Hamlet

published	November 17th 2005 by Cambridge University Press
first published	1602
binding	Paperback
isbn	0521618746 (isbn13: 9780521618748)
ebook
pages	286
description	Hamlet is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition...more [close] Hamlet is one of the ten most popular titles from the best-selling Cambridge School Shakespeare series now available in a new edition. The new edition includes new and revised activities throughout, new black and white photos from the widest selection of stage and film interpretations of the plays, and a larger glossary providing extra support with the language of Shakespeare. In addition, expanded sections on characters, language, and performance history offer the best support for the KS3 SATs and GCSE coursework. The new edition also includes exciting new features to bring the play to life such as a visually stunning eight-page section packed with full-colour production photographs and a striking new cover design. The new edition remains faithful to the Cambridge School Shakespeare active approach, which treats the play as theatre and the text as a script to be acted, explored and enjoyed. [close]
date added	09-13-06 edit book

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Trevor rated it:

02/09/08

recommends it for: humans

I’ve always meant to talk to my mate George about Hamlet and I guess this is as good an opportunity to do so as any.

There are different things I would say to different people about Hamlet – and as this is the near perfect play I guess there ought to be many and various things one could say about it.

The oddest thing about Hamlet is that people always tend to say the same thing – they always say, “Oh yes, Hamlet, the man who hesitates”. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it ...more

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John rated it:

05/15/08

Read in May, 2008

recommended to John by: Frickin' everyone
recommends it for: Classics readers, play readers, psychoanalytic readers, playwrights

For once William Shakespeare’s characters have truly varied dialogue, rather than three or four characters spouting aphorisms and flowery language. Prince Hamlet is downright verbose, but clever, and distinct from his friends and fellow court members. The best part is when we meet the ghost of his father and figure out where he got this habit.

It’s not the best part of the play simply for that bit of insight (humorous as it was to me), but because the opening of the play and everything le...more

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Dmitry rated it:

10/11/07

Read in January, 1985

recommends it for: you

Just taking a stab here. Feel free to comment or dismiss.

I'd like to suggest that "Hamlet" was the first work of "high" or "serious" literature, by which I mean the first publically disseminated text written in a common language that was difficult for its contemporary audience (as opposed to, for example, texts like DaVinci's notebooks, written in code, Thomas Acquinas's "Summa Theologica," written in Church Latin, and texts like "The Bible,"...more Just taking a stab here. Feel free to comment or dismiss.

I'd like to suggest that "Hamlet" was the first work of "high" or "serious" literature, by which I mean the first publically disseminated text written in a common language that was difficult for its contemporary audience (as opposed to, for example, texts like DaVinci's notebooks, written in code, Thomas Acquinas's "Summa Theologica," written in Church Latin, and texts like "The Bible," or "The Iliad" that became difficult over time.)

I think "Hamlet" was difficult the first time it was performed. To show why, I'd like to propose a definition of "literature" as opposed to "genre."

Let me define "genre" first. A genre work is a work that openly and unproblematically acknowledges its influences. Itis easy to read and to market. For example, there are now hundreds of books in the genre of "The DaVinci Code." They do not hide that fact, but put it on the cover. Doing that, they pay back both to the reader, and to Dan Brown: the reader gets the joy of recognition, and the "original" grows in stature.

This open acknowledgement of influence is the defining feature of "genre." A work is "science fiction" if it openly acknowledges the influence of other works of "science fiction"; the same goes for "mystery," "western," and so on. The influence can be lateral, as well as longitudinal. Michael Connelly and Robert Crais are contemporary authors of mysteries; their detectives, Harry Bosch and Elvis Cole live in the same canyon, and nod to each other from their balconies.

Genre is old. Storytellers have always, without any anxiety, used tropes and structures from earlier works. Virgil took ideas from Homer. The author of "The Pearl Manuscript" took imagery from "The Book of Revelation." It's possible that before the invention of printing, the act of copying was so labor intensive, that the notion of plagiarism as transgression did not exist.

In a work of "literature," the author feels anxiety about using other people's stuff, aka "generic conventions." I'm riffing here on Harold Bloom's "Anxiety of Influence." Bloom posits that new works of literature are created when authors willfully, yet subconsciously, misread the works of their predecessors. They don't "feel free" to take, and so what they take becomes transformed by their anxiety.

That anxiety (I may be willfully misreading Bloom) causes the literary work to become alienated from the very "conventions" that instantiate it. And that's precisely why it's difficult to read. As the tropes that should be familiar turn foreign, the anxiety transfers to the reader, and if it's felt acutely enough, the merely alien becomes wholly Other and completely new.

