Hamlet - William Shakespeare

This is a weird one to just pick up out of the blue. In fact, it was picked out of a deck of cards. See, many, many years ago (odd how I’m old enough to say many, many years and realize that it has actually been about ten years…eesh) my best friend Villar gave me “52 Great Books to Read” (actually a misleading title cause it includes plays and short stories). She wrote an inscription on the box: “let’s see if it’s true that you’ll read them.” Well the dare was set ages ago and, in my customary speediness, I am now taking up that dare. I’ve had a bit of a head start over the years and have already read 14 of those listed (some read many, many, many years ago, such that I don’t necessarily remember the plot, but it’s having read them that counts). So, I took out the 14 I had read, shuffled the rest, and picked out a card at random. That was Hamlet. Many thanks to Project Gutenberg for being awesome and having ebooks available. Check them out, they’re free and legal (all books with expired copyrights).

First off, a disclaimer. Shakespeare is seriously hard to read sometimes. Maybe it’s because I’ve been out of school too long. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had an English lit class since, well…actually…I don’t think I did take a class in the English Department at college ever…hmm…I remember I read stuff…but maybe it was philosophy or some such. Or maybe it’s because I am really quite illiterate. Regardless, it was a tad rough getting through this thing. So, many thanks also go out to Spark Notes.

I think the general gist of the play is well known (and there have been several stage and screen adaptations, some including Shakespearian-trained actors like Kenneth Branagh, some including unlikely megastars like Mel Gibson, some including guys like Ethan Hawke): Hamlet’s father, recently deceased, appears to Hamlet as a ghost to inform him that his wife-stealing, poison-dripping, murdering brother stole his wife, dripped poison down his ear, and effectively murdered him (the father, not Hamlet). The ghost wants Hamlet to get his full revenge on and Hamlet agrees. The rest of the play is filled with Hamlet dallying back and forth about whether to kill his uncle and how to do it, all the while pretending to be insane so that people don’t think he’s up to something (or, at least, so that people think he’s up to something like being crazy but not up to something like planning the perfect crime). Somewhere in there we get hints that Hamlet and Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius who is the King’s advisor, had a thing going on but now that Hamlet is pretending to be crazy, he’s also pretending he never liked Ophelia at all. According to SparkNotes this has much to do with Hamlet now being a misogynist because his mother, the Queen, has wedded his uncle so shortly after his dad’s death.

After Hamlet goes through some soul-searching and accidentally kills Polonius, and after the King ships Hamlet off to England, and after the ship gets attacked by pirates and Hamlet is sent back to Denmark, and after Ophelia goes crazy and kills herself, and after the King and Laertes (Ophelia’s brother) devise a plan to murder Hamlet, the play comes to it’s renowned grisly end: Laertes stabs Hamlet with a poisoned sword, Hamlet stabs Laertes with a poisoned sword, Hamlet stabs the King and forces poison down his throat, and the Queen accidentally drinks poison, and everyone dies. The end.

The story was not a surprise to me and I have no strong feelings for it except it’s a good revenge story. What I didn’t realize till I read it is what a complex character Hamlet really is. We want to think of him as a hero and victim (the play is about him after all, and his father, whom he loved very much, was taken away from him by his very own uncle). But he is also one screwed up guy. In pretending to be crazy, there is a fine line he’s crossing where he really does seem to be going crazy. He has no qualms about killing Polonius or about violently confronting his mother or about telling Ophelia that he never loved her at all or about sending two of his friends to be executed. In one scene, the King is by himself and it is Hamlet’s opportunity to kill him. However, the King is praying so Hamlet decides to wait because what’s the point of killing someone that just finished confessing when that would send him to Heaven instead of Hell? Better to wait until he’s sinning and condemn him to Hell that way. I mean, the guy is seriously a jerk and a badass at the same time.

Here’s what he says to his mother when he confronts her about marrying his uncle so quickly:

Queen.
O Hamlet, speak no more:
Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;
And there I see such black and grained spots
As will not leave their tinct.

Ham.
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty,--

In case you’re wondering, enseamed bed does mean what it kinda sounds like it means. Here’s what he says when the King asks him what he did with Polonius' corpse:

King.
Now, Hamlet, where's Polonius?

Ham.
At supper.

King.
At supper! where?

Ham.
Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain
convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.
[some lines have been cut here]

King.
Where is Polonius?

Ham.
In heaven: send thither to see: if your messenger find him not
there, seek him i' the other place yourself. But, indeed, if you
find him not within this month, you shall nose (smell) him as you go up
the stairs into the lobby.

I think now I see why they cast Mel Gibson as Hamlet. It kinda makes me want to watch that movie version. And it kinda makes me want to watch Reinassance Man, too. And I have to mention this somewhere because for some reason I always remember that scene from Clueless where Josh’s girlfriend is saying “to thine own self be true, Hamlet himself said that” and Cher says “no, Hamlet didn’t say that” and the girlfriend says “I think I remember Hamlet accurately” in a snooty tone and Cher scoffs and says “well I remember Mel Gibson accurately, and he didn’t say that, that Polonius guy did” and Josh laughs cause it’s true. It always makes me think of that, go figure.

This is the only Shakespeare play in that deck of cards, so my days of poring over centuries-old english is over for a while. But that is not to say that I won't be picking up another of his plays at some point. I hear Othello is a badass, too.