Hamlet

Greatest and longest tragedies ig by Shakespeare. Must read. Thanks Amazon for correct and within time delivery

Hamlet by William Shakespeare is about a prince who is heartbroken after losing his father and then finds out his father was murdered. The story follows his struggle to take revenge while dealing with confusion, anger, and overthinking. What I liked is how emotional and real Hamlet feels. He is not a perfect hero... he is lost, hurt, and keeps questioning everything. The story shows how revenge, secrets, and betrayal can slowly destroy people and relationships. Hamlet is a classic and needs no introduction. Everyone should read it.

Must read book

Got the book next day delivered, cuz of prime. Perfect condition! No rip and tear. Clear text.

Nice book with quite insightful.

Worth it tbh I'm excited to read it the quality is really good worth the price love it!

"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare is a deep, philosophical play based on the dilemma faced by Hamlet after having a heartwrenching confrontation with his father's ghost and the subsequent revelations made in the conversation; forcing him to question his own existence. Doomed by his fate and stuck between choices he seeks not to make, Hamlet's innate turmoil, philosophical questioning and retrospection, makes it one of Shakespeare's most enduring plays - in the 21st century.

Book was in good condition, story is very amazing. Though there have been a lot of usage of old english which makes it harder to read. Overall this book is good

Back in the late 60's, I saw a movie version of Hamlet at the Odeon theatre in my hometown. I looked up Hamlet productions on the IMDB and find that it was likely the 1989 movie with Nicol Williamson as Hamlet. I had taken five Shakespeare plays in high school but not Hamlet. I was unfamiliar with the play beyond the usual quotations from it. I didn't understand a word of it. Looking at the commentary on the Internet, I find that I was not alone in this. William spoke in a thick brogue and very quickly. At the time, I put up my lack of understanding as a lack of capability on my part. Hamlet was for other people who had a more subtle intelligence than mine. Imagine my surprise then when I saw Kenneth Branagh’s four-hour movie version of the uncut play. This was fast moving, exciting, insightful and powerful drama interspersed with some very funny comedy. Hamlet was completely accessible even to someone like me. Perhaps, it wasn’t me who was lacking subtlety but the previous versions of the play that I had seen with their cuts and impenetrable dialog were the things that were lacking subtlety. These were productions of a meta-Hamlet. People could be familiar with the play and recognize parts of it in the production and appreciate the play and the production in that way. Given my experience with Branagh’s version, I looked forward to reading the play as part of my project to read all the literature that I was assigned to read in school but didn’t. I’ve read my five high school plays and have moved on to attempt to read as many of the plays as possible. I found the Folger editions of the plays and with their side-by-side notes. I’ve found that I can read these plays with what I think is some degree of understanding. Each Folger edition has a brief essay on the play from a modern perspective. The Hamlet essay pointed out that the interpretation of the play has changed markedly over the centuries. Earlier critics looked at the personality of Hamlet and found him to be someone who was not capable of dealing with the issues that he faced. The author of the Folger essay points out that modern critics look more to the society in which the action takes place. They see an analog of the modern surveillance state in the actions of the characters to constantly spy on each other’s actions. The Danish court in Hamlet is one in which there is no common purpose. Characters vie with character for advantage. Each is out for his own benefit and are indifferent to the consequences of their ambition on others. Claudius murders the king and conspires to kill Hamlet multiple times. Hamlet is indifferent to the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and the pain to which he put Ophelia. Hamlet is a revenge play, but it is a revenge play in which those seeking revenge are as lacking as their enemies. The Folger edition says that the play can carry many readings and that is the reading that it carries for me. I have seen this in some other Shakespeare Plays. The Henry IV plays argue against the ambitions that cause the death and famine of internecine wars. Hamlet carries a play within a play that mimics the Danish court. However, for me, the Danish court is also a play that carries on in its own action indifferent to the factors of the real world. The players conspire against each other while in the real world the army of Fortinbras approaches to destroy the artificial world that they create among themselves. In this, I see the essential weakness of the surveillance state. We are faced with this same issue today as Shakespeare pointed out in his own time. Self-interest and suspicion breed only pain, hinger and death. The society they enable is unstable. It has no centre and cannot hold.

