Hamlet - Shakespeare

The story of Hamlet is fairly well known so I won't bother with a point by point plot recap.  As I've written before, I've seen the play several times and I've read parts of it, but I've never read it all the way through.  I've never studied it.  This time I tried to empty my head of prior expectations and theories.  I tried to see the character of Hamlet in the freshest possible light.
This is what I saw.  Hamlet has had the foundations of his life shaken.  His beloved father has died suddenly.  His mother has betrayed the father by quickly remarrying.  Hamlet is smart and quick witted and completely overwhelmed.  He has great trouble coming to grips with the new situation.
He then meets the ghost of his deceased father, who tells Hamlet that he was murdered.  This brings about two specific sets of doubts.  One, Hamlet isn't certain that he can trust the word of a spirit.  Two, Hamlet isn't certain that he isn't going crazy.  The second point surprised me a bit.  I know that Hamlet 'plays' at being crazy but really, how much of an act is it?  In fact, until Act 3, when Claudius confesses to God, you could chalk the whole story up to Hamlet's madness.
Several things happen fairly quickly:

• Hamlet seeks evidence by having a traveling troupe of actors portray the murder.  Claudius acts guilty and Hamlet is convinced.
• Hamlet rejects his girlfriend, Ophelia, in a particularly harsh way.  The actions of his mother have seemingly poisoned his relationships with women.  He can no longer trust their love.
• While confronting his mother, Hamlet strikes out in anger and kills Polonius.  He thought (hoped, really) that it was Claudius.  
• Claudius believes that Hamlet is too dangerous and seeks to have him sent to England and executed.

Hamlet finds out and escapes back to Denmark.  He arrives to find that Ophelia has committed suicide.  Her brother, Laertes, wants to kill Hamlet.  These are more emotional shocks and by this time Hamlet has completely lost control of the situation.  He allows himself to be goaded into a playful duel or at least what he thinks is play. 
Before the duel he apologizes to Laertes and tries to start mending fences.  But it's too late.  The swords are poisoned.  The drinks are poisoned.  Rather famously, everyone dies.

The beauty of the play is that so much of the motivations of Hamlet are in question.  His actions make sense through several different interpretations.  Norrie Epstein wrote of Hamlet analysis:

Romantics read Hamlet as a sensitive poet, morbidly filled with thoughts of death. To the Victorians, Hamlet simply brooded too much: all he needed was a good tonic. In the age of Freud, Hamlet's failure to act was not so much explained as diagnosed: he was a neurotic, obsessed with his mother's sexuality. During the mid-twentieth century, Hamlet became an existential hero, clad in jeans and a black turtle-neck, who peered into the abyss, saw the fundamental absurdity of existence, and concluded that all action, including revenge, was meaningless.

Rereading what from above, I can see that I've added to this tradition above by concluding, in the understanding of our time, that Hamlet was emotionally overwhelmed by the various shocks in his life and didn't have time to work his way through them.  (I wonder what scholars will suggest a hundred years from now?)  You can make supporting arguments for any of these actions.  In this way, Hamlet is probably the most three dimensional character in Western theater.  He provides a mirror to to the way we perceive human actions. 
It's not surprising that this is considered Shakespeare's masterpiece.  Some of his other plays are more enjoyable.  I don't know that any of them provide as much fodder for discussion.