Hamlet (Signet Classics)

This book provides great background and context for the iconic play, and explains many nuances of the text and the play. The book includes the text of the play along with lots of commentary and explanations, side by side in an easily readable format. I bought the book because I was going to a production of the play by the Oakland Theater Project, in San Rafael, California in September 2025. I had studied this play decades ago in a college English class, but there was a lot I missed the first time through, and I learned a lot from the book which made purchasing it well worthwhile. There are several very good essays in the book about topics such as Shakespeare's language, Shakespeare's life, and a modern perspective on the play, which were well worth reading. Total cost with tax was less than $9, very reasonable.

... which is best summarized in the pithy formulation that is a principal "takeaway" from this classic Shakespearean play: "To be or not to be, that is the question." Indeed, it is a gloomy play, with more than one character wondering if life is really worth it. The play commences with a ghost, who is Hamlet's father, who has returned to haunt the living, since he was murdered - by his brother, who is now the King. Furthermore, the reader learns early on, the wife of the now dead King quickly marries the new King; no "decent interval" required. And yes, she is the mother of Hamlet. That's the setup; Cliff Notes, as it has for generations of students, can walk you through the rest of the plot. I'll only add that not many of the principals are left standing at the end. And like those aforementioned generations of students, I was once one myself, though now I am "way past school." And like the vast majority of students, those Shakespearean school reading assignments rather perversely instilled a desire never to read Shakespeare again. At a very real level, one is just too young in high school to "get it." And the "stilted" language of the English of the Middle Ages only makes it harder. Perhaps the only way to instill a desire to read him in school would be to forbid it. I've been re-reading a number of works that I had to read in school, to see how the work and my perception of it have aged. "Hamlet" is a re-read. Now I've been able to observe, over several decades, the "craziness" that seems to come to people with power, as well as those who desire it. I now have known those who have died, and might call out for vengeance from beyond the grave. And I have observed the angst and indecisiveness in others, as so well depicted in the character of Hamlet. Ophelia, the young woman who Hamlet may have loved, has become a symbol for troubled young women, and she has lent her name to the title to a book or two. And there were some very famous women who followed her path, such as Virginia Woolf. I also know a few very real Danes, but they are far from angst-ridden. The most famous soliloquy, "To Be...," I mentioned earlier. It has been decades since I thought of that famous contemplation of death: "Alas, poor Yorick!- I knew him well..." Also, for decades, I've made references to getting something done "before we shake off this mortal coil" thinking it was probably somewhere in the Bible - but it turns out it was from Hamlet. And I thought Ben Franklin had said: "Neither a borrower or a lender be," so I was surprised to also find it in Hamlet. And then there were those I hadn't remembered or attributed, correctly or not, such as: "What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more..." Overall, the re-read was a great experience. And it is now so easy to download the plays, one at a time, for under a buck, unto the Kindle. I've set myself a goal of trying to read one a month, starting with the re-reads of the major tragedies, and then on to some of the comedies and histories which I had not read before. For Hamlet, 5-stars.

