MY OPINION: ****
*spoilers ahead*
I read this play for AP Literature and ended up really loving it, surprisingly. I am not the biggest fan of Shakespeare, nor am I a "hater" and I am usually fairly neutral toward each play. I don't let my thoughts about his other work influence my opinion of the current read, which I've found to be essential when reading Shakespeare. It is quite hard to judge such a prolific and renowned playwright such as William Shakespeare without looking at each of his works individually with a careful eye.
I believe the last Shakespeare I finished was another school read, Macbeth. I don't remember liking it quite as much as this one. I also have fairly strong opinions towards Romeo and Juliet, leaning towards the negative. However, as I've already stated, I did actually like Hamlet and its intricate plot, characters, and setting. I have recently grown an extreme love, borderline-obsession for Scandinavian/Nordic countries, particularly Sweden, and Denmark and Norway directly aligned with this adoration, though set in a completely different time period than what I have been self-studying.
The book covers several important themes, such as love, sexuality, power, murder, and life vs. death that I don't really want to go too far into after talking so extensively about the topics in class. However, I do think it is interesting to compare Shakespeare's portrayals of these rather broad and overarching themes with the same symbolism in his other works. Hamlet and his belief about what comes after life and the importance of female chastity is similar and different to Macbeth's belief of the afterlife and the portrayal of women within that work. I hated the utter misogyny that ran rampant throughout this play but I can forgive some of these trespasses due to the time period Shakespeare wrote this in and the emphasis on gender roles and values at the time.
I wrote about this in class already but I personally believe that Ophelia's tale ended up being the most tragic in this epic tragedy of a play. The poor girl is belittled by her own family, treated as being worth nothing more than her virginity, led on by the prince, hopelessly in love with a person who can never treat her the way she deserves, and goes mad with despair and confusion and betrayal. Her ultimate death is the uttermost tragedy of this book as I firmly believe it was not a suicide and her death was not intentional on her part. When blinded by madness, it is hard to control one's actions, as exemplified by her accidental drowning, and I hated the emphasis that the characters put on the "suicide" aspect and the lack of Christian values in her resulting funeral.
I performed a very simplified version of this play a couple of years ago and I think that ended up playing a fairly large role in my overall enjoyment of this book. I definitely did not understand the full extent of the issues and themes portrayed in this book when I undertook the role of Gertrude, the queen mother. After reading the book (several times, might I add, in an effort to study for our awful exam), I now understand important aspects of the book that I did not understand before. I also have come to view Gertrude in a new light, not as a bad mother but as an ignorant, young, confused woman stuck in a confusing relationship guided mostly by lust and the fact that marriage is the only thing a woman had at that time. People are too quick to judge the queen; I think she was a good mother at heart even if she did make some bad decisions.
I love how Shakespeare paints each character with their own flaws, desires, tragic actions, sins, and beliefs. It gives each person a more nuanced description that allows for further appreciation (or lack thereof) of who they are. Claudius is a fairly evil man, due to the fact that he killed his own brother, and there is no forgiveness there. Still, throughout the play, you start to see why he did it and get a glimpse into some of the remorse that he feels for his awful actions. Hamlet himself is painted as a loyal and distressed prince, confused and angry at his mother and full of a thirst to avenge his father upon a Ghost's desires. Is he mad? Is the Ghost real? Shakespeare forces you to question these things as you watch Hamlet's descent into the fragment of a man that he used to be.
One of the projects our teacher assigned for this book was to write summaries of each act in iambic pentameter with rhyming couplets. Through that project, I began to grow a much larger appreciation for Shakespeare. I cannot imagine writing so many lines with the same rhythm and rhyme scheme without going mad myself, especially in old English (though of course, it was not old at his time). By the time of this review, I am definitely leaning more towards Shakespeare-lover than before, though I cannot say I am fully sold yet. Still, I am fairly certain that I will be reading more of his work in my upcoming years at college and am excited to see how my opinions change with each new piece.
I would recommend this play to readers looking for a tragic, devastating, brilliantly-written piece of work, though I would recommend watching a movie version or seeing a performance along with it.
Main Character: Hamlet
Sidekick(s): Horatio, Gertrude, Ophelia, etc
Villain(s): Claudius, madness, death, betrayal, murder, etc
Classic Elements: This play is a classic Shakespeare creation.
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