Hamlet is one of my favourite pieces of literature of all time. I have referenced so many times and re-read often, why?

Not because of the story. Yes, it is another brilliant play by the genius that is William Shakespeare, but more importantly I fell in love with the many quotes, expressions and profound statements that the book is peppered with, which have made their way into our daily lives, in common dialogue and means of expression.

A play / book that has stood the test of time and is one of the most quoted books in history. The magic lies in it’s ability to use a few words that would take the rest of us a hundred words to explain, and yet it is written so eloquently and succinctly without ambiguity.

My father taught me a lot of these phrases growing up and I was using them in my daily life without knowing that they had originated from Hamlet. So I keep a copy of Hamlet close to me in memory of my father and because this book has found its way into my heart. You have to connect with Shakespeare's language to enjoy but for me Hamlet is a beautifully written masterpiece.

Some of my favourite quotes are:

"this above all, to thine own self be true",
“Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.”
“God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another.”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
"to be, or not to be: that is the question",
“To die, to sleep - To sleep, perchance to dream",

Everyone should read Hamlet once. It is not long but its effects are long lasting. A stunning piece of literature.

I don't think I can rate this, I will need to sit on it for a while.
What I will say though is... Hamlet is definitely queer.

n  The singular and peculiar life is bound
With all the strength and armour of the mind
To keep itself from noyance; but much more
That spirit upon whose weal depends and rests
The lives of many. The cease of majesty
Dies not alone, but like a gulf doth draw
What's near it with it. It is a massy wheel
Fixed on the summit of the highest mount,
To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
Are mortised and adjoined, which when it falls
Each small annexment, petty consequence,
Attends the boist'rous ruin.n

There is a mounting vileness once the Queen is dead. The Basilikon Doron is released, the son whose mother's head was cut off to ensure the peace of the realm is on the throne, and what has been gained through inveterate evil of colonialism has kept on gaining, but instead of that much pronounced Elizabethan, we have Jacobean. Instead of the gold of novelty, surprise after surprise of peace through scything after scything of populace, we may have the scythe, but not the wielder. Hated, unnatural, the bane of existence to many a man and a biting prick in the spine to the entire gender, but there was no betrayal that cut off the head too soon, no insipid frivolity that forced the island to swallow its own tail, no language of the conqueror to wriggle out from beneath and painfully make its way to light. There was just Elizabeth. And now she's dead.

With the need of a royal divorce came the gateway to a new, minimized, individualized religion. Poetry is the mediation a human requires to reconcile life and death, and over time the rhythms and rhymes have coalesced into many a ritual of speaking, singing, screaming, the random chance of natural selection resulting in such an example as the words spoken during the course of a Catholic laying to rest. What happens, then, in a particular corner of the world where Purgatory is no longer an incentive and prayers no longer a necessity and your beloved long departed may or may not be suffering ten-thousand years longer, an oversight in a change of scheme that names their transmutation nonsense. All of us are doomed to die, a universality garnering interest with a vengeance beyond twenty-five when the cell decay begins to outpace the cell renewal, but truth has nothing to do with individual experience. All you love are doomed to die, but each and every may only die once.

What of Hamlet I know now will make the return to King Lear all the more dire, for freedom's a baleful deity only because responsibility is so much worse. Your wars are won, your peace is gripped, and all there is left to do is provoke the self into an action guided by loss, propelled by rage, confined by that mewling and puking concept that is honor, that will bring the whole host of dependent selves down. A head of state's a nasty piece of work when fratricide is on the résumé, but put on the stage tens of thousands of revenge plots and you'll never accurately frame through scene and line of dialogue that creature that is civil war. Lear comes close, which is why, hard as it is for me to believe, I may come out of this class with a rearranged hierarchy when it comes to Shakespeare. But perhaps not. Unlike Hamlet, I have not yet seen the storm in the flesh, and the divide between words on a page and souls on a stage when contemplation's broken free off the footnotes must be given pause. I'm a reader through and through, but if all the world's a stage, the bodies fell first.

n  If thou didst ever hold me in they heart,
Absent thee from felicity a while,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.n

Hamlet, Hamlet. I will never muse enough.

n  Good my lord, will you see the players well bestowed? Do ye hear?–let them be well used, for they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.n

---

1/2/2013

I first encountered Hamlet in comic book form, alongside many other Shakespeare plays portrayed with fantastical characters in all shades, poses, and degrees of perverseness. The strongest memory from that time consists of the titular character, blonde head posing with an innocent expression between a hawk and a handsaw. Some time later I was intrigued to learn that Shakespeare himself had performed in productions as the infamous ghost. Nothing else of his acting career stayed in my brain, which may have been a foretelling of the special place this play would come to hold in my heart.