This is what happened with "Hamlet," a revenge play in which Hamlet's anxiety over avenging his father's death mirrors Shakespeare's anxiety over writing a "revenge play." Shakespeare's princ(e)ipal innovation, which created literature, was to focus his energies on the anxiety. The play cracked open, and stuff poured in--philosophy, cosmology, insanity, the human condition, the craft of acting, the fear of death, and so forth--alienating "Hamlet" from the very generic conventions that caused it to be. That alienation was also felt by the audience, and made their experience of "Hamlet" difficult. Even after four hundred years people argue over what "Hamlet" is about, and the one thing everyone agrees on is that it's NOT about what it seems to be about, which is whether Hamlet will kill Claudius.

The difficulty of literature has nothing to do with abstruse language or complicated ideas (which can be present in genre.) The difference is literature alienates the familiar, and genre familiarizes the alien. Literature takes a generically handsome prince, his college buddies, a love interest, a villainous murderer, a castle, and a spooky ghost--familiar generic elements all--and anxiously misreads it all into a hopeless muddle....less

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23 comments

Hager rated it:

12/19/07

Is it true that thoughts could carry us out of the limited universalities of words? Whether we speak or drink words or act them, is it not possible that they could encapture us in their meanings and what we intend to reflect upon our needs and desires to know and what we intend to become consequently? Aren't thoughts the breed of daughters which flirt with our minds and cause us to be playful or upset? Aren't they what everything is to a soliloquist? Has it any severe impact on him or her who so...more Is it true that thoughts could carry us out of the limited universalities of words? Whether we speak or drink words or act them, is it not possible that they could encapture us in their meanings and what we intend to reflect upon our needs and desires to know and what we intend to become consequently? Aren't thoughts the breed of daughters which flirt with our minds and cause us to be playful or upset? Aren't they what everything is to a soliloquist? Has it any severe impact on him or her who soliloquizes? Hamlet explains his philosophy throughout it.

This reflection is a proper continuation of the question because it realizes and makes him aware of the realization of the fact how fragile man is compared to the world he lives in. Hamlet has been put down by Ophelia's death and wonders what death is, the mystery behind which lies either rest or catastrophe depending on how we figure death out (either too late(by dying) or by pondering on its characteristics).

Another spontaneous mode of death is heartaches and painstaking questions in the mind. Hamlet uses death as a metaphor to describe what he is going through emotionally. He is depressed and frustrated and finds no way to empty his thoughts out but to improvise a speech on his opinions of the world due to the facts he has been through and what he has gained from experiences solely for the unpleasant cause of his mother's marriage to his uncle after a week from the father's death. The soliloquy continues on to carry out entertaining thoughts to face the disaster from the point of view of a desperately in need of an acquisition to an internal power to guide him through his dilemmas and misfortunes outside him.

Hamlet ponders and anticipates death to be the answer to all his miseries. Life is too short and decision making is crucial in every minute passing. Hamlet is practicing 'democracy of dialog and dictatorship of opinion.' Which means the surveillance of his feelings through stating his opinion (which in this case he does not or cannot escape to more relieving and more friendly atmospheres of thoughts).hamlet continues to ponder on the uselessness of his thoughts to his will to act and to his ability to execute a straightforward plan to end his misery and exceed his expectations of himself and to himself by himself and others who spoke to him whom he rejected and added that they all are 'allies against him' (i.e, Ophelia).

After denoting the words of the previous, Hamlet moves on to morbidly introspect into the meaning of life when opposed to death: is death something to be overcome or befriended to do along with in life as a fact? Is death the measure of existence, that it is the death of those who do not see into the moralities of others sympathized with and the life of others who could not get enough for a decent living grade in life among others? Is life just and is there a Natural Law that governs us all or is it the law of the 'survival for the fittest'? Thus he argues with himself in the fact about death in shadow of living a deathly life.

Hamlet finds soothing thoughts in the fact that it is fair to go through this being someone who is not able to act properly to avenge his father's death and family's honor in the disgraceful marriage done by his mother and uncle. He lastly conceives on final thought into death as a sympathetic fondness of Ophelia due after her death and finally humanely finds her fine and unlike what he has thought of her. The final lines are a conciliation of her death being his fault, that praying for her or wishing her a restful peaceful rest is all he could do in his 'temporary' state(which we know of now until the end of the soliloquy) of inability of acting further than his thoughts could convey to him(hamlet does not want to act but philosophize and awaits an external action to spring him into action(foreshadowing of the soliloquy).

