The phrase "dual existence" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where something or someone has two simultaneous states or realities.
Example: "The concept of dual existence is often explored in philosophical discussions about the nature of reality and consciousness."
Alternatives: "twofold existence" or "bifurcated existence."
The key, and the missing detail, is that Hamlet is a theatrical character, and, while he exists, let us say, in a book, Hamlet also has a dual existence in that he exists on stage, too.
"I had this dual existence," he said.
He described a kind of dual existence.
Embedded within this curious dual existence lay another dilemma: in the Mediterranean, I wrote.
Most amphibians lead a dual existence, spending part of their life in water, part on land.
The only expense he filed with regularity was for his cellphone, that indispensable tool of his dual existence.
It's got everything: a Peyton Place-ish location in small-town Scottsville, NY, and an involved family drama: a single mother, an absent father, covert sexual shenanigans, a Prodigal Son, and the fraught dual existences of home and office.
The sessions with Michael's shrinks were useful at first, because they laid out the ground rules of Michael's dual existences, and Jones and Wong have engaging presences ("Awake" is a very well cast show).
Where his contemporaries (Olivier, Richardson and Gielgud - were either straight or gay, Redgrave lived a dual sexual existence that was personally tormenting yet professionally enriching.
But that's typical of the dual performing existence led by the many enterprising but struggling children's performers who operate below the radar around the nation.
It was the start of a long education with the teacher Lee Strasberg -- and of a dual acting existence that in some ways persisted through three decades of increasingly demanding television and movie roles, culminating in her Broadway debut as Mercedes Ruehl's replacement in "The Goat".
