Hamlet is one of the few adolescents in Western art treated with sympathy by his creator. Shakespeare sees in Hamlet’s youth more than just immaturity and idiocy – he connects it with sincerity and philosophical depth.
 
To joke about one’s absurd adolescence is at the same time to boast about one’s current maturity. To say that it is “adolescent” to brood and ask what life is for at once flattens the complexity of our lives. Extending this method of labelling problems to the great works of literature would throw all literary critics out of a job. What made Hamlet, Raskolnikov or Young Werther tick? Adolescent angst. And what of Don Quixote or Humbert Humbert? Mid-life crises. And how to explain Anna Karenina? PMT and hormones.
 
The greatest masterpieces of art are, after all, attempts to answer many of the questions that confront teenagers around the time of the first kiss. One of the benefits of an evening with Hamlet is that he invites us to consider these questions with due seriousness. It may be time to revisit graveyards and wonder aloud what it’s all about.
 
[Alain de Botton]