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Jim rated it:

(review of isbn 0451526929)

11/29/07

bookshelves: plays, read-and-kept, required-reading, reviewed

Read in November, 2007

I've discovered the Signet Classics Shakespeare editions to be satisfying versions of the Old Man's stuff. They're thoroughly glossed and annotated, the editorial decisions are explained and reasoned out for the reader, and the supplementary criticism is insightful. I found the Signet Classics editions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night to also be of this high quality.

I've never read Hamlet -- ah, bless my public education -- and I fell asleep about forty...more I've discovered the Signet Classics Shakespeare editions to be satisfying versions of the Old Man's stuff. They're thoroughly glossed and annotated, the editorial decisions are explained and reasoned out for the reader, and the supplementary criticism is insightful. I found the Signet Classics editions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Twelfth Night to also be of this high quality.

I've never read Hamlet -- ah, bless my public education -- and I fell asleep about forty-five minutes into the Kenneth Branaugh juggernaut. Reading the play, I discovered I was familiar enough with the plot, but also surprised how many of my expectations were upset.

The hoary chestnut of Hamlet is that it's four acts of wondering what to do, and a fifth of doing it. Not true! Sure, Hamlet mopes about Castle Elsinore wringing his hands, but the plot does not stall. Shakespeare imbues Hamlet not with indecisiveness -- he swears revenge at the end of Act One so stoutly, how can you not believe him? -- but with thoroughness. Hamlet does not want to make a move against Claudius until all the bubbles on the Scantron have been filled in.

Ghost is not Satan attempting to trick me -- check. Get rid of Ophelia, the woman I love, to stay true to my quest -- check. Convince everyone I'm mad and harmless -- check. Tell off mom for being such a tramp -- check. Ditch these snooping Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kiss-asses off in Britain -- check. Kill Uncle Claudius in such a way as to reveal his treachery and insure his eternal damnation -- check.

The genius of Hamlet, of course, is that everything I've just written could be reasonably argued down. It's as rich a read as all the stuffed-shirts say it is.

As another reviewer here on Goodreads points out, the play is not really about whether Hamlet will kill Claudius; it's about the journey to the final scene, the pondering and self-questioning, the contradictions in Hamlet's character that are so human. That's true, but it cannot be overlooked: this is a revenge tragedy. The central question Hamlet faces is, what price revenge? He finds it to be an expensive proposition.

The monologues are all they're cracked up to be, in particular "what a piece of work is a man", which I reread about eight times out of sheer joy of the language. Try reading it with a sneering or sarcastic tone; it has the muscular flexings of the hard-boiled school about it.

The Signet Classics edition features a good discussion of the two extant quartos and the folio versions of Hamlet. For grins, check out the "to be or not be" speech from the first quarto. It reads like a parody of the version we've all learned. Better yet, compare it to the Shakespeare parody the Duke and the Dolphin muff in Huckleberry Finn. Twain, as usual, is spot-on....less

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Keely rated it:

(review of isbn 074347712X)

06/03/07

bookshelves: classics, drama

I know, I know. What the fuck is Shakespeare doing all the way down here?! Well, I suppose it's my obligation to explain.

Shakespeare is an amazing poet and master of the language. He layers on jokes, puns, and references everywhere. He has a massive output of work, and a great number of different plots. When we compare him to other authors, it is often difficult to find anyone who stacks up. However, I think that we are merely making the wrong comparisons.

Shakespeare didn't write books o...more I know, I know. What the fuck is Shakespeare doing all the way down here?! Well, I suppose it's my obligation to explain.

Shakespeare is an amazing poet and master of the language. He layers on jokes, puns, and references everywhere. He has a massive output of work, and a great number of different plots. When we compare him to other authors, it is often difficult to find anyone who stacks up. However, I think that we are merely making the wrong comparisons.

Shakespeare didn't write books or pamphlets or epics, he wrote plays. Short pieces of drama that were meant to be fast-paced and exciting. That they are mainly experienced today as bound books and not theatrical productions does not change their origins. If one wants to look at the achievements of Shakespeare, he should be compared to someone of a similar bent, such as the writers of South Park or Family Guy.

Shakespeare was meant to be lowbrow and political, but it only reads that way to those who are well-educated enough to understand his language, reference, and the political scene of the time. He referenced mythology because that is where reference popularly came from. Family Guy references obscure television from the 1980's. Do you think that is less esoteric, less of a knowledge base? Wait 400 years and we'll see.

