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Jason's Reviews > Hamlet
Hamlet
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“Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.”
I don’t know what to say about Hamlet. I could go on about how it is a story of madness and revenge. I could talk about the bonds of family loyalty, the sacrifices of love, the breaches of trust and their deleterious effects on the psyche. But this is old news—Hamlet has been around for over four hundred years. What could I possibly say that hasn’t already been said?
When my wife saw I was reading Shakespeare, her snippy comment went something like, “What are you reading that for? Don’t you you have enough drama in your life?” Which, thanks Cristina, and yes I suppose I do, but what of it? Drama can be so much freaking fun. There is a reason it sells, a reason there are countless dramatic television shows on the air, countless box office films released each year rehashing the same old dramatic plotlines (some to great effect; others, not so much). And there is a reason people are still reading Shakespeare centuries upon centuries after his death: they are fun, they are witty, they are ever so dramatic.
Hamlet is no exception. With plot elements involving fratricide, lethal potions, mistaken identity, forgery of correspondence, espionage and treachery, along with a solid dose of hanging out with the ghosts of dead relatives, one could imagine I’m reviewing an episode of General Hospital. But what is Hamlet if not a soap opera for the Elizabethans? It is an epically tragic train wreck crammed into five tiny acts.
What makes this piece of drama so timeless, though, is that its action is served in such perfect complement by its depiction of character. We all know what Prince Hamlet is going to do before he does it. Hamlet himself, even while doubting his abilities and struggling with his resolve, knows how it’s going to all play out. Why else would he be so cruel to Ophelia? And yet it is this internal turmoil that fuels our interest in the action. It might seem like an ordinary train wreck at its surface, but upon deeper inspection it is a train wreck in whose conductors and engineers we have a vested interest.
So, witty discourse meets fast-paced drama meets penetrating character introspection? It almost makes me wonder what would have become of Luke and Laura had William Shakespeare been in charge of the script.
I don’t know what to say about Hamlet. I could go on about how it is a story of madness and revenge. I could talk about the bonds of family loyalty, the sacrifices of love, the breaches of trust and their deleterious effects on the psyche. But this is old news—Hamlet has been around for over four hundred years. What could I possibly say that hasn’t already been said?
When my wife saw I was reading Shakespeare, her snippy comment went something like, “What are you reading that for? Don’t you you have enough drama in your life?” Which, thanks Cristina, and yes I suppose I do, but what of it? Drama can be so much freaking fun. There is a reason it sells, a reason there are countless dramatic television shows on the air, countless box office films released each year rehashing the same old dramatic plotlines (some to great effect; others, not so much). And there is a reason people are still reading Shakespeare centuries upon centuries after his death: they are fun, they are witty, they are ever so dramatic.
Hamlet is no exception. With plot elements involving fratricide, lethal potions, mistaken identity, forgery of correspondence, espionage and treachery, along with a solid dose of hanging out with the ghosts of dead relatives, one could imagine I’m reviewing an episode of General Hospital. But what is Hamlet if not a soap opera for the Elizabethans? It is an epically tragic train wreck crammed into five tiny acts.
What makes this piece of drama so timeless, though, is that its action is served in such perfect complement by its depiction of character. We all know what Prince Hamlet is going to do before he does it. Hamlet himself, even while doubting his abilities and struggling with his resolve, knows how it’s going to all play out. Why else would he be so cruel to Ophelia? And yet it is this internal turmoil that fuels our interest in the action. It might seem like an ordinary train wreck at its surface, but upon deeper inspection it is a train wreck in whose conductors and engineers we have a vested interest.
So, witty discourse meets fast-paced drama meets penetrating character introspection? It almost makes me wonder what would have become of Luke and Laura had William Shakespeare been in charge of the script.
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Reading Progress
August 7, 2011
– Shelved
April 7, 2012
– Shelved as:
for-kindle
Started Reading
November 25, 2012
–
Finished Reading
November 26, 2012
– Shelved as:
reviewed
November 26, 2012
– Shelved as:
thrill-me-chill-me-fulfill-me
Comments Showing 1-50 of 58 (58 new)
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Kelly
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rated it 5 stars
Nov 24, 2012 06:31PM
Look forward to your review!
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Haha, she turns the tables right back around on me. :P
I like how Hamlet always has conversations with his dead dad, who helps him live by "The Code." No, wait, that's Dexter.
And then people make fun of As the World Turns for having characters interact with ghosts?
I know not of what you speak, but obviously you like watching your "stories".
Like sands through the hourglass...
I have to think about what I want to say first...otherwise it will be a conjumbled mess of a review.More so than usual, I mean.