The years rolled on, and with them came my favorite teacher of all time. Thanks to her, Hamlet, and a ten page essay discussing the symbolism of death, I began to see what all the fuss with Shakespeare was about.  As that year ended, so did my last English class, and it would be a long while until I rediscovered Hamlet, at my first live performance put on by the actors of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

Now, it's true that I had loved the play in high school, but that had been through reading it at an extremely slow pace, constantly ferrying back and forth between text and explanation. Flash forward four years to the performance, years filled with equations, calculations, and engineering garble, leading up to a much quicker rendition of the work I had understood only through slow perusal and much hand-holding. What good would watching it do, if the scenes flew past my uncomprehending brain?

But I did know what was going on. I could follow every amusing quip and every stunning soliloquy. More importantly, I loved it as much as I had all those years ago, my first journey through lines of archaic prose to the shining and glorious wit that had composed it. And a week later the title Infinite Jest caught my eye, and the rest is history.

In short, Hamlet is special to me, for its beautiful prose and deceptively human themes as well as its constant presence throughout the years. It is a play whose value to me only increases as my life continues, with every new encounter inspiring increased understanding and appreciation of its existence. I could go on about the complexities seething in the mind of each and every character, the wickedly quick humor and scathing wordplay, the immense presence of death working its way throughout every aspect of Hamlet's world, the battle between ancient cultures raging through lines of debate. To be, or not to be. With so many beliefs, who can avoid the question? I could even drag out my aforementioned essay for public perusal. But I won't. A heartfelt recommendation, for now, is enough. The rest is for the future.

Well, I’m an English literature student and I absolutely love Shakespeare’s plays. This is nothing unusual or exciting. Most English student’s live for Shakespeare. So far I’ve enjoyed reading, and studying, everything of his that’s popped up on the reading list until this came along. My reaction surprised me most of all, I never expected to find something of Shakespeare’s that I not only dislike, but also detest. This is also one of his most revered plays, and it’s also considered one of his greatest tragedies. So I’m somewhat dumfounded at my reaction. This play was frustrating, annoying and damn right revolting.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘who has the right to actually criticise this masterpiece?’ Well no one does. Objectively speaking it is, of course, a work of sheer brilliance. But, that doesn’t mean I have to like it or enjoy reading it. Today I sat through three hours of my lecturer praising this and calling it one of Shakespeare’s most important plays because it marked an important change within his career as dramatist and development as a writer. That’s all well and good, I can see that; and I appreciate that. However, Hamlet is one of the most idiotic and self-obsessed characters in creation. His inaction defines him as a tragic character, but to my mind that’s just silly. He caused his own death and the death of everyone in the play; yes, again, this makes his inaction tragic but it was also completely self-defeating; it boarded upon the absurd. The man needed a slap and a reality check, I just find him so unbearably frustrating.

I’m not arguing against the play’s literary merit, so please don’t get defensive with me in the comments section. It is an iconic piece of literature; it can’t be denied. However, I am going to lay down three points of reasoning as to why I disliked it so.

1. A crap idea for revenge



Hamlet’s revenge makes no sense; it is completely illogical. His uncle has killed his farther; he has personally murdered his own brother by pouring poison into his ear. This man, Claudius, has no empathy; he has no conscience. If a man can so callously kill his own brother, then, surely, logically speaking, trying to appeal to his sense of regret is almost pointless. He’s murdered his brother and has taken his place. He’s filled that role; he doesn’t care who he’s killed in the process. But, yet, somehow, this cold hearted man is deeply affected by his deed that is manifested in Hamlet's mock play. The idea for revenge shouldn’t have worked, but it did. Claudius admits his guild, in prayer, and sets Hamlet into a more crazed state. How is this revenge?

