Thoughts on Shakespeare's Hamlet
For my book club, Fantastic Books & Where to Find Them, I picked Shakespeare's Hamlet for October. I had been craving reading some Shakespeare and wanted to start here.
Hamlet shows us how someone has to learn to live with the loss of a parent (trying to understand or make sense of what it means to die) and being called 'mad' in the process. It also shows us revenge.
While reading Hamlet, I felt a slight turmoil relating to his character. I lost my dad in 2010 from an aortic dissection.
I remember that night in the hospital. My dad was in the ICU, so close but untouchable due to being hooked up to all sorts of machines with IVs and lines running into his body.
When the doctor took my mom, my bother and I aside to help us understand what was going on, I remember he grabbed a pen and piece of paper, started drawing the human heart then showed how it was torn.
It looked like the heart was shredding itself apart.
There were bad days, there were also better days where it looked like my dad might actually just get up and walk out of the hospital.
My dad stayed in the ICU for over a month before he passed.
Reading Hamlet re-opened that grief.
During the month of October, I became a bit obsessive looking into Shakespeare's life and also finding interviews from actors who have played Hamlet, clips from plays and I also started listening to John Gielgud's recordings (click here if you want to hear them).
When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, it was after the loss of his son, Hamnett who passed away at age 11, it's speculated from the Bubonic Plague. At that time in England, about a third of all children died before 10.
At the beginning of the play, we learn that Hamlet's father has already passed. Hamlet's uncle and now king tries to console Hamlet - in my opinion, as a 'get over it, this is what happens so accept it' kind of attitude. The following is taken from Act 1, Scene 2, lines 87-105.
King
'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,
To give these mournings duties to your father;
But you must know your father lost a father;
That father lost his; and the survivor bound,
In filial obligation, for some term
To do obsequious sorrow. But to persever
In obstinate condolement is a course
Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief;
It shows a will most incorrect to heaven,
A heart unfortified, a mind impatient,
An understanding simple and unschool'd;
For what we know must be, and is as common
As any the most vulgar thing to sense,
Why should we in our peevish opposition
Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven,
A fault against the dead, a fault to nature,
To reason most absurd; whose common theme;
Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried,
From the first corse till he that died to-day,
'This must be so'. We pray you throw to earth
This unprevailing woe,
After this, Hamlet has an exchange with a ghost that looks like his father. Hamlet wonders if this ghost is the ghost of his father, or something else. An angel? A demon?
What lead me to pick Hamlet for the book of the month?
It started with hearing that the play was going to run in New York at the Public Theater this past summer. I really wanted to see it - Kyle and I could go and stay in New York for the weekend or something but it didn't work out. I would still love to see the play at some point.
So, I just decided to nerd out on some Shakespeare and dive into the play anyway. I found an interview with Sam Gold, the director of the play that was held in New York with Oscar Isaac who played Hamlet.
Also found a few performances from other renditions of the play (you HAVE TO watch this performance from Benedict Cumberbatch - WOW!)
I also found this touching article from the New York Times with an interview from Oscar Isaac.
I was reading about this tragedy and felt so close to it.
Strange how art does that to you. How you're affected by the music you listen to, the paintings you look at, stories you read, movies you watch. Somehow, hopefully affected by it.
Throughout the month of October, I started memorizing the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, some of Shakespeare's most famous lines. I found myself thinking of those words off and on when doing house chores or meditating... almost not even realizing I was doing it.
Act 3, Scene 1. Lines 56-88
Hamlet
To be or not to be - that is the question;
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep -
No More; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would gardens bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,-
The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, - puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action. -
I enjoyed reading Hamlet and it makes me want to read more of Shakespeare's work. I remember when I was around 13 years old I read Romeo & Juliet and at the time, I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now.
Have you read Hamlet? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it and go follow my book club to find out what November's book pick is!
XOXO
-SARAH
