Review: Hamlet (repost from GoodReads, 2016)

Hamlet by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the Arden Shakespeare edition, with notes and critical introduction by Harold Jenkins. I plan to see this at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer. It isn't quite my favorite Shakespeare tragedy (that's still King Lear) but it's certainly powerful.

Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play, completed in 1601 or 1602. The basic plot is from a Norse legend recounted in Saxo Grammaticus’s 12th century account of the history of Denmark. In the 16th century a longer version was written by the French writer Francois de Belleforest. An earlier play telling the story, is known to have existed based on contemporary references; scholars call it the Ur-Hamlet.

When the play opens, Hamlet’s father, the king, has recently died and his mother, Queen Gertrude, has married the deceased king’s brother, Claudius, who immediately succeeded him to the throne. Hamlet is disgusted she remarried so quickly - about a month after his father’s death. (Wouldn’t she have lost her seat as queen if she hadn’t married Claudius? It could be a political decision.) The ghost of Hamlet’s father appears to him and tells him that he was murdered by Claudius, and urges Hamlet to avenge his death - but tells him to leave Gertrude out of it (“Taint not thy mind nor let thy soul contrive/Against thy mother aught”). I’m not sure what to make of this, but it’s interesting that the ghost doesn’t have the same resentment against her that Hamlet does.

The play is full of philosophical musings by the characters. For instance, in Act II, Scene II, Hamlet remarks that “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” The editor of this edition, Harold Jenkins, mentions a similar sentiment from the essayist Montaigne, whom Shakespeare had read: “That the taste of good or evils doth greatly depend on the opinion we have of them.” In the context that Montaigne was using this idea, though, “good” and “bad” are not a matter of ethics but a matter of pleasure and pain - what we find pleasing or painful is a matter of our attitude, not of the objective reality of pain and pleasure. (This doesn’t mean the same thing as “right and wrong depend on what we think about them.”) In the play, the context right before this famous line is Hamlet’s complaint to the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern that Denmark - and the world - have come to feel like a prison (because of his depression). They reply that they don’t think so, and he replies that to him it is a prison.

The first of Hamlet’s two most famous soliloquies is in Act I, in which he says that he wants to kill himself because his life has come to seem meaningless ("How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, / Seem to me all the uses of this world!”) but he won’t commit suicide for fear of eternal damnation. The second - “to be or not to be” is in Act III, scene II. Hamlet contemplates whether it’s better to struggle through life or commit suicide. He concludes that death would be better if it were not for the fear of the unknown that comes after death.

Jenkins has some interesting things to say about how critics have addressed the motives of the characters:

“Sometimes criticism has even denied what is in the text; for well over a century it was almost universally accepted that when Hamlet proposes to defer his revenge till he could send the king’s soul to damnation, he could not have meant what he said. In our day a race of critics has arisen who maintain that Hamlet should have disapproved of his father’s ghost as much as they do themselves.
This desire to explain what the play does not by supplying the characters with motives and reactions on the model of our own is part of that demand for psychological realism which has dominated dramatic criticism since the eighteenth century, encouraged by the rise of the novel, which can trace the inner workings of its characters’ minds to a degree that a play, presenting its persons through speech and action, cannot.”

Jenkins also discusses how Laertes’s quest for revenge parallels Hamlet’s: "if Laertes is to take vengeance upon his father’s killer, he must seek Hamlet’s life… the situation of revenge is now revealed as one in which the same man may act both parts.” This aspect of the plot shows what Hamlet could have been; Laertes is more resolved and less cautious than Hamlet. “Hamlet knew ‘the dread of something after death’ and the ‘conscience’ that makes men ‘cowards’ but but Laertes consigns ‘conscience’ to the profoundest pit of hell when he says ‘I dare damnation.’
The play’s view of revenge is ambivalent; there’s another passage near the end of Act II where Hamlet says he is “Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell.” Shakespeare doesn’t really reject the idea that Hamlet is obligated to avenge his father, but it seems to involve him in evil anyway, in some sense.

