Publisher : DH Audio
Publication Date : 1996 05
>> It harrows me with fear and wonder
Hamlet doesn t need any introduction the tortured Dane the ghost meditations on suicide and a climax full of death But as well known as the storyline is the play itself is what deserves the attention both for Shakespeare s shadowy plot filled with uncertainty and treachery and for his brilliant immortal writing which takes on a new dimension when read on the page
Prince Hamlet of Denmark is understandably upset when only a short time after his father s death his mother Gertrude marries his uncle Claudius who is now the new king Who wouldn t be unhappy But when Hamlet encounters the tormented ghost of his father I am thy father s spirit/Doom d for a certain term to walk the night he learns that his dad was murdered by his uncle but he s plagued by indecision since he s unsure if the spirit was truly his dad
In response to this vision Hamlet s behavior becomes more bizarre and erratic he dumps his girlfriend Ophelia arranges a play that mimics real life a little too closely and generally acts like a loon But when an argument with his mother ends in tragedy and the death of one of Ophelia s loved ones Hamlet s fate is sealed as Claudius begins plotting to get rid of him too
Small warning like all Shakespeare s plays it s best to read Hamlet after you ve seen a good performance because the entire thing was intended to be acted out Otherwise it s like reading a movie script to a movie you haven t seen easy to get lost and the dramatic effects aren t easy to connect to
But if you HAVE seen a good performance of Hamlet then the play will just jump off the page The plot is a relatively simple one but it s tangled up in all sorts of moral dilemmas personal doubts deteriorating personal relationships and a creeping undercurrent of darkness The best part is that Shakespeare leaves you with all sorts of questions that are left up in the air is Hamlet crazy or just faking it Is the ghost really his dad
And of course it contains some of the most intense powerful examples of Shakespeare s work here vivid nasty imagery In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed/Stew d in corruption honeying and making love/Over the nasty sty some bleak humor you re a fishmonger and Hamlet s immortal soliloquies It s also one of Shakespeare s most quotable plays obviously you ve got bits like Alas poor Yorick to be or not to be and Something is rotten in the state of Denmark but there are countless other familiar phrases littered through the text
On the page Hamlet is basically an embittered young man who is torn between his doubts and convictions but is still determined to fix things O cursed spite /That ever I was born to set it right A lot of the supporting cast are hard to follow but there are some brilliant and enduring roles here the incestuous queen Gertrude the subtle menace of Claudius the windbag Laertes and Ophelia whose uncertainties spiral into madness after her ex boyfriend kills her dad
It s best to get a grip on this classic tragedy by watching an actual performance but reading Hamlet s text is a vivid experience on its own Brilliant complex and intense
>> The Mighty Elusive Dane
Hamlet is for everybody but not for everybody to enjoy equally The sad truth is I am one of those who have come through some application to feel real appreciation for the play yet never loved it The fault is mine and not Shakespeare s but it is an honest fault worth exploring
The story is pretty straightforward on its face The king of Denmark has died and as his son Hamlet fights overwhelming grief he comes to discover the father died at the hand of his successor Hamlet s uncle Claudius As he contemplates the enormity of this knowledge he wrestles with the fact his friends and court advisors are in league with the uncle Even Hamlet s mother has compromised her connection with him by marrying Claudius soon after being widowed Through all this turmoil a cosmic consciousness slowly emerges in young Hamlet
There are more things in Heaven and Earth Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy
It s that cosmic consciousness that s at the heart of why Hamlet sticks out so At the same time it s a revenge play and in the end one of Shakespeare s bloodiest this side of Titus Andronicus Hamlet s murky origins are explored in an essay A Note On The Sources included in the Signet edition This discusses evidence for an earlier text of the play before the version we have possibly written by Thomas Kyd who penned a popular bloodbath called The Spanish Tragedy
Our Hamlet has at times a two headed aspect if it were a movie it might have been co directed by Quentin Tarantino and Ingmar Bergman A lot of soul searching dominates the first three acts monologues abound some more gripping than others The story is kicked off very dramatically by a pair of soldiers who have spotted the ghost of Hamlet s father but slows up to accommodate one of Shakespeare s overdone devices the play within the play Hamlet s madness is a topic of much discussion but is he even acting mad It s hard to tell from the text which has our hero going off in several directions at once His love for the waifish Ophelia is said to be a great motivator but all we see him do with her is blow her off
This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind The 1948 film by Laurence Olivier began with that statement but this question of Hamlet s indecision like the madness thing is unsatisfying reductivist Olivier s film is terrific in part for some judicious trims that do away with the subplot about a Norwegian invasion and focus more attention on Hamlet himself One wonders if Shakespeare s longest play is a little too well long
Who is Hamlet I don t think Shakespeare tries to answer that What he did was build something so enigmatic that civilization stepped in to fill and refill the blanks
What we have from Shakespeare is an underbaked or rebaked story many of the best lines of dialogue in English a few puns that haven t aged as well and achingly deep thoughts about the nature of man alternately nihilist existentialist and Christian in tone sometimes all three at once Is man just food for worms in the end or is there indeed a divinity that shapes our ends/Rough hew them how we will Shakespeare was too great an artist to attempt a definitive answer and that s the glory of Hamlet But there s frustration also in the open ended nature of its characters and narrative Sometimes you re better off not trying to cram too much into a simple revenge story
>> This is NOT a book this is a PLAY
Just so all of you are aware Shakespeare was not in the practice of writing books He was a playwright so when you go ahead and say that this book was boring or hard to follow make sure you realize that what you have in front of you is dialogue never intended to be read by the public but only seen on stage This gives the words more power and more accessibility If someone reads you the To Be or Not To Be soliloquy aloud you will understand it far better than a first glance at the text
I would simply state that for many in this day and age reading Hamlet is a very difficult undertaking We are not trained in this language and can hardly tie our attentions down for a 10 line speech let alone the so called ranting discourses that take place in this play This does not make the material worse it makes us inferior to the text The play touches on themes that every person must face at some point love familial duty vengeance politics friendship and betrayal It is about Hamlet s struggle to discover what life is and he discovers this by defining death It is a brilliant text with some of the best use of language before the publication of Moby Dick in 1851 another reportedly long and boring work that in fact touches on nearly everything man has thought
