For the final creative project in my Shakespeare course, I created a visual representation of how Hamlet‘s personality traits would be treated in the modern-day world of medicine. In today’s world, someone like Hamlet would be prescribed a plethora of pills to help cure his unfortunate mental disorders. My goal for the project was to create a connection between a piece of Shakespearean literature and the ongoing discussion of mental illness across the world.

To accomplish this, I acted as a doctor and diagnosed Hamlet’s psychological health, writing “a doctor’s note,” to explain the reasoning behind each medication I prescribed. For each note, I took an image of a blank prescription and added the desired medical information on Photoshop, paying close attention to detail. Once I had the ‘realistic’ notes, I then tried to find an adequate prop to mimic all the controlled substances I had just prescribed. My small budget and creativity led me to Target, where I selected a variety of Tic-Tac containers to represent pills. Then, I relabeled the containers to match the medication and the color of the pills.

Here is a brief overview of my evaluation for Hamlet:

• A college student prone to all types of distractions and indecisive thoughts, Hamlet clearly shows signs of Attention Deficit Disorder. He struggles to make up his mind for just about every problem in his life, most notably his inability to kill Claudius. I prescribed: 30mg Adderall once a day.
• At the beginning of the play, Hamlet learns of his father’s death, which is severely upsetting, causing him to fall into a deep depression and develop anxiety. Hamlet clearly shows symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I prescribed: 50mg Zoloft once a day.
• After returning home, Hamlet finds out that his mother, Queen Gertrude has already been re-married to the “new” King of Denmark, his uncle Claudius. Hamlet begins to wear all black and recite sad soliloquies for the following weeks. The protagonist struggles to cope with this traumatizing event in his life and shows signs of Major Depressive Disorder. I prescribed: 20mg Prozac twice a day.
• After overcoming his depression, the protagonist struggles with daily anxiety which is evident in his conversations and thoughts. Hamlet demonstrates symptoms such as restlessness, feeling on edge, and irritability – a textbook example of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I prescribed: 1mg Xanax three times daily.
• Ever since his initial ghost encounter at the beginning of the play, Hamlet remains unsure about the voices and hallucinations he experienced. These delusions combined with his bizarre Psychomotor behavior, make him a patient of Schizophrenia. I prescribed 15mg Abilify once a day.
• Hamlet often switches his mental state, he frequently appears intelligent and levelheaded, however, at other times he acts crazy and makes rash decisions. Additionally, he presents a character with a talkative personality and a unique ability to involve himself with undesirable activities, therefore I diagnosed Hamlet with Type Two Bipolar Disorder. I prescribed: 300mg Seroquel once a day, before bed.
• All of these prescriptions are signed under the name Doctor Butts, who is a physician that appeared in one of Shakespeare’s other works.

My project enhances understanding of the play, specifically focusing on the protagonist character. Hamlet appears as the typical young adult, going through what seems to be the worst days of their life. Alongside the intense depression, Hamlet also faces a mental struggle between an inability to make up his mind or acting too hastily. Naturally, as I dug deeper into the story I improved my understanding of Hamlet, however, this allowed me to create more obscure connections between the character and various psychological disorders.

Shakespeare used Hamlet to draw a timeless connection between the audience and mental health issues that so many young adults face. The relevance of my project lies in the fact that while Hamlet’s unique circumstances were merely fictional, his mental hardships were actually quite relatable.

Reflection

The creative project seemed intimidating at first, but once I settled on an idea – it allowed me to view Shakespeare in an entirely new light. My experience completing the project was condensed into various intellectual breakthroughs, when I would spontaneously think of improvements or additional ideas to enhance my project. The topic of diagnosing Hamlet with mental disorders helped me understand the play because it forced me to hyper-analyze one specific character, the protagonist. I felt challenged when it came to two key aspects in my project: the accuracy in my diagnosis as well as not repeating the same symptoms for each disorder.

At first, the play’s complex story, combined with peculiar language, made it difficult to draw the more obscure connections between Hamlet and modern illnesses. Luckily, as I analyzed Hamlet more throughout the play, the easier and more creative my diagnoses became. During the project, I was forced to make some bold judgments about Shakespeare’s portrayal of Hamlet, however, this allowed me to exaggerate his interesting personality. In the end, after a tedious construction process, I felt fully satisfied with my project and how it turned out.

The impact of my project relies entirely on its relevance in today’s world. By using the most discussed topic in the modern news, I drew a connection between mental health and a character from Shakespearean literature, which I felt was a neat idea. One of the challenges I struggled with, was also a goal I had set for myself – maintaining a high level of accuracy in each aspect of my project. I demonstrated this goal in the small details of my project, such as my FDA approved prescription paper all the way through to the symptoms I cited in each diagnosis. The visit from special collection indirectly influenced my project, mainly by showing me how much people still cared about Shakespeare’s work. It got me thinking, if people focused on any issue in our society with such rigor and dedication, we could solve some serious issues. I used the timeless character, Hamlet, to express the continued importance of mental disorders in our culture.

I was absolutely amazed at the quality of content that our lecture recitation created for this project. While I still thought my idea was quite unique, some of my peers brought in work that was much more detailed and thorough. A few incredible projects that come to my head immediately would be the complete Game of Life: Shakespeare edition, and the working game of 20 Questions, written in C++. I found these projects to be extremely informative and showed a phenomenal understanding of the plays. While these two projects showed unmatched attention to detail, there were other remarkably creative ideas, such as the picture book filled with beautiful drawings. The book came together to create animated cartoons, which were relevant to the overall theme of the project. Projects such as the picture book demonstrate a wonderful idea, being implemented in ways that think outside the box. This leads me to the advice that I would give to a future student approaching this project – do it differently. While past projects can guide a student towards their idea, I gained the most by trying to break the status quo and create something completely different.