Rating: 
Summary: 'Thou Shalt not read'
Review: I don't know, was this book " To good or not to good?" Somewhere in between I guess. Hey give me credit I'm only Twelve years old. Well anyway, this book was not so bad. As Shakespeare Mentioned in Hamlet. " All leave the room exept Hamlet" Or something like that. I have good advise. Read this if you truly understand it, by all Means who am I to judge. But here are some of the books that are the best books in the world.
1. JANE EYRE (Charlotte Bronte'
2. EMMA (JANE AUSTEN
3. WUTHERING HEIGHTS (EMILY BRONTE'
4. LITTLE WOMEN (LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
5. PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (JANE AUSTEN
6. SOMEWHERE IN TIME (RICHARD MATHESON
7. SENSE AND SENSABILITY (JANE AUSTEN
8. TWENTY THOUSAND LEAUGES UNDER THE SEA. (JULES VERNE
9. AGNES GREY (ANNE BRONTE'Well as you can see I'm a Bronte&austen Fan
But Shakespeare is good. So read Hamlet if you can.
I recomend it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Classic Drama that Delights Everyone
Review: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, written by William Shakespeare, considered to be one of the best playwrights of all time, was a solid, entertaining drama. Hamlet is consistently suspenseful and full of struggle between the characters. As a first time Shakespeare reader, I found the play challenging to read because it contains language written about four centuries ago. However, Shakespeare carefully crafted his words of prose so that every sensible person would enjoy reading it. Hamlet is about a prince of the same name. He learns that his father, once King, had been murdered by his uncle, now the King, who, soon after his father's death, married Hamlet's mother. The ghost of King Hamlet arrives one night and wants Hamlet to revenge his father's death. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is woven with many unique characters that only Shakespeare could provide. These characters include the pathetic Polonius, the suicidal Ophelia and the ignorant and foolish Queen Gertrude. Hamlet struggles throughout the play to determine the right thing to do regarding his father's death, and how to do it. I recommend this book to all people who love great drama. In this bold piece of literature and many of his other works, Shakespeare has the unique ability to teach many valuable and interesting lessons, some of which are comical, and some of which are serious. If you are new to the world of dramas such as Hamlet, you may soon become an addict. As you can see, Shakespeare is an amazing playwright, and I hope you have the pleasure of reading this story in the future.
Rating:
Summary: Goodnight, sweet prince
Review: Admittedly, there is really nothing I can say about Shakespeare's brilliant The Tragedy of Hamlet that has not been said before. The fact that this tragedy is so praiseworthy does not mean it should no longer be praised, though. So many of us had to read Hamlet in school, but there is something to be said and much to be gained by reading it on one's own again for pure pleasure. The story is a compelling one, the characters are sharply presented and unforgettable, and the play represents human tragedy in the fullest sense of the word. No matter how well you know the story, you as a reader are totally captivated by the human drama of the ill-fated prince of Denmark. The Bard's characters are incredibly human, be they good or evil, powerful or fragile. One can delight in the downfall of evil men and lament the fate of their innocent victims. The language is beautiful but difficult, of course. I often found myself rereading lines or entire passages to try and get a better sense of their meaning, and even then some vagaries of the language escaped me. The story itself, though, is vividly revealed through the Bard's poetic words, and even the most insensible lines roll off the tongue beautifully. I was most amazed by all of the famous lines and quotations found in this one drama; pop culture itself almost demands of you some knowledge of Hamlet. If "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio" or "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" mean nothing to you, you would do well to brush up on your Hamlet. If you draw a blank at the words "To be or not to be," you might want to check your pulse to see if you still have one. I will not attempt any literary criticism here because libraries are already overflowing with books on the subject. The madness of Hamlet is, I suppose, debatable; certainly, his madness is feigned early on, and I have much admiration for his manner of calling forth the guilty conscience of those who wronged his father through his supposed ravings, but one must particularly question his dealings with the lovely and innocent Ophelia. Madness, rage, murder, incest (of a sort), graveyards, sword fighting, poison, love, betrayal--this play has all of these things and more, yet it is the great humanity of Prince Hamlet himself which makes this tragedy foremost among all of the Great Bard's dramas. Good and evil exist in each soul; evil does not always lose, and good does not always win. Shakespeare understood this, and that is why this tragedy will always serve as a literary mirror in which careful readers can peer into the depths of their own souls.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliance
Review: Ahh, Hamlet. This is, by far, the best of Shakespeare's work. This book has Opera-like simplicity (similar to Othello) but has enough captivating emotional scenes that can really sweep one off his feet. I first picked up this book while on the treadmill in gym class at my school. In the beginning, I thought I should whip out my Shakespeare dictionary and begin to translate every word, but alas this was not the case. Instead, Shakespeare managed to make this book oddly understandable. Sure, it's sprinkled with Shakespeare's traditional tongue, but the context clues are frequent enough so that the book can be easily read. Definately a must for beginner Shakespeare readers. This particular edition is also the best due to the fact that it has pages dedicated to the history of Hamlet's time. ENJOY!
