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Hamlet

William Shakespeare

Start date: February 20, 2016

Finish date: July 19, 2018

Discussion: THE BARD

Why we're reading this: Because it's Hamlet.…more
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THE BARD

* HAMLET by WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
By Traveller · 14 posts · 22 views

last updated Feb 22, 2016 04:26PM

Hamlet Act 1
By Traveller · 35 posts · 19 views

last updated Mar 03, 2016 02:01AM

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What Members Thought

Mar 26, 2008 Brad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, shakespeare, played-a-part

Is there a better artistic expression of death's myriad manifestations than Shakespeare's Hamlet? I say no. In my counter-factual universe I see William Shakespeare as a Lieutenant at the First Somme. Imagine the war poetry that Shakespeare could have written. Perhaps one such war sonnet would have gone something like this:

My subaltern’s eyes will ne’er again see the sun,
Exposed hearts are more red than whores lips are red;
If we go o’er the top we are sure to face the gun;
And those caught on ...more

27 likes · Like · see review

Jan 31, 2011 Brad rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: shakespeare, played-a-part, undermined-the-love

I have loved Hamlet for most of my life. I've read it, performed in it, read it again and again, seen it on stage countless times, performed in Stoppard’s 15 minute version, read it again and again and again, and taught it over and over. I have always loved it.

But not this time.

I finished re-reading it last night (I've one more class to teach tomorrow), and I feel like I've just fallen out of love. You know that feeling when you still love someone but you're no longer in love? That's where I se I have loved Hamlet for most of my life. I've read it, performed in it, read it again and again, seen it on stage countless times, performed in Stoppard’s 15 minute version, read it again and again and again, and taught it over and over. I have always loved it.

But not this time.

I finished re-reading it last night (I've one more class to teach tomorrow), and I feel like I've just fallen out of love. You know that feeling when you still love someone but you're no longer in love? That's where I seem to be with the Dane.

I struggled all night trying to locate these new feelings. “Where did they come from?” I wondered, and I think I found the answer while I was eating my breakfast bagel. I'm tired of Hamlet and his internal world.

I know there is much more to Hamlet than this internal struggle -- which the Romantics gave us in the 1800s and psychoanalysts entrenched in the 1900s -- but I can't seem to shake myself out of Hamlet's self-absorption. It's like standing in front of Picasso’s Guernica and being so entranced by the suffering that Picasso’s technique and political message disappear.

I am always reading Hamlet criticism, I listen to what others have to say (including my often insightful students), and I even discover new things for myself that I’ve never noticed before. I hear these voices, but none of them can break through my emotional attachment to Hamlet’s self-examination. And I am bored with it. I see the other stuff going on around it, I hear the other things going on around it, but I am as fixated on Hamlet’s internal struggle as he is.

And to make matters worse, I am starting to wonder if the two hundred year preoccupation with Hamlet’s internal world has reached the end of its usefulness. Is self-awareness useful in our time of reality shows and vampire love affairs? Is it as precious as the novel Push by Sapphire? Is it as dusty and mouldy as Woody Allen and Philip Roth? Do we need to find our way back to the roots of Hamlet (“what is this quintessence of dust?” where man and dust are the key components) or do we simply need to find something in Hamlet that speaks to us in the here and now?

Or is the question really only one I can ask myself: do I need to find something new in Hamlet that speaks to me, something to break my obsessive focus on what’s going on inside?

Yeah, it’s probably that. ...more

15 likes · Like · see review

Sep 21, 2011 Brad rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, meta-review, personal-mythology, drama, shakespeare, drunken-reviews, anger-management

Dear Hamlet Hater,

Hey you! Yeah. You! How the fuck can you dislike Hamlet?!

I'm not talking about the play here; I am talking about the man. Fuck you and your bullshit about his "indecision," that indecision sets him apart. Unlike everyone else in the play -- who slay their foes willy-nilly or embrace their personal ignorance to engage in tacit murder or let their passions o'errule their reason -- Hamlet takes his time with his revenge, refusing to be fooled by a damned ghost, looking for proof, Dear Hamlet Hater,

Hey you! Yeah. You! How the fuck can you dislike Hamlet?!

I'm not talking about the play here; I am talking about the man. Fuck you and your bullshit about his "indecision," that indecision sets him apart. Unlike everyone else in the play -- who slay their foes willy-nilly or embrace their personal ignorance to engage in tacit murder or let their passions o'errule their reason -- Hamlet takes his time with his revenge, refusing to be fooled by a damned ghost, looking for proof, making sure that Claudius is really guilty before he acts.

Yeah, yeah, Hamlet was mean to Ophelia. I don't disagree. But Hamlet can hardly be considered the only factor in her death/suicide. And it's not like she didn't deserve it. Polonius and Laertes, Claudius and Gertrude (and maybe even that sneaky bastard Horatio, the last to see her alive) played their parts in her "madness," and it's not like Ophelia didn't have her own hand in her demise. Hamlet loved her. Hamlet's father dies, he's seeing ghosts, his mother is banging his uncle, and there's Ophelia -- at the behest of her family's patriarchs -- cutting off Hamlet when he needs her most. I'd be pissed if she did that to me. I'd call her a whore and a weakling and mock her until she left me alone. Where's her backbone? Where's her love? Nowhere to be found; hence, Hamlet's anger (not that I blame Ophelia, though. What the hell could she do considering the world she was living in? Considering the power of the men in her life?).

And what about Hamlet's thoughts on the equality of mankind? How can you hate on a guy who thinks the way Hamlet does? This is a cat who spends most of his soliloquys holding an in-head debate about the equality of man in death. This is a guy who puts kings and nobles on the same level as fishmongers and worms. He's a guy who embraces life in death without fliching. He sees the "providence in the fall of sparrow" and knows it is good.

Yet you hate him. Why?

Is it because your high school teacher sucked? Is it because you are daunted by Shakespeare and Elizabethan English? Is it because you are convinced that Hamlet is a whinger? Is it because you've fallen prey to a century-plus of Freudian disassembling? Is it because you expect Mobster-style decisiveness? Would you like it more if RockStar put out a shooter game called Grand Theft Elsinore?

Or are you simply a dumbass?

Go watch Lion King or Strange Brew and get back to me.

Love, Brad

p.s. this is a Ceridwen-special: a drunken review.

p.p.s. if you're bored you can go read my Hamlet and WWI inspired poem or my other Hamlet review from last year's less than stellar experience. ...more

13 likes · Like · see review

Jan 14, 2010 Traveller rated it it was amazing

Shelves: plays

I want the Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism edition of this--sadly, some person had decided to merge that volume with 753 other editions of Hamlet texts, and i can't seem to get them separated... ...more

4 likes · Like · see review