On a dark winter night, a ghost walks the ramparts of Elsinore Castle in Denmark. Discovered first by a pair of watchmen, then by the scholar Horatio, the ghost resembles the recently deceased King Hamlet, whose brother Claudius has inherited the throne and married the king’s widow, Queen Gertrude. When Horatio and the watchmen bring Prince Hamlet, the son of Gertrude and the dead king, to see the ghost, it speaks to him, declaring ominously that it is indeed his father’s spirit, and that he was murdered by none other than Claudius. Ordering Hamlet to seek revenge on the man who usurped his throne and married his wife, the ghost disappears with the dawn. Prince Hamlet devotes himself to avenging his father’s death, but, because he is contemplative and thoughtful by nature, he delays, entering into a deep melancholy and even apparent madness. Claudius and Gertrude worry about the prince’s erratic behavior and attempt to discover its cause. They employ a pair of Hamlet’s friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, to watch him. When Polonius, the pompous Lord Chamberlain, suggests that Hamlet may be mad with love for his daughter, Ophelia, Claudius agrees to spy on Hamlet in conversation with the girl. But though Hamlet certainly seems mad, he does not seem to love Ophelia: he orders her to enter a nunnery and declares that he wishes to ban marriages. A group of traveling actors comes to Elsinore, and Hamlet seizes upon an idea to test his uncle’s guilt. He will have the players perform a scene closely resembling the sequence by which Hamlet imagines his uncle to have murdered his father, so that if Claudius is guilty, he will surely react. When the moment of the murder arrives in the theater, Claudius leaps up and leaves the room. Hamlet and Horatio agree that this proves his guilt. Hamlet goes to kill Claudius but finds him praying. Since he believes that killing Claudius while in prayer would send Claudius’s soul to heaven, Hamlet considers that it would be an inadequate revenge and decides to wait. Claudius, now frightened of Hamlet’s madness and fearing for his own safety, orders that Hamlet be sent to England at once. Hamlet goes to confront his mother, in whose bedchamber Polonius has hidden behind a tapestry. Hearing a noise from behind the tapestry, Hamlet believes the king is hiding there. He draws his sword and stabs through the fabric, killing Polonius. For this crime, he is immediately dispatched to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. However, Claudius’s plan for Hamlet includes more than banishment, as he has given Rosencrantz and Guildenstern sealed orders for the King of England demanding that Hamlet be put to death. In the aftermath of her father’s death, Ophelia goes mad with grief and drowns in the river. Polonius’s son, Laertes, who has been staying in France, returns to Denmark in a rage. Claudius convinces him that Hamlet is to blame for his father’s and sister’s deaths. When Horatio and the king receive letters from Hamlet indicating that the prince has returned to Denmark after pirates attacked his ship en route to England, Claudius concocts a plan to use Laertes’ desire for revenge to secure Hamlet’s death. Laertes will fence with Hamlet in innocent sport, but Claudius will poison Laertes’ blade so that if he draws blood, Hamlet will die. As a backup plan, the king decides to poison a goblet, which he will give Hamlet to drink should Hamlet score the first or second hits of the match. Hamlet returns to the vicinity of Elsinore just as Ophelia’s funeral is taking place. Stricken with grief, he attacks Laertes and declares that he had in fact always loved Ophelia. Back at the castle, he tells Horatio that he believes one must be prepared to die, since death can come at any moment. A foolish courtier named Osric arrives on Claudius’s orders to arrange the fencing match between Hamlet and Laertes. The sword-fighting begins. Hamlet scores the first hit, but declines to drink from the king’s proffered goblet. Instead, Gertrude takes a drink from it and is swiftly killed by the poison. Laertes succeeds in wounding Hamlet, though Hamlet does not die of the poison immediately. First, Laertes is cut by his own sword’s blade, and, after revealing to Hamlet that Claudius is responsible for the queen’s death, he dies from the blade’s poison. Hamlet then stabs Claudius through with the poisoned sword and forces him to drink down the rest of the poisoned wine. Claudius dies, and Hamlet dies immediately after achieving his revenge. At this moment, a Norwegian prince named Fortinbras, who has led an army to Denmark and attacked Poland earlier in the play, enters with ambassadors from England, who report that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Fortinbras is stunned by the gruesome sight of the entire royal family lying sprawled on the floor dead. He moves to take power of the kingdom. Horatio, fulfilling Hamlet’s last request, tells him Hamlet’s tragic story. Fortinbras orders that Hamlet be carried away in a manner befitting a fallen soldier.

