About this title: Shakespeare's classic tragedy of love, madness, and revenge, first enacted in London in 1602. Young Prince Hamlet, in mourning for his dead father, receives an apparition of his father's ghost telling him that he was murdered by his own brother Claudius, who then assumed the throne and married Hamlet's mother, Gertrude. Intent on revenge, Hamlet ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
"perhaps one of the strangest things ever written? just sitting here thinking about this play makes me dizzy. this play seems so nihilistic, so hell-bent on showing the audience Hamlet destroy his life, and the life of anyone else he cares about, and then making this script so beautiful that it poisons the soul of anyone who would dare to read it with it's own special melancholy. of course, an unforgettable experience. with Shakespeare, i'm always left more with questions than answers (something learned) - here i'm left wondering, is it worth destroying everything you love in pursuit of a destructive goal? do the ends justify the means? (again, the answer to both questions implicitly would seem to scream "no!" but then i'm reminded, again, of the beauty of Hamlet's madness, and how it seems that once stricken with the kind of depression that would make even the sky over your head already seem like the lid to your tomb, wouldn't you risk everything to punish the person who made your life that way?)"
"This play is re-imagined so many different ways depending on your source. I love this play, especially the uncontrolled conspiracies of everyone trying to plan something behind everyone else's back. I loved reading this play for the first time in high school and researching a paper on the unconventional character of Hamlet's dad, the ghost. And I find the similarities between Hamlet and Batman facinating, in fact I started a storyline myself of the character's from Batman acting in Hamlet but I never finished it. Batman as Hamlet (both lost father and swore revenge and seek justice and others call them crazy), Catwoman as Ophelia (independent character but romantically linked to Batman/Hamlet), Robin as Horatio (the best friend), the Joker as Claudius and Harley Quinn as Hamlet's mom, Two Face as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (former friends), the Penguin as Polonius, Alfred as the dad-ghost, etc etc. I think if I were better at drawing I probably would have finished this project sooner."
"Hamlet is without a doubt, the best Shakespeare play I have read thus far.
But what other reviews have failed to mention, which I particularly love about this play is the fantastic dark comedy within it (comedy as in the "haha" comedy, and not the "everybody's happy at a wedding" comedy).
Disclaimer: You'll just have to believe that the following statements are true and that I am not just a pompous snob trying to look smart.
Now, I almost always get the jokes of Shakespeare the first or second time I read them, but Hamlet is the only play that made me laugh as I was READING it (This does not include performances, of which I have seen several fantastic ones). Although I must admit, the shoe pun at the beginning of Julius Caesar made me snort.
This is probably due to the fact that I am a 90s child and am therefore inclined to have a more sick, twisted sense of humor.
I mean, come on-- twisting polite gestures to make references to oral sex? who doesn't love that? Worms eating the dead body of the guy you just killed? And the part with the gravedigger's bashing Ophelia because she committed suicide-- sooo f-ed up. This is the kind of stuff Seth Green would hesitate to touch. Of course you still have your bad puns (of which I'm also a fan) and your 400 year old pop-culture references that nobody gets anymore, but this to me, is the best piece of pre-20th century black comedy I have ever read (black comedy as in "dark and sick" not as in "Tyler Perry's house of Payne")."
"What could I say of Hamlet that hasn't already been said? It's place in the literary canon is absolutely necessary. Hamlet, the prince, is the deepest, most complete character in literary history, unsurpassed previously and ever since. What makes Hamlet so special is his ability to see the world around himself, and to question his own existance within that world:
To be, or not to be, - that is the question: - Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? - To die, to sleep, - No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, - 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; - To sleep, perchance to dream: - ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, - The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, - puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know naught of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
-Hamlet Act III, Scene I
Reading through this play, I am constantly in awe of it's power, depth, and grace. So much so, I doubt my capacity and understanding to teach it."
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