Rating: 
Summary: "Hamlet":
Review: First off, let's clarify one thing: when rating Shakespeare, I'm rating it as opposed to other Shakespeare, otherwise, the consistent "5 stars" wouldn't tell you much. Granted, there ARE Shakespearean plays that I do NOT rate five stars, even as compared to the normal scale; "Taming of the Shrew" comes to mind. But the majority are certainly in the 5-star class, and this is one of them. It's a real shame that the language has changed so much since Shakespeare wrote that his plays are no longer accessable to the masses, because that's who Shakespeare was writing for, largely. Granted, there is enough serious philosophizing to satisfy the intelligensia, but there's certainly enough action and enough broad-based, unsubtle humor to satisfy any connoiseur of modern hit movies. Unfortunately, while the plots are good enough to be lifted and reworked into modern stories in modern language (and they frequently are, sometimes more subtly than others) once you change the language, it's no longer Shakespeare, until and unless the rewriter can be found who has as much genius for the modern language as Shakespeare had for his own. And to date, at least, that hasn't happened, and I don't see it happening any time soon. "Hamlet" is not an easy play to read, even by the standards of Shakespeare. There are a LOT of turns of phrase that will have even the competent modern reader scanning the footnoted explanation for a translation, and unfortunately, much of the value of Shakespeare's double-entendres is lost when somebody has to explain them to you. Still, the plot is a classic one, the dialogue is still (in spite of its occasional impenetrability) sparkling, and it has a remarkably high amount of (admittedly dark) humor for a classic tragedy; the scenes in which Hamlet acts the manic fool in order to keep his own counsel are delightfully funny (to say nothing of the gravediggers, and the verbal sparring between them and Hamlet.) One of the many "must read" Shakespearean plays. There is simply too much here that one MUST be familiar with in order to understand references in later literature. And it is worth the effort, but it is certainly not an easy read.
Rating: 
Summary: For dummies only
Review: This 2-star rating is based not on the content of the original, which is quite good, but on the absurd "modernisation". Really, kids, why not just watch 'Friends'?
Rating:
Summary: "The Time is out of joint." (warped-- not , lack of "pot")
Review: Ah, me. To read the reviews of this play -- and to
think of the wasted minds, education, and culture.
Why don't we just shut down the schools and bring on
the dancing girls? Where are we headed? Or to quote from this play: "What is a Man
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
Surely He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused. " -- Hamlet.
[Act 4, Scene 4.]
---------
But enough "preaching."
This review applies to THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY
edition of HAMLET. This series is remarkable
in a number of ways. I especially like the
formatting of the text. The text of the play,
well printed -- not cramped, is on the right-hand
page in the book, while on the left-hand page are
the notes and glosses and illustrations which
help to explain words or allusions which occur
in the text on the right-hand page. This arrangement
makes things very easy and interesting to read.
Before the text of the play itself, this
edition has short sections titled: Shakespeare's
HAMLET. Reading Shakespeare's Language (which has
subsections titled: Shakespeare's Words. Shakespeare's
Sentences. Shakespearean Wordplay [not foreplay, but
if it were wordplay in the Foreword, it might be
Foreword play or word Foreplay -- which is what
punning is, and Shakespeare likes puns quite a bit --
as did Herman Melville and Henry David Thoreau].
Implied Stage Action.). Shakespeare's Life.
Shakespeare's Theater. The Publication of Shakespeare's
Plays. An Introduction to this Text.
In the back of this volume is an essay titled
"HAMLET: A Modern Perspective." by Michael Neill.
His first sentences are certainly provocative: "The
great Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold used to
maintain that 'if all the plays ever written suddenly
disappeared and only HAMLET miraculously survived,
all the theaters in the world would be saved. They
could all put on HAMLET and be successful.' Perhaps
Meyerhold exaggerated because of his frustration -- he
was prevented from ever staging the tragedy by Soviet
dictator Joseph Stalin, who apparently thought it too
dangerous to be performed -- but Meyerhold's sense of
HAMLET's extraordinary breadth of appeal is amply
confirmed by its stage history. Praised by Shakespeare's
contemporaries for its power to 'please all' [not in
the modern era, 21st century Ameriky on the verge of
sliding into either "A Clockwork Orange" or "Bladerunner"
barbarism and mediocre diffusion...] as well as to
'please the wiser sort,' it provided his company
with an immediate and continuing success.
-- Michael Neill. (p. 307)
In the back are also suggested "Further Readings"
(which appear to be very interesting essays) and a
Key to Famous Lines and Phrases. At this price,
and with such an attractive volume, and formatting
this is really "a deal" as "they" say.
Remember, there ARE hierarchies of value in life --
everything is NOT just "stuff."
Rating:
Summary: heresy .. but strangely thankful for it
Review: This book promotes one of the greatest works of the Western canon - yet at the same time profanes it. So how should I vote?
Rating:
Summary: Hamlet
Review: This book was a little over my head. If I was a little older I can actually see myself enjoying the book. The translation along the side was very helpful and I was able to understand the text better because of it.
Some parts were creepy. I was literally creeping out when Hamlet started making out with his mom. Of course I realized that that was hundreds of years ago and maybe back then that was OK. This story provded us with a look at what literature used to be. I think this a good story to read in class. Hamlet also gives kids a new vocabulary. Many of the words in it were unfamiliar and old. I give this book 2 stars, because it is difficult to interpret.
Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare Truly Made Easy
Review: As I read throug Shakespeare Made Easy: Hamlet, I found that the original text was very hard to understand. The story was great, but to know what was going on I had to look at the "easy" text. After reading the easy text, I was able to understand the Shakespearian text much better. This made the book much more enjoyable. After reading the story, I realized that Shakespeare isn't as boring as it is labled, it is actually very good. It wasn't the best book, but it gave me a whole new respect for the literature of Shakespeare.
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