Rating: 
Summary: Madness in great ones must not unwatched go
Review: The reading of Hamlet and Lear in high- school helped me understand my father. Or rather my father helped me understand them. All the hesitation and delay and indecision, all the great outpourings of feeling in soliloquy , all the great sense of life as tormenting and impossible and yet somehow great and sublime, all this echoed and reflected from my own childhood family life world back and forth to Hamlet. The great language reaching out to metaphor no ordinary mind could find. This too.
Of the plot and the story of the father murdered and the son who needed to revenge and delayed and the mother who betrayed and enticed, this was far far from me. More I loved the language the great speeches even when we were taught that they were ironic and self- condemning (To thine own self be true as triteness not truth) I loved and memorized much of Hamlet's solitary crying , " Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a dew" and felt in the pain of Hamlet my father 's pain and poetry. I know for most this is the greatest play ever played, and I know too how down the generations critics have given their own long theories explaining why Hamlet delayed and what the ultimate meaning of the play is. But what each of us is given in his own way is another story. And if I have here said a few private words it certainly will not harm or change very much that vast sea of readings which have accumulated around this work, and which will grow still larger and larger in time. One of the great works unquestionably, one mankind will go on reading and rereading as long as mankind keeps reading. And for me a hint that my father's life and suffering somehow related to a higher world called Literature where it might have its echo, and who knows one day truly find its meaningful expression.
Rating:
Summary: Liberal Doses of Ham in your Sublet
Review: In my eyes, Shakespeare could do almost no wrong, but some of his plays were decidedly better than others--Hamlet, for example--for reasons of literary style, subject matter, etc. In my case, his tragedies are far more interesting than his romances/comedies/histories given the wide range of emotions you're made to feel upon reading them.In any case, Hamlet has the best quotes, and has spawned a million books/movie versions/spin-offs. "Get the to a nunnery", "something rotten in Denmark", "To be, or not to be", "A hit; a very palpable hit"... the list is endless. If nothing else, it's the kind of material that's easily visualized and easily understood. I might have been 15 years old when I first read it, but it all made sense. Moral dilemma--ethics--deceit--virtue--honour--revenge... these are all things that make a story classic, not rustic. Over 400 years later, the source material is as vital as ever. Excellent stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Signet Edition
Review: I'm not writing a review of Hamlet the play here - that would be superfluous. Next to the Bible, it is the greatest piece of literature of all time. I think that the signet edition is the best. It has its usual introduction on Shakespeare and his times. It then goes into the different versions of Hamlet that have come down to us. It has several commentaries on the play, including one by Coleridge. Most useful of all is a history of the productions of Hamlet on the stage and screen.
| 