Oh no! Did I scare you off writing with my own terrible example of a conjumbled mess of a review? Well at least you're profiting by my bad example. I think Hamlet is a hard act to follow, so I'll be curious to see your opinion of Macbeth in comparison to Hamlet. I would think it would suffer by comparison, but then again I am one of the few in these parts who doesn't unreservedly love that one. I hope you do, though! There are lots of reasons to.
So far I'm preferring Hamlet to Macbeth, too.
Good review, Jason. Glad you loved it. Macbeth is good, but Hamlet is the best.
I'm a Macbeth guy, but maybe Hamlet's indecisiveness hits too close to home! BTW, take a look at the Arden edition if you would like better notes.ps. Do we have the same wife?
1. Macbeth2. King Lear
3. A Midsummer Night's Dream
4. Richard III
5. Richard II
6. Henry V
7. Hamlet
8. Troilus and Cressida
9. Julius Caesar
10. Henry IV Part I
11. Titus Andronicus (for camp appeal)
12. Much Ado About Nothing
13. Twelfth Night
14. Romeo and Juliet
15. The Taming of the Shrew
16. Othello
17. Henry IV Part II
18. As You Like It
19. Antony and Cleopatra
20. The Merchant of Venice
21. The Comedy of Errors
22. Coriolanus
23. Love's Labour's Lost
24. The Winter's Tale
Measure for Measure: Don't remember.
All others unread/unseen.
Liberty wrote: "Midsummer at 3?! That's a surprise. Why?"It's delightful. Just like me.
And funny too.
The only one that really jumps out at me on your list is Antony and Cleopatra. That high? Really? Otherwise, our lists are fairly compatible...And ZOMG... the play within the play in Midsummer is the best part!
And if we're speaking purely objectively, Titus would have to be at the bottom of my list... but it has a so-bad-it's-good appeal to it. It's the Showgirls of Shakespeare's oeuvre.
You two listmakers are awesome; I love your lists. One day I will be able to make lists with you.
David wrote: "It's the Showgirls of Shakespeare's oeuvre."Ha! When Oxford World's Classics releases its next edition, this has to be the blurb on the front cover. All the kids will want to read it!
Great review Jason. I used to be quite the Shakespeare fangirl in my youth. I find my fondness for the plays is directly proportionate to which ones I've seen performed live. The Bard's writing certainly takes on a whole other level of awesome when earnestly projected on stage.
If I had to make a list it would include:
Macbeth (dearly love)
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Richard III
Othello
I'm much more a fan of the tragedies, though I never miss an opportunity to see Much Ado About Nothing.
So now that you've read it, do you think Hamlet is truly off his nut, or is he faking it?
You mean in terms of his treatment of Ophelia? Or just his seeing his father's ghost in general? Am I allowed to think that he is neither off his nut nor pretending to be?I think Hamlet really does see the ghost of his father, and I do believe that really freaks him out (as it would), and his freaking out when his mother doesn't see the ghost is justifiable. But I don't think his treatment of Ophelia comes from him being crazy. I think he's already chosen his path and knows there's no viable future with Ophelia, so he's mean to her to distance himself from her, or to distance her from the train wreck he's embarked on.
I always thought he was "distraught" and stressed out (who wouldn't be after seeing a ghost and finding out your father had been murdered?) but I never thought he was insane and out of control, even though he contemplates suicide. Feigning insanity more like it. If people think you're crazy they're much more likely to underestimate you and not see you as a serious threat. He certainly knows what he's doing when he sets up the play in order to watch Claudius's reaction. Only someone in full control of their faculties would be up for that I think.
lol, *Don’t you you have enough drama in your life?* good one!
She's a peach, i'nt she?
Trudi wrote: "I always thought he was "distraught" and stressed out (who wouldn't be after seeing a ghost and finding out your father had been murdered?) but I never thought he was insane and out of control, eve..."I think the only person who is truly insane in this play is Ophelia. Poor, poor Ophelia.
I think the most interesting character in this play is Gertrude. The extent of her moral complicity isn't really spelled out in the play—which leaves us with an ambiguous, problematic character... and those are always the most fascinating ones, in my opinion. Of course, Gertrude is Hamlet's mother, so that adds a lot emotional weight to the story. It's one thing to be betrayed by an uncle, but it's something else entirely to feel betrayed by your own mother.I also think Gertrude's speech where she reports [SPOILER ALERT!] Ophelia's death is extremely moving and one of the best passages in the play.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,Yeah, that's a really cool passage. I agree, ambiguous characters are the most interesting. I think there's a lot ambiguity surrounding that death scene, for example: did Ophelia kill herself or did she accidentally drown in the course of a crazy person's stupor?