2. Hamlet is a fool




Hamlet needed to step and truly consider his situation; yes, he does this in five soliloquies, but he never considered one angle; he never considers that his inaction could lead to a worse result that acting directly. He stages a play for the King to get revenge after much indecisiveness. The most direct action of revenge would have been to simply run the King through with a sword in the throne room or to poison him in kind. This would have made him a murderer, so it was off the table. He could have clenched his fists, and grinded his teeth, and just got on with the situation. But, to do so would be to ignore his father’s spirits’ request for revenge. So he could not really go down either route, but to do neither is worse than simply ignoring one. It leads to the bloodbath that is the final scene, which forced his hand. On a character level, I think of Hamlet as a coward who, ultimately, causes his own fate. This isn’t why I dislike him; he makes the play a tragedy, but it’s the illogical nature of his actions that condemns him in my estimation. He has two roads before him, and instead of taking either he forces a third road that is more detrimental than either.

3. He is too self-obsessed



Hamlet barely considers anyone else. To his mind, his uncle marrying his mother is incest. In renaissance England this was as bad as full blown incest. Claudius and Gertrude were only in-laws: siblings by marriage. So by today’s standards it’s not that immoral. Regardless, though Hamlet doesn’t consider how his mother feels about this. He is repulsed by the notion, but she could be in love or she could be in the more likely eventuality of a forced marriage. Hamlet doesn’t consider her feelings; he is just repulsed by the idea of their marriage rather than the emotions and bond that may or may not be involved. This doesn’t make him a bad person, but, when considered with my other two points, I think it make him somewhat idiotic, selfish and frustrating.

I simply dislike this play because I’m practically repulsed by its “tragic hero.” I recognise that this is an unpopular opinion, and I cannot help but think that I should have liked the play. But, Hamlet just infuriates me far too much for me to overlook my dissatisfaction with him and admire the play's formal features. I just cannot personally like it.

The Skinhead Hamlet - Shakespeare's play translated into modern English. By Richard Curtis. Yes, that Richard Curtis!

Note : those offended by the F word - LOOK AWAY NOW! And Georgia, if you've stumbled on this review by your funny old dad - this is ANOTHER Paul Bryant. Not me!

*********

ACT I
SCENE I
The Battlements of Elsinore Castle.

[Enter HAMLET, followed by GHOST:]

GHOST: Oi! Mush!

HAMLET: Yer?

GHOST: I was fucked!

[Exit GHOST:]

HAMLET: O Fuck.

[Exit HAMLET:]

SCENE II
The Throneroom.

[Enter KING CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, HAMLET and COURT:]

CLAUDIUS: Oi! You, Hamlet, give over!

HAMLET: Fuck off, won't you?

[Exit CLAUDIUS, GERTRUDE, COURT:]

HAMLET: (Alone) They could have fucking waited.

[Enter HORATIO:]

HORATIO: Oi! Watcha cock!

HAMLET: Weeeeey!

[Exeunt:]

SCENE III
Ophelia's Bedroom.

[Enter OPHELIA and LAERTES:]

LAERTES: I'm fucking off now. Watch Hamlet doesn't slip you one while I'm gone.

OPHELIA: I'll be fucked if he does.

[Exeunt:]

SCENE IV
The Battlements.

[Enter HORATIO, HAMLET and GHOST.:]

GHOST: Oi! Mush, get on with it!

HAMLET: Who did it then?

GHOST: That wanker Claudius. He poured fucking poison in my fucking ear!

HAMLET: Fuck me!

[Exeunt.:]

ACT II
SCENE I
A corridor in the castle.

[Enter HAMLET reading. Enter POLONIUS.:]

POLONIUS: Oi! You!

HAMLET: Fuck off, grandad!

[Exit POLONIUS. Enter ROSENCRANZ and GUILDENSTERN.:]

ROS & GUILD: Oi! Oi! Mucca!

HAMLET: Fuck off, the pair of you!

[Exit ROS & GUILD.:]

HAMLET: (Alone) To fuck or be fucked.

[Enter OPHELIA.:]

OPHELIA: My Lord!