He shows how this is reflected in the Players’ recitation of the story of the fall of Troy in Act II, Scene II. The speech describes the slaughter of Priam, the king of Troy (from the Aeneid). In the endnotes, Jenkins says that Shakespeare’s emphasis on this aspect of the story is distinctive: “Though the element of revenge is inherent in the story of Pyrrhus (his father, Achilles, had been killed by Priam’s son Paris) it receives little stress in Virgil or the medieval writers.” (I haven’t read the Aeneid, but it’s on my TBR for this year.)

Review: Macbeth

Macbeth by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


This is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. It is not the saddest of the tragedies -- that one is probably King Lear -- but it is bleak and disturbing. I read the Folger Library edition.

The first time I read Macbeth was in 2013. This is not my favorite Shakespeare play, but it would be a good one to start with if you haven't read Shakespeare before. I plan to see it on stage later this year. I might want to watch a film version as well, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I did see Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's retelling of Macbeth, a few years ago, along with an adaptation of the film for the stage that was performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

The play takes place in the Scottish Highlands, beginning with the brief appearance of the three witches planning to meet with Macbeth. The scene moves to Duncan, king of Scotland, hearing an account of how his generals, Macbeth and Banquo, put down a rebellion against the king and an assault from Norway. Macbeth and Banquo enter, and meet the three witches, who predict that Macbeth will become the thane of Cawdor, and after that a king, and that Banquo's children will be kings. Soon, it turns out that Macbeth is given the title of thane of Cawdor after the previous one rebels against the king and is sentenced to death.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth, John Singer Sargent (1889)

When Duncan plans to visit the Macbeths, Lady Macbeth speaks with Macbeth and convinces him to kill Duncan and attempt to take his place as king. In case you did not know that already, I don't think I am giving too much away here because it happens very early on, and the rest of the play is about the consequences of the murder.

I am fascinated with how Macbeth and Lady Macbeth switch places over the course of the play, with Lady Macbeth initially being the more determined and ruthless of the two. Ultimately, however, she is the one who falls apart, while Macbeth's reaction to guilt is to become more ruthless over time.

I will be reading another Shakespeare play, As You Like It, later this year, and maybe I will fit in one more. I am thinking of Troilus & Cressida because I reread The Odyssey in February, so it would tie in with that.

This is the play I am reading for the Back to the Classics Challenge 2019.

Here are some of my favorite quotes, besides the one at the beginning of this review:

- Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.

- I have done no harm. But I remember now
I am in this earthly world, where to do harm
Is often laudable, to do good sometime
Accounted dangerous folly. Why then, alas,
Do I put up that womanly defense
To say I have done no harm? (Lady Macduff)

- Here’s the smell of the blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

- Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.

Top 10 Tuesday: Platonic Relationships in Books

I've divided this into "close family" and "friendships." I thought I'd have 10, but I only came up with 9 in time for TTT. Maybe I'll update this post later.

Close Family Relationships

1. Morpheus (aka Dream of the Endless) & his older sister, Death, from The Sandman.

"You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification in this or any other plane!"

They are two of the seven Endless, anthropomorphic personifications of natural forces.

I have a couple of friends on GoodReads who have read and reviewed all of The Sandman comics, but I haven't found any blogs that have reviewed it. It is definitely not for everyone (it's more violent than my usual reading, for one thing) but this relationship is one of the best things about the series. Death is one of very few characters who can occasionally talk some sense into Morpheus. 

2. Morpheus & Delirium, also from The Sandman: my favorite volume of the series is probably Brief Lives, so I had to include this one. They're adorable. (Delirium is the youngest of the Endless.)

3. Lear & Cordelia from King Lear  -- I haven't read this in years, but I remember some parts vividly. King Lear is probably my favorite Shakespeare tragedy, edging out Hamlet just a bit. The quote I chose for this one is from Act V, scene III, when Lear and Cordelia are captured.

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.” 

4. Denethor + Boromir + Faramir from The Lord of the Rings  -- I am counting this as one relationship, because you kind of need all three of them to make sense of it. I don't usually connect Tolkien to Shakespeare, but this part of Lord of the Rings seems clearly inspired by King Lear. This has always been one of my favorites, at least in the books; the less said about the film version of this particular subplot, the better.

