Hamlet
1603
- performing arts
- stage history
- reyes, reinas, soberanos
- venganza
- history and criticism
- criticism and interpretation
- literary criticism
- succession
- fathers
- regicide
The story
In this quintessential Shakespeare tragedy, a young prince's halting pursuit of revenge for the murder of his father unfolds in a series of highly charged confrontations that have held audiences spellbound for nearly four centuries. Those fateful exchanges, and the anguished soliloquies that precede and follow them, probe depths of human feeling rarely sounded in any art. The title role of Hamlet, perhaps the most demanding in all of Western drama, has provided generations of leading actors their greatest challenge. Yet all the roles in this towering drama are superbly delineated, and each of the key scenes offers actors a rare opportunity to create theatrical magic. Hamlet is a unique pleasure to read as well as to see and hear performed.
What it’s like
Dense, formal blank verse with a sharp, wry edge, read best in a quiet room with a single lamp and a long evening ahead. The prose moves in sudden swings: long, self-lacerating soliloquies that slow the whole book to a standstill, then rapid, bantering exchanges at court and on the battlements, where the pace snaps forward again. The imagery runs to rot, weather, and things hidden beneath surfaces: stale gardens, cold winter nights, a painted face over a rotting heart. Its mood is brooding and feverish, with black comedy in the gravediggers and the courtiers' fawning, and a melancholy that never fully lifts. Violence is sudden and bloody but comes late and sparingly, with the killings dealt in quick, shocking turns rather than lingered over; the mood is more dread and grief than gore, and there is no sexual content beyond coarse innuendo. Its people are thinkers caught in action they cannot bring themselves to commit to, and the arc is one of erosion: a grieving young man spiraling through doubt toward a reckoning he cannot avoid. Made for readers who love language as much as story, students and actors, and anyone wanting a tragedy that rewards slow, rereading attention.
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