Hamlet (The Annotated Shakespeare)
by William Shakespeare
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Book Summary Information
Author: William ShakespeareEditor: Burton Raffel
Introduction: Professor Burton Raffel
Contributor: Harold Bloom
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-10-01
ISBN: 0300101058
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of Hamlet (The Annotated Shakespeare)
Book Review: Hamlet is the greatest play ever written and the pinnacle of Western literary endeavor
Summary: 5 Stars
Hamlet is the longest, most complicated and famous of Shakespeare's 39 plays. The role of Hamlet requires the actor to deliver 40% of the over 4,000 lines in the play. Shakespeare is the supreme playwright of the ages and Hamlet is the pinnacle of his dramatic genius.
Hamlet is haunted by the ghost of his father old Hamlet. The ghost is in purgatory; Hamlet has returned from study at Wittenberg University. The Ghost tells Hamlet to kill Claudius. Claudius murdered his brother old Hamlet and married his widow Gertrude. Hamlet renounces his lover Ophelia the daughter of Polonius an advisor to to King Claudius. Ophelia goes mad and drowns in the river as a suicide victim. Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius thinking he is Claudius. Hamlet and Laertes fight a duel but each dies; Claudius and Gertrude also succumb to poison. The play ends with bodies littering the "prison of Denmark" as wasteland imagery abounds. Fortinbras and the Norwegian army seize Elsinore Castle.
This relatively simple plot of a revenge play is turned into a philosophical inquiry into such weighty subjects as Death; Family dynamics; the afterlife; incest; murder and love. No generation or actor can plum the full depths of Hamlet.
One thinks of the great lines:
To thine own self be true
Tis kind to be cruel
To be or not to be
words, words, words
the play's the thing
frailty thy name is woman
there is something rotten in the state of Denmark
all the rest is silence
The list of memorable words and the enigma of young intellectual Hamlet forced to act make this the play of the ages. Shakespeare is not easy to read or understand but knowing Hamlet is essential to everyone's cultural education.
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