Back in the late 60's, I saw a movie version of Hamlet at the Odeon theatre in my hometown. I looked up Hamlet productions on the IMDB and find that it was likely the 1989 movie with Nicol Williamson as Hamlet. I had taken five Shakespeare plays in high school but not Hamlet. I was unfamiliar with the play beyond the usual quotations from it. I didn't understand a word of it. Looking at the commentary on the Internet, I find that I was not alone in this. William spoke in a thick brogue and very quickly. At the time, I put up my lack of understanding as a lack of capability on my part. Hamlet was for other people who had a more subtle intelligence than mine. Imagine my surprise then when I saw Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour movie version of the uncut play. This was fast moving, exciting, insightful and powerful drama interspersed with some very funny comedy. Hamlet was completely accessible even to someone like me. Perhaps, it wasn’t me who was lacking subtlety but the previous versions of the play that I had seen with their cuts and impenetrable dialog were the things that were lacking subtlety. These were productions of a meta-Hamlet. People could be familiar with the play and recognize parts of it in the production and appreciate the play and the production in that way. Given my experience with Branagh’s version, I looked forward to reading the play as part of my project to read all the literature that I was assigned to read in school but didn’t. I’ve read my five high school plays and have moved on to attempt to read as many of the plays as possible. I found the Folger editions of the plays and with their side-by-side notes. I’ve found that I can read these plays with what I think is some degree of understanding. Each Folger edition has a brief essay on the play from a modern perspective. The Hamlet essay pointed out that the interpretation of the play has changed markedly over the centuries. Earlier critics looked at the personality of Hamlet and found him to be someone who was not capable of dealing with the issues that he faced. The author of the Folger essay points out that modern critics look more to the society in which the action takes place. They see an analog of the modern surveillance state in the actions of the characters to constantly spy on each other’s actions. The Danish court in Hamlet is one in which there is no common purpose. Characters vie with character for advantage. Each is out for his own benefit and are indifferent to the consequences of their ambition on others. Claudius murders the king and conspires to kill Hamlet multiple times. Hamlet is indifferent to the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the pain to which he put Ophelia. Hamlet is a revenge play, but it is a revenge play in which those seeking revenge are as lacking as their enemies. The Folger edition says that the play can carry many readings and that is the reading that it carries for me. I have seen this in some other Shakespeare Plays. The Henry IV plays argue against the ambitions that cause the death and famine of internecine wars. Hamlet carries a play within a play that mimics the Danish court. However, for me, the Danish court is also a play that carries on in its own action indifferent to the factors of the real world. The players conspire against each other while in the real world the army of Fortinbras approaches to destroy the artificial world that they create among themselves. In this, I see the essential weakness of the surveillance state. We are faced with this same issue today as Shakespeare pointed out in his own time. Self-interest and suspicion breed only pain, hinger and death. The society they enable is unstable. It has no centre and cannot hold.

A book you need if you study a certain topic...

Más que una tragedia, es un laboratorio de la conciencia humana. Shakespeare desmonta aquí, con una elegancia feroz, las capas del pensamiento: duda, memoria, deseo, miedo, lucidez súbita y desmoronamiento inevitable. Cada monólogo palpita como si hubiera sido escrito esta mañana; cada silencio pesa más que cualquier gesto heroico. Lo sorprendente no es que Hamlet sea un clásico, sino que siga siendo un misterio. La obra rehúye la interpretación definitiva, y en esa resistencia reside su grandeza. El lenguaje —a ratos afilado, a ratos casi hipnótico— captura esa región imprecisa donde la razón se quiebra y la tragedia deja de ser un formato para convertirse en una experiencia. En un tiempo saturado de narrativas que explican demasiado, Hamlet continúa recordándonos que la literatura más poderosa no aclara: profundiza. Es una obra inagotable, vigente por la simple razón de que seguimos luchando con las mismas sombras que persiguen a su príncipe.

Très bon livre, avec explication des mots compliqués et du vieil anglais, commentaire et biographie de l'auteur. Idéal pour les étudiants en littérature

Great explanation on Shakespeare’s Hamlet writing and poem.