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Hamlet (Barron's Book Notes) Review

"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.

Hamlet (Barron's Book Notes) Overview

A guide to reading "Hamlet" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list.

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Customer Reviews

It harrows me with fear and wonder - E. A Solinas - MD USA
"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.

This is NOT a book, this is a PLAY - Lee Went -
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).

Another excellent Oxford World's Classics edition - Christopher H. - Cambridge, MA
Note that this review refers to the Oxford World's Classics edition of Hamlet. Amazon does a really terrible job of sorting out which editions of Shakespeare plays are the same and which are different, so this review will almost certainly be referred where it does not belong.

This edition, like most of the Oxford World's Classics Shakespeare editions, is outstanding. The introduction is a good solid read and the editor is a very good writer (a quality which, though often overlooked, really makes or breaks an annotated edition). His references and notes are keen and illuminating and occasionally betray a wry sense of humour. Plenty of room in the margins for notes, as I found out taking a ridiculously intense seminar on this play and Joyce's Ulysses this semester. This play is truly Shakespeare's masterpiece, and this edition eminently does it justice.

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Sunday, September 5, 2010