Más que una tragedia, es un laboratorio de la conciencia humana. Shakespeare desmonta aquí, con una elegancia feroz, las capas del pensamiento: duda, memoria, deseo, miedo, lucidez súbita y desmoronamiento inevitable. Cada monólogo palpita como si hubiera sido escrito esta mañana; cada silencio pesa más que cualquier gesto heroico. Lo sorprendente no es que Hamlet sea un clásico, sino que siga siendo un misterio. La obra rehúye la interpretación definitiva, y en esa resistencia reside su grandeza. El lenguaje —a ratos afilado, a ratos casi hipnótico— captura esa región imprecisa donde la razón se quiebra y la tragedia deja de ser un formato para convertirse en una experiencia. En un tiempo saturado de narrativas que explican demasiado, Hamlet continúa recordándonos que la literatura más poderosa no aclara: profundiza. Es una obra inagotable, vigente por la simple razón de que seguimos luchando con las mismas sombras que persiguen a su príncipe.

Hamlet is, of course, a great work that gets better with each rereading. The Folger edition ebooks of his plays are the best ebook versions of Shakespeare I have found so far because of how easy they made it to access the footnotes in the book. Unfortunately, the essays in the Folger editions tend to be boring and repetitious. That said, there is still a lot of good comment available online so it is less critical to have it in the ebook itself.

Très bon livre, avec explication des mots compliqués et du vieil anglais, commentaire et biographie de l'auteur. Idéal pour les étudiants en littérature

... which is best summarized in the pithy formulation that is a principal "takeaway" from this classic Shakespearean play: "To be or not to be, that is the question." Indeed, it is a gloomy play, with more than one character wondering if life is really worth it. The play commences with a ghost, who is Hamlet's father, who has returned to haunt the living, since he was murdered - by his brother, who is now the King. Furthermore, the reader learns early on, the wife of the now dead King quickly marries the new King; no "decent interval" required. And yes, she is the mother of Hamlet. That's the setup; Cliff Notes, as it has for generations of students, can walk you through the rest of the plot. I'll only add that not many of the principals are left standing at the end. And like those aforementioned generations of students, I was once one myself, though now I am "way past school." And like the vast majority of students, those Shakespearean school reading assignments rather perversely instilled a desire never to read Shakespeare again. At a very real level, one is just too young in high school to "get it." And the "stilted" language of the English of the Middle Ages only makes it harder. Perhaps the only way to instill a desire to read him in school would be to forbid it. I've been re-reading a number of works that I had to read in school, to see how the work and my perception of it have aged. "Hamlet" is a re-read. Now I've been able to observe, over several decades, the "craziness" that seems to come to people with power, as well as those who desire it. I now have known those who have died, and might call out for vengeance from beyond the grave. And I have observed the angst and indecisiveness in others, as so well depicted in the character of Hamlet. Ophelia, the young woman who Hamlet may have loved, has become a symbol for troubled young women, and she has lent her name to the title to a book or two. And there were some very famous women who followed her path, such as Virginia Woolf. I also know a few very real Danes, but they are far from angst-ridden. The most famous soliloquy, "To Be...," I mentioned earlier. It has been decades since I thought of that famous contemplation of death: "Alas, poor Yorick!- I knew him well..." Also, for decades, I've made references to getting something done "before we shake off this mortal coil" thinking it was probably somewhere in the Bible - but it turns out it was from Hamlet. And I thought Ben Franklin had said: "Neither a borrower or a lender be," so I was surprised to also find it in Hamlet. And then there were those I hadn't remembered or attributed, correctly or not, such as: "What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more..." Overall, the re-read was a great experience. And it is now so easy to download the plays, one at a time, for under a buck, unto the Kindle. I've set myself a goal of trying to read one a month, starting with the re-reads of the major tragedies, and then on to some of the comedies and histories which I had not read before. For Hamlet, 5-stars.