The Greatest Literature of All Time

Hamlet is such a famous play�so much THE great drama, the one play that everyone in the world can quote at least six words from�that we usually can't see how strange it is that this should be so.

Look at the plot. The prince of Denmark suspects his father the king was killed by Uncle Claudius (his father's ghost told him so) who has taken over the throne�and his mother the queen�and so he spends most of the play moaning about it and trying to make up his mind what to do about it, along with killing an innocent man, driving the woman who loves him to suicide, alternately berating and coming onto the queen, taunting the king by staging a play about regicide, escaping being murdered himself, and finally leaving the court strewn with bodies, including his own.

It's Shakespeare's longest play (if you have the edition with the full text). Very dramatic. Violent. Yes. Passionate and darkly reflective by turn. Yes. Yes. A lovely tale of power, intrigue and bloody vengeance.

For Klingons maybe. But what is it about Hamlet that appeals to us gentle folk so deeply?

I don't know. I find it difficult to get a handle on Hamlet. It's all over the place, yet somehow intensely focused. I could write an essay on any of a dozen themes found in Hamlet, but I can't seem to sum up what the play is all about. Maybe there are too many ways of looking at it. Maybe it's about intensity itself. About the desperate, inchoate yearning inside us�so no matter how different our personalities and circumstances are from Hamlet's we each identify with this confusion of fear and outrage. Maybe.

I don't usually go along with saying a work of art is whatever you make of it, but Hamlet more than most plays seems open to multiple interpretations that depend on the audience's situation and expectations.

The great Albanian actor Aleksander Mo�ssi (1879-1935) played the lead role in Hamlet often over a thirty-year period and is said to have unveiled three interpretations at different stages in his life. As a young man, he portrayed Hamlet as sentimental and melancholy, suffering spiritually. As he matured, his Hamlet became a humanist. And in his later years, he played the prince as a rebel, not merely bent on revenge but standing against tyranny and hypocrisy.

Interestingly, all three interpretations could represent phases that adolescents go through on a daily basis. Just listen to an hour of pop music�rock, rap, hip hop�and you'll hear all these stances. And more than once you'll sense the implied violent release that Shakespeare delivers at the end of Hamlet.

So I'll leave it to you and future generations to find their own interpretations of Hamlet. Perhaps, as Hamlet says, the play's the thing. He's talking about his staged play-within-the-play as the way he'll provoke the king, but we can also take Hamlet as the thing to rouse our own personal or social demons.

End of serious discussion on Hamlet.

In case you really don't want to bother reading this disturbing this play in its full length, here's a more palatable summary for you. It's supposed to have appeared in a Time-Life publication in 1962 and shows how Hamlet would be written for one of the Dick-and-Jane primers that were popular for teaching children to read in those days:

See Hamlet run. Run, Hamlet, Run.
He is going to his mother's room.
"I have something to tell you mother," says Hamlet.
"Uncle Claudius is bad. He gave my father poison. Poison is not good. I do not like poison. Do you like poison?"
"Oh, no, indeed!" says his mother. "I do not like poison."
"Oh, there is Uncle Claudius," says Hamlet. "He is hiding behind the curtain.
Why is he hiding behind the curtain?
Shall I stab him? What fun it would be to stab him through the curtain."
See Hamlet draw his sword. See Hamlet stab. Stab, Hamlet, stab.
See Uncle Claudius' blood.
See Uncle Claudius' blood gushing.
Gush, blood, gush.
See Uncle Claudius fall. How funny he looks, stabbed.
Ha, ha, ha.
But it is not Uncle Claudius. It is Polonius. Polonius is Ophelia's father.
"You are naughty, Hamlet,' says Hamlet's mother. 'You have stabbed Polonius."
But Hamlet's mother is not cross. She is a good mother.
Hamlet loves his mother very much. Hamlet loves his mother very, very much.
Does Hamlet love his mother a little too much?
Perhaps.
See Hamlet run. Run, Hamlet, Run.
"I am on my way to find Uncle Claudius," Hamlet says.
On the way he meets a man. "I am Laertes," says the man.
"Let us draw our swords. Let us duel."
See Hamlet and Laertes duel. See Laertes stab Hamlet. See Hamlet stab Laertes. See Hamlet's mother drink poison. See Hamlet stab King Claudius.
See everybody wounded and bleeding and dying and dead.
What fun they are having!
Wouldn't you like to have fun like that?

� Eric

Win free books in Editor Eric's Great Literature Contest