HAMLET: Fuck off to a nunnery!

[They exit in different directions.:]

ACT III
SCENE I
The Throne Room.

[Enter PLAYERS and all COURT.:]

FIRST PLAYER: Full thirty times hath Phoebus cart...

CLAUDIUS: I'll be fucked if I watch any more of this crap.

[Exeunt.:]

SCENE II
Gertrude's Bedchamber.

[Enter GERTRUDE and POLONIUS, who hides behind an arras.:]

[Enter HAMLET.:]

HAMLET: Oi! Slag!

GERTRUDE: Watch your fucking mouth, kid!

POLONIUS: (From behind the curtain) Too right.

HAMLET: Who the fuck was that?

[He stabs POLONIUS through the arras.:]

POLONIUS: Fuck!

[POLONIUS dies.:]

HAMLET: Fuck! I thought it was that other wanker.

[Exeunt.:]

ACT IV
SCENE I
A Court Room.

[Enter HAMLET, CLAUDIUS.:]

CLAUDIUS: Fuck off to England then!

HAMLET: Delighted, mush.

SCENE II
The Throne Room.

[Enter OPHELIA, GERTRUDE and CLAUDIUS.:]

OPHELIA: Here, cop a whack of this.

[She hands GERTRUDE some rosemary and exits.:]

CLAUDIUS: She's fucking round the twist, isn't she?

GERTRUDE: (Looking out the window.) There is a willow grows aslant the brook.

CLAUDIUS: Get on with it, slag.

GERTRUDE: Ophelia's gone and fucking drowned!

CLAUDIUS: Fuck! Laertes isn't half going to be browned off.

[Exeunt.:]

SCENE III
A Corridor.

[Enter LAERTES.:]

LAERTES: (Alone) I'm going to fucking do this lot.

[Enter CLAUDIUS.:]

CLAUDIUS: I didn't fucking do it, mate. It was that wanker Hamlet.

LAERTES: Well, fuck him.

[Exeunt.:]

ACT V
SCENE I
Hamlet's Bedchamber.

[Enter HAMLET and HORATIO.:]

HAMLET: I got this feeling I'm going to cop it, Horatio, and you know, I couldn't give a flying fuck.

[Exeunt.:]

SCENE II
Large Hall.

[Enter HAMLET, LAERTES, COURT, GERTRUDE, CLAUDIUS.:]

LAERTES: Oi, wanker: let's get on with it.

HAMLET: Delighted, fuckface.

[They fight and both are poisoned by the poisoned sword.:]

LAERTES: Fuck!

HAMLET: Fuck!

[The QUEEN drinks.:]

GERTRUDE: Fucking odd wine!

CLAUDIUS: You drunk the wrong fucking cup, you stupid cow!

[GERTRUDE dies.:]

HAMLET: (Pouring the poison down CLAUDIUS'S throat) Well, fuck you!

CLAUDIUS: I'm fair and squarely fucked.

[CLAUDIUS dies.:]

LAERTES: Oi, mush: no hard feelings, eh?

HAMLET: Yer.

[LAERTES dies.:]

HAMLET: Oi! Horatio!

HORATIO: Yer?

HAMLET: I'm fucked. The rest is fucking silence.

[HAMLET dies.:]

HORATIO: Fuck: that was no ordinary wanker, you know.

[Enter FORTINBRAS.:]

FORTINBRAS: What the fuck's going on here?

HORATIO: A fucking mess, that's for sure.

FORTINBRAS: No kidding. I see Hamlet's fucked.

HORATIO: Yer.

FORTINBRAS: Fucking shame: fucking good bloke.

HORATIO: Too fucking right.

FORTINBRAS: Fuck this for a lark then. Let's piss off.

[Exeunt with alarums.:]

Quick reread before The Steep and Thorny Way (retelling WOOT!)

n  Questionn : Is it really as crazy I remember or am I delusional?



n  Answern : Oh okay. Never mind.

