Book review Hamlet

[hamlet]

By William Shakespeare ,Written between 1599 – 1601,performed in London, England (Probably 1601-1602) With 4,042 lines and 29,551 words, Hamlet is the Shakespearean longest Tragic play

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Hamlet, like Shakespeare's other plays, is written in a combination of verse and prose. The nobles typically speak in unrhymed "Iambic Pentameter", is a kind of rhythmic pattern. It's a ”classic Revenge Tragedy”. Shakespeare conveys, then, is that human beings are both good and bad, and that their complexity should not be negated, but rather explored.

SAMUEL JOHNSON: from his edition of Shakespeare's plays, 1765

“IF the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterized, each by the particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety. The incidents are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation”.

—  Gives your personal opinions and thoughts about the book and relates the book to your personal life.

This play is just a “Infelicity” to read in the sense of inner delight at the writing, The complexity of characters, the richness of the thought produced by the insights into human existence in constructing this marvelous drama. Hamlet is a revenge story where a son's quest for avenging his father's murder. But it has been said that nothing is new under the sun. Love, lust and hatred are discovered anew in this timeless classic. The drama pulls into an intimate engagement and Hamlet's tragedy becomes the tragedy of every individual. No nation is a stranger to political intrigues and love affairs. With the words "something is rotten in the state of Denmark", Shakespeare underlines the universality of 'rotten'ness. The king of Denmark is killed by his brother, who lusts after the crown and the queen. Hamlet, the prince, comes about vows revenge.

—  Gives a brief summary of what goes on in the book but not giving a way the final event ( to do this, you usually just say a question such as “Who will win the vigorous battle between ________ and ______?  Read the book to find out !

            “To be or not to be." That's of Hamlet  that Shakespeare's 500 years old play would be full of betrayal, violence, lust, and an argument for proper mental health. Hamlet’s father, also Hamlet, has been murdered by his own brother, who then marries Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet is actually told this by the ghost of his father, and it nearly destroys his mind, driving him toward madness. Shakespeare bears to the depths of human emotions. The king, Hamlet’s uncle, is fully in the know of his past actions, the danger he is in, and the threat Hamlet poses, mad or not mad. Thus he plots to remove Hamlet, but would rather just exile him rather than kill him if possible. Hamlet’s two student-days friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, blithely betray Hamlet and conspire with his father. The minister of state, Polonius, plots with the king against Hamlet, but again, would prefer to understand Hamlet as mad and to just exile him. Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia is pursued by Hamlet, but is throughout suspicious of him, but attracted at the same time. Later in the play Laertes, son of Polonius and Ophelia’s brother, plays a role of avenger after Hamlet kills Polonius. In the end the entire mess comes crashing down in tragic deaths of nearly everyone within several blocks of the theater!

S. T. COLERIDGE: from Lectures on Shakespeare, 1818

IN Hamlet he [Shakespeare] seems to have wished to exemplify the moral necessity of a due balance between our attention to the objects of our senses, and our meditation on the workings of our minds, - an equilibrium between the real and the imaginary worlds.

—  Leaves the reader in suspense

One of those famous set of lines is advice which, early in the play, Polonius gives to his son, Laertes, before he sets off to live in France. This is the famous “Never a borrower or lender be.” I was really taken in this return to Shakespeare to see how utterly timely and powerful that bit of advice is here in 2014 when borrowing run amuck has threatened the well being of the entire planet. It’s worth looking back on this awesome advice from Polonius:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be
For loan oft loses both itself and friend.
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

It make take our current times a full generation or more to recover from the madness of an entire planet which acted nearly the exact opposite of that marvelous Polonius advice. Top of FormOnce Hamlet gets this information about the murder and incestuous relationship between his mother and his uncle, is he really mad, as the other characters readily assume, or is he just devastated, but carefully planning his revenge? he may well be mad, he may be playing on the fact that others read his actions that way to be able to better ready his revenge ?.There is also a great deal of ambiguity about his mother’s views. She seems to allow that she is very naïve and doesn’t really know what’s going on, yet one gets the strong textual clues that she knows quite well what her new husband has done, and she’s trying very hard to not know.Hamlet is a character that perfectly represents the complexity of human tendencies and in the course, itself becomes a metaphor to the inner psyche and indecisive state of mind that every human undergoes. Hamlet understands that he was “born to set right” but the Question about madness arises, either he does mad after the death of his father or before he was ,as this psyche does not come within some days or with a passage of time ?

J. W. VON GOETHE: from Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, I 795-6

The time is out of joint, 0 cursd spite

That ever I was born to set it right!

In these words, I imagine, will be found the key to Hamlet's whole procedure. In this view the whole piece seems to me to be composed. There is an oak-tree planted in a costly jar, which should have borne only pleasant flowers in its bosom; the roots expand, the jar is shivered. A lovely, pure, noble and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds, and tums, and torments himself; he advances and recoils; is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind.

This play, in addition to being gripping from the first to the last lines, is also just filled with famous lines and speeches, slices of Shakespeare’s writing that are well worthy of the fame they have achieved from the most famous “To be of not to be” speech to one-liners of great significance.