"Do you wish then that our places had been exchanged?"
"Yes, I wish that indeed," said Denethor. For Boromir was loyal to me and no wizard's pupil. He would have remembered his father's need, and would not have squandered what fortune gave. He would have brought me a mighty gift."
For a moment Faramir's restraint gave way. "I would ask you, my father, to remember why it was that I, not he [Boromir], was in Ithilien. On one occasion at least your counsel has prevailed, not long ago. It was the Lord of the City that gave the errand to him."

Rereading this, it strikes me that Faramir's interest in scholarship is what led him to want to learn from Gandalf in the first place. Ironically, it's a quality he shares with Denethor!

Close Friendships

1. Frodo & Sam from The Lord of the Rings. Obviously. Do I even have to elaborate on this one? I'll let this quote speak for itself:

"Yes, that's so,' said Sam. 'And we shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?'

'I wonder,' said Frodo. 'But I don't know. And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to.'

'No, sir, of course not. Beren now, he never thought he was going to get that Silmaril from the Iron Crown in Thangorodrim, and yet he did, and that was a worse place and a blacker danger than ours. But that's a long tale, of course, and goes on past the happiness and into grief and beyond it – and the Silmaril went on and came to Eärendil. And why, sir, I never thought of that before! We've got – you've got some of the light of it in that star-glass that the Lady gave you! Why, to think of it, we're in the same tale still! It's going on. Don't the great tales never end?'

'No, they never end as tales,' said Frodo. 'But the people in them come, and go when their part's ended. Our part will end later – or sooner."

2. Maedhros & Fingon from The Silmarillion. This one has a complicated backstory, but these two belonged to the house of Finwe, the royal house of the Noldorin Elves; they found themselves on opposite sides of the family feud. Maedhros was held hostage by Morgoth (Sauron's boss and the main villain of The Silmarillion)  and Fingon set out to rescue him, which he hoped would reconcile the two sides of the family. (Technically, I guess they could go under "family;" but they're only half cousins, so I put them here instead.)

"Then in defiance of the Orcs, who cowered still in the dark vaults beneath the earth, he took his harp and sang a song of Valinor that the Noldor made of old, before strife was born among the sons of Finwe; and his voice rang in the mournful hollows that had never heard before aught save cries of fear and woe.

Thus Fingon found what he sought. For suddenly above him far and faint his song was taken up, and a voice answering called to him..."

In light of later events, this one makes me almost as sad as the next one on the list.

3. Turin & Beleg from The Children of Hurin  -- If you've read the book, you know this one doesn't end well, but I haven't said anything about that. So, these two are a mortal man and a Sindarin Elf; they met when Turin came to the kingdom of Doriath as a child. When Turin left, Beleg left everything behind to follow him -- and found that he had fallen in with a band of outlaws -- a combination of "houseless and desperate men" and those "driven into the wild for evil deeds." Here's one of my favorite bits, from their argument about whether to stay with the outlaws:

"I would lead my own men, and make war my own way,” Turin answered. “But in this at least my heart is changed: I repent every stroke save those dealt against the Enemy of Men and Elves. And above all else I would have you beside me. Stay with me!"
"If I stayed beside you, love would lead me, not wisdom,” said Beleg. “My heart warns me that we should return to Doriath."

3. Strange & Norrell from Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell -- Two magicians in an alternate-history magical version of England. Both of them are very flawed characters; Strange is the romantic type of antihero and Norrell is more like the petty, pathetic type of antihero. But I loved reading about them! This quote is from their conversation about Strange's article in The Edinburgh Review.

"You think that I am angry," said Mr Norrell, "but I am not. You think I do not know why you have done what you have done, but I do. You think you have put all your heart into that writing and that every one in England now understands you. What do they understand? Nothing. I understood you before you wrote a word. He paused and his face worked as if he were struggling to say something that lay very deep inside him. "What you wrote, you wrote for me, and me alone."