Ps. The 4th picture makes me laugh way too much for my own good. Oops.

this is just one big episode of the office

Updated review February 2017:
This is my third time reading Hamlet and, like a fine wine... you know the rest. I read the same copy I've had lying around for years with one page of notes on the left and the play on the right. This time I was able to read most of the play without notes which was pretty awesome. Just had to glance over to figure out what some of the words meant, but I actually got the story this time. It's taken me three tries with a book that helps me cheat, but boy oh boy I finally got this down.

It's beautiful! I loved it! It really hits a variety of genres and kept me turning the pages. It was weird... I read it pretty slowly to breathe in the language and take my time with it, even reading it out loud at times until my wife made me shut up. I tried to get her to play the female parts, but she wasn't feeling it. I guess she really just had the Queen of Ophelia so her options were limited. But yeah, I read it slowly but it also seemed to fly by at the same time.

Hamlet is a very complex guy who goes through a range of emotions as the story unfolds. His monologues are just really great poetry that I wish I could memorize and just belt out randomly on a street corner or while I'm in the grocery store contemplating another unhealthy snack. To be or not to be... I loved the monologues. I loved when things just went nuts at times. The ending was just crazy and awesome. It's just a daggum fantastic story, and you should give it a shot if you haven't already. Find a copy that helps you and breaks down the language and all that. It's good.

I've got Macbeth on the shelf, too. Might be time to revisit it and then tackle more Shakespeare. I've gotta be in the right mindset though. Can't just be reading all this nonsense all the time. I have real books waiting to be read, too. Books with real words and stuff.



Previous review:
I once asked a friend of mine if he liked Shakespeare to which he responded, "I don't dislike Shakespeare". That's exactly how I feel about him, too.

In high school I was forced to read Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. My thoughts on Shakespeare haven't really changed much in the past 15 years. His stories are great, but they were written so long ago that it's not always fun to read. I appreciate the hell out of the guy, but he will never be my first choice (or second or third) when I'm looking for something new to read.

That being said, this was my favorite play to read through. Maybe I'm older now and find it easier and more enjoyable to read this stuff for pleasure rather than because I may have a pop quiz over the third act. I thought the story was fantastic and was surprised by how many lines I recognized from just being a human and dabbling in a little bit of culture every now and then.

Would I have ever read this if it wasn't being read in a group to prepare for Infinite Jest? Nope. But, I did and I'm glad I took the time to do it.

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark and, like Oscar the Grouch, I love it. And I love Hamlet. He can’t shut up, he’s a moody as hell bisexual and gets all philosophical while wanting everyone to think he’s losing his mind triggering a self-fulfilling prophecy of his mental health actually spiraling… okay so maybe I relate a bit too much. But this play rules and it has survived as a classic for a reason even if its characters don’t survive the play. Plus who doesn’t love a good revenge story? Especially one that has become a staple plot that has also led to great retellings like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead or even The Lion King and has so many elements that would later be revitalized as gothic tropes in literature and film.

This whole play is steeped in the interrogative mood that situates us in constant contemplation of ‘what a piece of work is man’ through a cavalcade of philosophical inquiries that move from sophism to existentialism. Of course ‘to be or not to be,’—one of the most quoted and recognizable lines of the play—is often considered to probe existentialist ideas long before Kierkegaard and Sartre would take up their pens and opens the play up as an investigation of identity and purpose that is, arguably, very existentially thematic. Much of the play asks ‘what is a man’ but is also Hamlet asking “who am I?” of himself as he schemes and stumbles through the ‘rotten’ state of the world. He also seems to express ideas of relativism central to the Sophists in lines such as ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,’ and this moral relativism coupled with a thirst for revenge adds a rather edgy and engaging texture to the narrative as it plunges forward into destruction and death.

It is also a coveted role on the stage and there is such an incredible list of people who have played Hamlet. Peter O'Toole, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Fiennes, Richard Burton, David Tennant, Kenneth Branagh, Christopher Plummer, Daniel Day-Lewis, Alan Cumming and many more. Even Ian McKellen played him in a recent age-blind cast production. Who wouldn't want to play Hamlet? But Ophelia as well, one of the more interesting characters who has certainly had a life of her own across literature.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet lives on, like many of his plays, for having a rather universal quality to them that appeals to the times no matter when in history it is revisited or performed. Themes of being trapped by circumstance, themes of betrayal, themes of the in-fighting of the ruling class dooming a nation under them, and themes of struggling with identity continue to trouble people in every era and Hamlet always offers an avenue for confronting these ideas. A fantastic play that stands out even in Shakespeare’s impressive canon of works.