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
Although there's no hard evidence, of course, I like to think that her mental state was such that it didn't matter if she lived or died. And I don't mean she was suffering a morbid bout of depression. I mean that she'd lost her bearings to such an extent that everything in the world was just about equal to her... as suggested by Gertrude's line: 'As one incapable of her own distress.'
Some of Shakespeare's women are very powerful, complex characters: Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, Elizabeth from Richard III, Cordelia...
Omigod, I love Lady Macbeth.I agree with you about the state of Ophelia's mind, too. Just the fact that she is still singing those random tunes while she's lying in the brook waiting to drown is pretty awful. It's not that she particularly wants to die; it's that she just doesn't care either way. Which is even sadder, somehow.
And I'd like to think that Gertrude was ignorant of Claudius's crimes. I don't tend to think there's any kind of incest there, either, as Hamlet points out. I think there was a time that it was pretty common to marry your brother's widow. In Deadwood, which is only one of the greatest TV shows ever, it was pretty much made clear that it is a brother's responsibility to assume the role of caretaker of the deceased's family. And that encompasses marriage.
Lady Macbeth is one of my favorite characters of all time. Everyone always kind of dismisses her as evil or merely a bad influence on Macbeth—but the fascinating thing about her is that she isn't evil. She knows her limitations. She prays to be freed from moral considerations, but ultimately she is undone by her own humanity. In a strange way, this is an exceptionally optimistic view of human nature. We may wish to catch 'the nearest way'—but there's something essential about us that rebels against it.
Jason wrote: "And I'd like to think that Gertrude was ignorant of Claudius's crimes. I don't tend to think there's any kind of incest there, either, as Hamlet points out. I think there was a time that it was pre..."I don't think she knew that Claudius killed the King, but it seems as though there's something muddy about her conscience. She doesn't know, but you (meaning I) almost feel she intuits or suspects the truth but turns it away...
You mean like plausible deniability, right? As long as she doesn't admit to herself that Claudius probably killed her husband she can go on pretending that he didn't. Whatever it takes to soothe the conscience.I'm going to save Message 35 for later because I haven't finished Macbeth yet. But it sounds deep, David. (And familiar. I read Bram's review last night and all those comments from two-and-a-half years ago. Pretty interesting stuff there.)
Lady Macbeth is fascinating and I still haven't made up my mind about Shakespeare's ultimate verdict of her. In order to do the evil deed, she calls on the forces of nature to "unsex" her, to take away any womanly weakness and trepidation. You could argue that once she falls apart and is plagued with guilt and cannot get out the damned spots that is her humanity/feminine side taking over. Are we to take from this that only the masculine can be truly evil and that humanity=femininity (or is that too simplistic an interpretation?)
I'm not sure...although I might be able to answer this question after I finish Macbeth tonight. Unless I end up watching The Walking Dead, instead, as I am two episodes behind.
Hmm...regicide and mental breakdowns? Or ZOMBIES!!!
ZOMBIES!!!! Always zombies :)
Well, I think that those are Lady Macbeth's attitudes about evil and gender. She believes that men are made of sterner stuff and are capable of doing the dirty work necessary to (opportunistically) achieve one's ambitions without the moral qualms of the 'weaker' sex. I'm not sure what Shakespeare is saying about gender here—if in fact he is saying anything beyond the completely practical (i.e., that men regularly kill and conquer in war, while women stay home)—but I do think that Lady Macbeth is acutely aware of her 'limitations' (although in a moral sense we would generally call these limitations strengths). I can't quote the passages exactly, but later she says she would have killed Duncan if he didn't resemble her father, and still later while sleepwalking she delivers the pregnant exclamation: 'Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?' Her 'prayer' is probably an anticipation of these qualms.I guess what I'm saying is that (with the best of Shakespeare) I enjoy the ambiguity. I don't want the case for and against the Macbeths to be firmly resolved. Shakespeare may have intended a commentary on gender here, but this doesn't do much to explain Macbeth's squeamishness at the beginning of the play. Why does he even need convincing or persuasion? I'm more interested in what Shakespeare says about humanity in general—and I don't think Macbeth or Lady Macbeth fare very well with their machinations...
David wrote: "I can't quote the passages exactly, but later she says she would have killed Duncan if he didn't resemble her father..."Yeah, I can't speak to the second half of the play, but to me (so far), Lady M is like the Bobby Bacala of the Sopranos Crime Family. She doesn't get her hands dirty directly, but she's there to help plan out your crimes, give you moral support when you have doubts, and she's great at cleaning up.