Additionally, all of Shakespeare's magnificent plots were lifted, sometimes whole cloth, from other books and histories, just like how sit coms have 'episode types' or how the Simpsons steals the plots of popular movies.

I also don't think Shakespeare was as visionary or deep as he is often given credit for. Rather, he was always so vague with the motives and thoughts of his characters that one can usually attribute one or the opposite effect to any situation. Is Shylock evil because he's a Jew, evil despite the fact, or evil because of society? You can make a case for all three, while Marlowe (the superior writer) never left it to chance, and where has it gotten him?

Shakespeare was and is a genius, and his effect and talent for aphorism cannot be overstated. I think he probably wrote the King James version because it is so pretty. However, he is not the be-all and end-all of writing....less

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Erik rated it:

05/07/08

A New Staging: Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius and Gertrude are junkies in Alphabet City in the early 80s. When Hamlet's dad is edged out, Claudius takes over and starts plying Gertrude with smack. Worse, Hamlet, who is hallucinating about his father, must go to Claudius as his new supplier.

Meanwhile Laertes is sent away by Polonius, a rehab counselor: "to thine own methodone maintenance program be true." Claudius decides to tip off a couple of narcs from the "Dirty Precinct" ...more A New Staging: Hamlet, Ophelia, Claudius and Gertrude are junkies in Alphabet City in the early 80s. When Hamlet's dad is edged out, Claudius takes over and starts plying Gertrude with smack. Worse, Hamlet, who is hallucinating about his father, must go to Claudius as his new supplier.

Meanwhile Laertes is sent away by Polonius, a rehab counselor: "to thine own methodone maintenance program be true." Claudius decides to tip off a couple of narcs from the "Dirty Precinct" Detectives Rosencranz and Guildenstern, to keep an eye on Hamlet's habit. And after dissing the drug-addled Ophelia with his sexual indifference and ambiguity, and accidentally offing Polonius, Hamlet is packed off to rehab, but returns to the neighborhood in time to make a speech about his indecisiveness "to kick or not to kick" and witness Ophelia's O.D. in Thompkins Square Park. Hamlet and Laertes then scrap to a no decision. In an incestuously charged bedroom scene, Hamlet confronts his mother about her habit and she agrees to go off junk and quit turning tricks for Claudius.

Finally, Claudius gets seriously pissed and hatches a plan to infect Hamlet with HIV, contriving to get Laertes to give him a hit from a dirty needle. Gertrude, who is having trouble staying clean, takes the hit herself to the horror of Claudius. Because her tolerance is down, she OD’s. Then Hamlet and Laertes scramble for the rest of the available H, shooting each other up, but not before Hamlet manages to stick Claudius savagely in the carotid. Claudius dies. Hamlet makes a last speech to his estranged sometime lover Horatio about the rest being silence and ODs, as does Laertes. As the bodies are carted off by the EMTs to St. Vincent’s, Fortinbras, a real estate developer, enters with a crew of contractors in hardhats, and starts putting up yellow signs on the fronts of all the buildings:

NEW LUXURY ONE AND TWO BEDROOMS,
FORTINBRAS PROPERTIES, LTD.

"H" a play coming soon to an East Village venue near you.......less

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Kelly rated it:

04/20/07

Read in September, 1998

Hamlet is sad and ponders "to be or not to be", etc. Then he dies.

Apparently a room full of monkeys with typewriters can produce this, given time (or so i'm told).

----------------------------------
Correction:

"In case you don't feel like counting, this value is 62 digits long. In our hypothesising above, we imagined 17 billion galaxies, each with 17 billion planets, each with 17 billion monkeys, each of which was producing a line of text per second for 17 billion...more

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Madeline rated it:

05/18/08

bookshelves: shakespeare

Hamlet, abridged:

GHOST/DAD: Hamlet, your uncle killed me and married your mom. I want vengeance, so best get to murdering, plzthnx.
HAMLET: EEK!
OPHELIA: Hamlet, are you okay?
HAMLET: Get away from me, skankwhore!
OPHELIA: WTF? *drowns*
GERTRUDE: Kid, you need therapy.
HAMLET: And you need to be less of AN ADULTEROUS WHORE!
POLONIUS: OMG so rude!
HAMLET: Eavesdropping? I KEEL YOU!
*play goes on hold while Hamlet talks to skeletons*
LAERTES: You killed my dad and drove my sister...more