4. Aziraphale & Crowley from Good Omens - Two friends -- an angel and a demon -- who set out to avert Armageddon.

"We'll win, of course," he said. 

"You don't want that," said the demon. 

"Why not, pray?“

“Listen," said Crowley desperately, "how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh? First grade, I mean." 

Aziraphale looked taken aback. 

"Well, I should think-" he began. 

"Two," said Crowley. "Elgar and Liszt. That's all. We've got the rest. Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot. Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?"

5. Finrod and Andreth, "Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth," History of Middle-earth vol. 10 - I really want to reread the Athrabeth, but my library no longer has the book, so I'll have to acquire it someday. (They used to have it, I read it from the library in the first place. I immediately read this chapter two more times.) Anyway, this is my favorite thing I've read from the History of Middle-earth, featuring a philosophical discussion between two friends, Finrod Felagund and Andreth of the House of Beor.

This a tough one to quote because I don't want to give too much away here, but I'll just say that despite the theological/philosophical focus of the text itself, the intensity and honesty of their friendship definitely comes through.

"And then suddenly I beheld as a vision Arda Remade; and there the Eldar completed but not ended could abide in the present for ever, and there walk, maybe, with the Children of Men, their deliverers, and sing to them such songs as, even in the Bliss beyond bliss, should make the green valleys ring and the everlasting mountain-tops to throb like harps.’

Then Andreth looked under her brows at Finrod: ‘And what, when ye were not singing, would ye say to us?’ she asked.

Finrod laughed. 'I can only guess,' he said. 'Why, wise lady, I think that we should tell you tales of the Past and of Arda that was Before, of the perils and great deeds and the making of the Silmarils! We were the lordly ones then! But ye, ye would then be at home, looking at all things intently,
as your own. Ye would be the lordly ones. "The eyes of Elves are always thinking of something else," ye would say. But ye would know then of what we were reminded: of the days when we first met, and our hands touched in the dark."

Review: Love's Labor's Lost

Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain and nourish all the world.

I saw this at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on Oct. 11th. I only had time to start reading before going to see it. Not one of my favorites, but I really enjoyed it. It will be interesting to compare it to As You Like It which I'm planning to see next year.

From the playbill:

"...Shakespeare takes the common elements of a romantic comedy, tosses them into an enclave in the woods, and sends the typical constraints of a well-behaved society packing in order to make a play where the characters transform themselves by inventing their own rules -- and then change again and again with more and different rules, in increasingly fantastical, wonderful, whimsical, maddening ways.

Moreover, this is a play that knows it's a play. That, in itself, does not make it unique -- Shakespeare often uses the theatre as a metaphor for life -- but in Love's Labor's he is especially interested in the smallest bits of what makes up a play: words. Words rhyming, words meaning two things at once, romantic words set down on paper, and sharp-witted words launched in volleys like arrows. The playwright plays with his writing, and all that wordplay creates this giddy, fantastical realm -- a gorgeous paper castle that stands in stark relief against the plain language of reality. It is only at the very end of Love's Labor's Lost that we learn the real reason for that third part of the title: Lost.

Love's Labor's Lost is too many things to count. The most important thing it is, to me, happens in the last ten minutes... It tells a truth about who we are in our youth, in our middle age, in our dotage, in our ending."

View all my reviews

The Sunday Post

Last week I posted reviews of The Red Tree, contemporary horror for the RIP Challenge, and Manfred,  my first book for the Classics Club.

I saw Love's Labor's Lost on Thursday at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. I got a discounted ticket on short notice, but I started reading the play before I went to see it. It was a great performance. Just finished reading it this morning. I haven't reviewed it yet. I really enjoyed this one. I think I'll want to watch it again at some point, so I'll look for a video version.

I'm reading The Ballad of Black Tom. Hoping to finish this soon.

I posted the Monday Poem for All About Books again this week: "Ode to the West Wind" by Percy Shelley.

I started listening to the Uncanny Magazine podcast. This month they have a two-part podcast (episode 24, parts A & B) with the theme of disability in SF, which is also the theme of this month's issue.