There's a little bit of that in Hamlet, too. Hamlet refers to his weaker side as feminine (the part that doubts his resolve to avenge his father's murder). And Claudius says something to him like, your grief is unmanly. Again, I don't know that this is Shakespeare expressing his definitive opinion about male/female characteristics, because I think he does go on to give Gertrude some strong character traits (she's definitely not weak), but it probably does say something.
It was inevitable this show was going to be mentioned on this thread, so I might as well be the fangirl to do it. My favorite discussion of what's going on with Ophelia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0uVGC...(There's also another great bit in another part of the show where the director discusses with Gertrude why she doesn't try to save Ophelia. Obviously she saw it happen in excruciating detail. He sees it that Gertrude thought she was better off dead. A reflection on her own situation, perhaps? anyway.)
Anyway, great review Jason! I like your point that Hamlet knows what he's going to do. Revenge for one's father, pretty standard plot of eye-for-eye justice (if given some equivocation when we're not sure if his uncle did it nor not). But he digs his heels in and fights fate. For all the complaining we do about his indecisiveness that takes quite a character. He actually really wants to know why, both about the motives of others and his own. Anyway, sorry to interrupt! I love this gender conversation that is happening. (I agree. Gertrude is weak.)
Yeah... I maaaay have already lost a half an hour to watching the rest of the episode that was part of. The discussion of to be or not to be/the intimidating task of playing Hamlet and saying those words is also awesome! (Oh hey, do I have an excuse to link again? I think I do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMiSvo... My favorite part is that they don't tell you what he chose, so we get to guess.)
Those clips are awesome! I've never heard of this show. It looks fantastic.So I might have to think a bit more about Gertrude. I did say earlier that I don't think she was complicit in Claudius's crimes which, if I did think that, would speak to her strength of character. But I still sort of see her as a foil to Ophelia. Where the latter seems to have zero control over her life, the former presents herself stoically at times: like when she interferes between Laertes and Hamlet when they're fighting, and when she tries to comfort Ophelia. Even the way she talks about Ophelia's death seems, I don't know, not weak.
But if your point is that those tiny hints of strength don't encapsulate her character as a whole, then hmm...yeah, maybe.
And Kelly, thank you!
Excellent review, Jason. After reading your review the first time I was motivated to go right my own. I was in such a hurry, I failed to click "like" or comment. Where were my manners. Thank you for inspiring me.
This is great, Jason! You've mastered the smart but accessible review. Shakespeare as soap opera is a great angle. It makes me wonder, though -- might he even have been good enough to write nighttime drama for cable? Imagine what we'd get if he shared writing credits with Vince Gilligan or David Simon.
Right?? I think it's great to think of Shakespeare in those terms...as a brilliant storyteller with an ability to draw out characters and evince emotion through the characters' connections, etc. How is that so unlike Vince Gilligan or David Simon who master their work (although it is by a different medium) with poetry and depth, other than the fact that they don't use early Modern English? It's not! Therefore, if A is to B as B is to C, then Vince Gilligan and David Simon are like modern versions of Shakespeare.
Wait can we add David Milch and David Chase to this list of Shakespearean incarnates, as well? Or am I now diluting Shakespeare down too much?
Oh Lord no, Jason. That's no dilution. I'm not as familiar with Milch, but we were all over the Shakespearean drama that played out in The Sopranos.
1. The Wire2. Mad Men
3. Breaking Bad
4. The Sopranos
5. Deadwood
You've got to see Deadwood at some point, Steve. If any of those 5 count as poetry (camera angles in Breaking Bad, set design in Mad Men, dream sequences in The Sopranos), the mid-19th century speech used in Deadwood is like poetry. Poetry with swears, but poetry.
You've yet to steer me wrong, Jason. (We just finished season 4 of Breaking Bad and have obsession to spare.)There must be historical language experts who could advise guys like Milch on what expletives colored the speech of the day. I'd be interested to know if that was the case with Deadwood. It sometimes struck me as too contemporary.
From what I understand of Deadwood, the dialogue is written to mimic 19th-century speech patterns (we might have talked about this when discussing The Sisters Brothers), but because they used swear words back then that would sound kind of humorous to modern ears, and since the intent is definitely to not be humorous, swear words like 'fuck' and 'cocksucker' are used in place of the old words. But the rest of the speech is very old-style which takes some getting used to. When I was watching Deadwood, it was not one of those shows that I could just sit back and veg out to—I had to pay pretty close attention to make sure I was getting it all. But once you're in it, you're in it.
Cristina hated Deadwood, by the way. So that's the only one in my list of 5 that I had to watch by myself. But I'd still recommend it.