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Mel rated it:

08/08/08

bookshelves: classics, drama

Any serious study of literature and writing eventually brings one to Shakespeare and inevitably the play said to represent the pinnacle of his career—perhaps the apex of literature in the Western canon. As a life-long student of literature I have examined this text several before. Each reading brings a renewed sense of awe.
The storyline is filled with intrigue, passion, madness, murder, even ghosts, and yet the reader remains engaged and does not lose track of the action. Each character, i...more

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Jenni rated it:

08/05/08

Read in August, 2008

Ah, "Hamlet." My introduction, however slight, to the anti-hero. It's hard to say if "Hamlet" or "Lear" is my favorite Shakespeare play, but "Hamlet" is definitely the one I know best; I have entire passages memorized and have read dozens or hundreds of articles and theories surrounding the play and its composition.

Why? That's hard to explain. "Hamlet" both fascinates and repels me. In real life, if I met the prince of Denmark I'd probably s...more

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Ali rated it:

(review of isbn 074347712X)

04/12/07

bookshelves: great-ones, tragedies

For me as a man of theatre, reading a play is kind of ”one man performance”, and totally different experience compare to the very same plays performance at theatre or in film form. I consider them as three different versions of one story.
Among all Hamlets film I’ve ever seen, the most wonderful were Hamlet, (1964), directed by Grigori Kozintsev., with Innokenti Smoktunovsky as Hamlet, The 1980 BBC version directed by Rodney Bennett with Derek Jacobi as Hamlet is a master pjece, and Haml...more

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Jennie rated it:

04/17/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in January, 1998

recommends it for: Anyone who wants to understand the human experience

I think Hamlet may be one of the ten most important works written in English. Many people have many things to say about Hamlet, particulary his hesitation and the way the play ends.

However, I think it is important for numerous reasons, not the least of which is Shakespear's handling of a subject that is still taboo to this day.

This book addressess suicide in a way that not only makes it palatable for people to read, but makes it inherently relatable. The "to be or not to be" s...more

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Mckenzie rated it:

05/15/08

bookshelves: plays

To be perfectly honest, I think the only time I have appreciated Hamlet, is watching Shakespeare Abridged. A professor spent half of a semester dissecting this play, and I still didn’t care for it, to his great dismay.

“Why?!” he asked.

“I don’t know where to begin,” I said. “It’s just painful to me. Not in a good way, either. I mean, it’s Romeo and Juliet painful. I just hate these two plays. I swear Shakespeare was drunk when he wrote them.”
...more

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Kelly rated it:

(review of isbn 074347712X)

05/25/07

bookshelves: brit-lit, favorites, plays, worth-rereading

Read in September, 2003

recommends it for: everyone. Even if you don't like Shakespeare. It's necessary.

I literally do not know how I would get by in my other literary experiences without knowing this play at at least the moderate level that I do having read it three or four times and written a few papers on it. There are countless other books (Ulysses being the first that comes to mind) that reference it or use it as a major theme, and I think I would have missed out on a huge amount of appreciation for the author's formation of the novel had I not known this play.

That all being said, I am aw...more

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Dan rated it:

06/24/08

bookshelves: theatre--plays

Read in January, 1989

The hero wears black, is a university student, writes poetry, studies philosophy at university. He's got a thing going with Ophelia. Horatio has his back. Following the death of his father and the remarriage of his mother, Hamlet finds himself questioning everything he had formerly believed. When some of his friends tell him they've seen a ghost, he sets out to investigate, with surprising results.

The play has a ghost, madness, melancholy poetry, meditations on suicide, self-reflexivity,...more

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Marissa rated it:

07/25/08

This is one of my favorite Shakespearean dramas.
The King of Denmark, Hamlet's father, has just passed away. Quickly his mother marries his uncle. Hamlet, who has been away at school, comes back to the castle depressed and angry. His father's ghost appears to him and tells him his uncle murdered him so he could take the crown and his mother. Hamlet, his father says, must avenge his death.
The majority of the play is Hamlet dithering about whether he should really do it. Is the ghost hon...more

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Briynne rated it:

12/12/07

Continuing on with "Hamlet". This is definitely the play with the most killer lines. I love Ophelia, even though I wish she would do something instead of being ruled by everyone around her. Although, one could probably make the argument that is precisely what she did when she chucked herself in the water. Like all the tragedies, this one works because I genuinely root for a happy ending every time even though I know what's coming. And, Polonius is hilarious, even though you