Is it possible that I had only read the first 4 scenes and Hamlet already became one of my favorite male characters ever? YES!
Why?
He’s constantly wearing black and monologuing about how literally everything is hard and making everything more dramatic then it is, is so ME!?

And this is considered a tragedy (which in some ways it is) but I found it so funny (probably because I have a dark soul) and I will definitely reread this at any given moment of peace.

I absolutely loved this play, and I’m so happy that now I can say that I have read Shakespeare!

I’m a cultured woman now y’all.

The reason why Hamlet is still discussed today is that it still eludes and confounds us. This intriguing aspect of the play has kept it alive for centuries. Hamlet's doubts, questions, and inability to act strengthen him in our eyes; everything that he struggles with is deeply familiar, and it reverberates, to varying degrees and in different contexts, with us even today. For instance, these six words 'to be or not to be' haunt Hamlet throughout the play, and this dilemma is no stranger to us, we face it all the time. No living person is immune to it.

The plot of Hamlet is simple; his father, the king, is killed by Hamlet's uncle who then marries the widowed queen – Hamlet's mother. The exact nature of king's death is revealed to Hamlet by his father's ghost More than his father's death, and it is the intrigue behind his death that pushes him into a vortex of doubts and shakes his very existence.

Now what happens to Hamlet in the play is not unusual. Even worse incidents happen in life, but not all young men or women respond to death, crime in ways he does. His very being is invaded. He is consumed by what he now knows, and this 'knowing' forces him to act, which means, he has to expose and punish his father's murderer.

When the young Hamlet gets to know of his uncle's heinous deed, he is internally damaged. He has no control over his life. His lover, Ophelia, could not calm him or divert him, nor does he seem capable of responding to her pleadings; strangely enough he is more eaten away by the thoughts of his uncle and mother's sinful union. However, he is not angry with his mother because his father's ghost has nothing against her 'she is blessedly unaware of the darker sides of the world.'

To dissect Hamlet psychologically takes us nowhere, he is a problematic character that defies 'fixing.' T. S Eliot, in his critique of Hamlet, coined the term 'objective correlative' and claimed that Hamlet's emotions are in excess of the situation he encounters. This seems a valid observation. For instance, one wonders why does the queen never for a second reflect or doubt the abrupt death of the king. How could she be so naive? Not only this, soon after the king's death, she agrees to marry her brother. Hamlet, on the contrary, stops living his life, stops loving his beloved Ophelia. He is only left with one motto; his entire life reduced to one thing – that is to avenge his father's murder.

One can unceasingly go on analyzing Hamlet and yet not able to know him. Like truth, like life, Hamlet is eternal, elusive, only partly penetrable. Therefore, we are so obsessed with Him.

Maybe it's just me, but I always experience disconnect when reading Shakespeare's plays. A group in catching up on classics decided upon a buddy read of Hamlet and I attempted to join in, and got through Act I only and skimmed through the rest. It's not the language- I actually only read Shakespeare to sharpen my skills. And it's not the story or even reading plays. Something about the Bard I find it hard to get through and I still can not pinpoint it.

That being said, even Act I included some talking points. A young prince who wants revenge for the murder of his father, going as far as calling his mother's relationship with his uncle to be incest. In Jewish law a widow is obligated to marry one of her deceased husband's brothers unless they preform a ritual ceremony freeing her. This brings up the timeless question visited in commentaries of A Merchant of Venice- was the Bard Jewish? Regardless, even if Hamlet was seething at his uncle's attempt to seize the throne, in some circles the marriage is perfectly legal.

And of course, there is the love interest Ophelia whose father tells her to proceed with caution. Yet even this is not enough for me to read through one of Shakespeare's finest. Is it the lack of female strong characters other than A Merchant of Venice and MacBeth, my two favorites? A dated setting? Outdated references? I still can't pinpoint it but suffice it to say I will leave the reading of the Bard to others and move on. As classic as his plays are, they just are not my taste.