost is clever on Shakespeare's part in that the audience cannot help but distrust the bad omens the ghost brings. However, it tells Hamlet what seems to be the truth about what really happened prior to his death, and the ghost doesn't appear to be inherently evil; he doesn't come from hell, per se, but rather from Purgatory waiting to be purged of all sins. And yet, I find it hard to believe that Shakespeare himself was superstitious in comparison to the audience he was serving. And I too am pretty skeptical of this apparition. If we were to modernize this portion of the play, how would it be done?

I've had this theory run through my head a couple of times since I've thought about it, and now I can't help but notice how it could fit even in Shakespeare's time. Maybe the ghost doesn't really exist; maybe Hamlet himself is going crazy. It's plausible, at best. His mind is going through an incredible amount of stress, and to top it all of he has no way of releasing this inner tension that's eating off of him. In response, his mind starts projecting and hallucinating to account for this stress, to try and make sense of it (I worked on psychology for way too long today, being snowed-in and all). He imagines his conversation with his dead father's ghost and comes up to his own wild conclusion that his uncle killed his own father to put his own mind at ease. This is why his mother and Claudius want to keep an eye on him, and why everybody (including the sentinels) always seems so polite to him; they're afraid of doing something that could set Hamlet off. There's the outlier Polonius of course (who seems to hate Hamlet's guts), but I think I would be more sympathetic towards him if I knew that my daughter were to date someone as emotionally unstable as Hamlet during this difficult time. I have to admit that what Claudius and Gertrude have done, so soon after the late King Hamlet's death, is a bit creepy. But they could also be genuinely concerned for Hamlet's health; if they knew, as parents, how weird their situation was, they would do anything in their power to help Hamlet make sense of it. If Hamlet isn't responding the way they want them to, of course they'd be worried.

And this would be a perfect modern adaption of our 'ghost.' Regardless of whether Hamlet's hunch on the killer is right or not, considering the possibility of mental disorder adds depth to Hamlet as a character. If we don't even know if Hamlet has his head on straight, how do we discern reality from imagination? It's an interesting take on Hamlet's disposition, that his insanity from grief caused him to be this way. At least, I find that more believable than a "thoughtful" ghost guiding him to avenge his murder with more murder.