(29) Hamlet

Well, I’m back after a particularly vile illness. It was wonderful (thanks for asking), the kind of quick-hit illness that makes you reevaluate your place in this cold, dark universe. Talk about suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Anyway, I’m back and better than ever (or at least not throwing up every 20 minutes) and I do want to finish out this Hamlet business.

Interestingly, as I lay dying in bed, thoughts of this play certainly floated around in my infected mind, imparting whole new (and certainly unwanted) dimensions of meaning. To be or not to be and poor Yorick indeed. So right now, to me, this is a play about mortality, obviously and above all. I’m sure if I read it a year from now it will mean something else entirely, which is of course one of the reasons why it is so great. But anyway, some final bullet points:

• The movie version by Kenneth Branagh is really very good, excellent even. It provides a full performance (4 hours) with great acting across the board. As noted earlier, nothing beats seeing the play (as opposed to simply reading it). Never more true than in this case.
• Speaking of the movie, it’s interesting to point out that Branagh directs the play and is the lead actor. Additionally, the play-within-a-play, directed by Hamlet in the play, is also directed by Branagh (playing Hamlet of course). Everybody is directed by Shakespeare. Got it?
• It is cliché to say (oh well), but this is easily the best Shakespeare play I have yet read, and I have a hard time believing it will be supplanted by any of the others I have yet to read (and I have some pretty stellar ones left). It’s just that good. You could spend a lifetime studying this one play and, on your deathbed, find some new angle to it. Daily I think about something from it in the context of my day and wonder, when will all this noticing stuff stop? Hopefully never.
• One of my favorite scenes in the play is when Hamlet first encounters the ghost of his father, especially the father’s speech in this scene. This gives me the chills every time I read it. There are some hauntingly great lines in there. Also, it is clearly pivotal to the play in that before this scene, Hamlet is simply a grieving son. After this scene, he’s an unhinged, doomed, murderous maniac (of sorts). Also, for what it’s worth, this scene is done especially well in the Branagh movie. I showed my 10 year old son and he was totally enthralled so that must mean something, right?
• In some respects, this play boils down to an exploration of the “domino effect” that bad deeds almost always incur. Karma’s a bitch.
• The Sparknotes test (something I take and usually ace after reading every play) was particularly difficult this go around. I missed four questions (gasp!) to only earn an 84%, which is B work. I suck. Particularly irksome was missing the question about who was the first character to speak in the play…something I recorded in my own post only days earlier. In my defense, they offered both Bernardo and Francisco as answers so you had to remember which one went first in this tight scene, which is asking a lot. So eff them.