Hamlet Review

Hamlet by William Shakespeare (398 pages)
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
Date Read: 25 September 2016

Synopsis:

This Norton Critical Edition of Hamlet features a newly edited text based on the Second Quarto (1604–05). It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations and appendices providing important passages from both the First Quarto Hamlet (1603) and the Folio Hamlet (1623). Robert S. Miola’s thought-provoking introduction, “Imagining Hamlet,” considers this tragedy as it has taken shape in the theater, in criticism, and in various cultures.


“The Actors’ Gallery” presents famous actors and actresses—among them Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen Terry, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton, Kenneth Branagh, and Jude Law—reflecting on their roles in major productions of Hamlet for stage and screen. “Contexts” includes generous selections from the Bible, Greek (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides) and Roman (Seneca) tragedies, Saxo Grammaticus, Dante, Thomas More, and Thomas Kyd.


“Criticism” reprints a wide range of historical and scholarly commentary including English critics (John Dryden, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Johnson), European and Russian writers (Voltaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Leo Tolstoy), and Americans (John Quincy Adams, Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln). Recent scholarly writing takes various approaches to Hamlet—mythic (Gilbert Murray), psychoanalytic (Ernest Jones), comparativist (Harry Levin), feminist (Elaine Showalter), and New Historicist (Stephen Greenblatt), among others.


An engaging selection of Hamlet’s “Afterlives” includes the seventeenth-century Der Bestrafte Brudermord; David Garrick’s altered stage version; comic reflections by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and Tom Stoppard; and selections from Heinrich Muller’s postmodern nightmare (Hamletmachine), Jawad al Assadi’s cynical Arab adaptation (Forget Hamlet), and John Updike’s haunting novel (Gertrude and Claudius).


A Selected Bibliography is also included.

My Review:

This is the third or fourth time I've had to read this for my classes, and I have got to say, it does not disappoint! I love how I am able to catch new details each time I read it.

This time I focused on Ophelia and her "madness." I have some theories about why she acts mad, and that it is not necessarily her losing control, but gaining it in her own way. This is the first moment where she is able to act on her own in the whole play. The first time that she does not have a male controlling all of her actions.

I love being able to see the different interpretations of the play both on stage and on the screen. The to be or not to be speech will always be one of my favorites.

This is in my top three favorite Shakespeare plays of all time because of the intricacies in the plot and the characters. I can't wait to get to study this again with a new professor to get different insights on the play itself.

All of the articles that are added with the play are very interesting to read as well. They add another new light to the already interesting play! I would highly recommend reading those once you finish the play, even if you have read the play before!