a word from our sponsors
See the new shakespeare.com. This feature, while it still provides useful information, is no longer maintained.
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help
Don't discount the lowbrow appeal as well. This play has everything: there's a ghost, there's a play-within-the-play, there's the aforementioned sex (in two generations) and humour (all over the place), there are advancing armies and there are fabulous swordfights. Also a poisoning, a stabbing of the wrong guy, Ophelia's madness & suicide, H. leaping into her grave to declare his love, etc. -- the wonderful business of is-he-mad-or-just-pretending, which they're STILL arguing about -- PIRATES, for God's sake! Yorick's skull! Did I mention advancing armies?I had a thing for this play before I knew anything about it. I remember as a child, coming across a picture in one of my father's books, of a weary blond guy in black clothes, contemplating a skull, and at the age of nine or whatever I knew I wanted to BE that guy. Then I saw the Olivier film, and then I read the play, and then I REALLY wanted to be that guy. Now I'm 49 and part of me STILL wants to be that guy. Hamlet is a sexy character, and appeals to the brooding, misunderstood adolescent in all of us.
Oh, and there's also some really good writing. :-)
(And by the way, everybody praises Shakespeare for his great poetry and insight into human behavior, but there's relatively little said or written about his mastery of stagecraft: of plot outline: of what scene to put where, and how to build each scene on the ones before. Aside from everything else, this play is a masterpiece of plot construction.)
Posted by John Lazarus on March 26, 1997 at 10:52:22
In Reply to "I need help this time." posted by Kari on March 25, 1997 at 19:40:05
Replies | Post Reply | Shakespeare Queries From Genuinely Interested Students 3.15.97: Top | Help