William Shakespeare Books

I recently read the book Hamlet by William Shakespeare and I loved it. It contains all of the characteristics needed for a good story Such as murder, revenge, friendship, trust, life, and death. Hamlet also expresses how many different emotions people can have such as love, hate, anger, sadness, and much more. This story shows how important family and love are.
In Hamlet a young boy, named Hamlet finds out that his father, the king, was murdered in his sleep and the king's brother wants to marry the queen. Soon after the wedding Hamlet is visited by the ghost of his dad. The ghost tells him that his brother, now the king, is the one that killed him with help from the queen. The ghost asks hamlet to avenge his death by killing the new king. Through most of the play hamlet has to decide what to believe. While he is doing that his girlfriend thinks he is going crazy because he has been acting so strangely. All of the other people in the castle also start to believe that he is insane.
Is the middle of the play Hamlet says the most famous lines ever written and most people have probably heard them somewhere. What he says is, "To be or not to be, that is the question, for is it nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune of to take arms against the sea of troubles in by opposing in them. To die, to sleep, no more." Hamlet is the longest play ever written but it is very good. Without all of the things in it the story would not be so interesting.
I am sure you probably have many questions about the book. To find out how the story ends you will just have to read the book. I am sure you wont be disappointed.

One of the major problems with sound recordings of plays isthat of making stage actions clear when the lines are of no help. WhenCyrano tells Christian to "climb" up to the arms of Roxane, we can assume he does so and a few discreet grunts would help. But when Hamlet stages a dumb show for Claudius and all the court, different directors of recorded versions treat the problem differently.

One or two recordings leave it out and skip directly to the spoken "Mouse Trap," while at least one I have heard has some music playing and the court reacting audibly to whatever is supposed to be happening. Well, I was most impressed in the Arkangel audio edition of when Shakespeare's stage directions concerning the dumb show were read by Hamlet as dialogue. This works just fine and I cannot conceive any future recording doing it any other way. The exchange of rapiers during the duel, however, is not at all clear without having a text open before you. (In the Branagh recording, a line is inserted to tell us the weapons are switched.)

The intelligence with which that dumb show is handled made me very favorably disposed to this set that is cast strongly with Jane Lapotaire (Gertrude), Imogene Stubbs (Ophelia), Bob Peck (Claudius), and Norman Rodway (Polonius). However (oh, dear), when it comes to the Hamlet of Simon Russell Beale, I must back off just a little.

I find his reading much better than the dry recital of Paul Scofield on the Harper Audio version, less flexible than Brannagh's on the Bantam set, and far less poetical than Gielgud on the long out of print RCA Victor version from the 1950s. Whether by personal choice or director's mandate, this is somewhat monochromatic Hamlet: angry and intense. Too many of his lines are read between strong inhalations, as if he is trying to cope with his emotions--which indeed Hamlet is. Towards the end of the play, he seems to loosen up and actually manages a vocal smile as he tells Horatio about how he forged the letter that sends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths.Do not missunderstand! What he does he does very well. My point is that he does not explore all the facets of the character as well as some of the rival Hamlets.

Although timed at 3 hours, 25 minutes, the entire play is on two cassettes (as opposed to the four for the Scofield version and for the Branagh) and modestly priced. So despite my minor reservations, this is for me the "Hamlet" of choice.

This review is not of Hamlet itself, but rather on this edition of Hamlet (ISBN: 9781411400344), which was edited by Jeff Dolven and David Scott Kastan. I read a lot of heavily annotated books, and I have to say this is one of the best book designs I've ever encountered. The various references materials (footnotes and definitions for archaic words) appear in a manner that makes the text very easy to follow.

The scholarship is also top-notch. The annotations give you enough to make things clear without insulting your intelligence, or without overburdening you with unnecessary detail. The essays are also interesting and informative.

I've been avoiding Shakespeare ever since high school, which was many years ago. Now that I'm reading him again, I'm glad I'm in such good hands. It is making the experience a joy, rather than a chore.

My compliments to the editors and the book designer. They have done a superior job of making this difficult text accessible to the modern reader. I wish my editions of Dante and Milton had similar layouts. Highly recommended.

William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is arguably the most famous play ever written in the English language; presenting the world with questions and characters that have been the subject of thespian and scholarly debate ever since the Prince of Denmark's first appearance on the stage of London's Globe Theatre. Probably written and first performed in 1601 (estimates vary between 1600 and 1602), the play draws on Saxo Grammaticus's late 12th/early 13th century chronicle "Gesta Danorum," which includes a popular legend with a similar plot centering around a prince named Amleth; as well as several more contemporaneous sources, primarily Francois de Belleforest's "Histoires Tragiques, Extraicts des Oeuvres Italiennes de Bandel" (1559-1580), which expands on the story told in the "Gesta Danorum," and a lost play known as the "Ur-Hamlet" (i.e., original "Hamlet"), sometimes also attributed to Shakespeare, but equally likely written by a different author a few decades earlier. Another work frequently cited in this context is 16th century playwright Thomas Kyd's "Spanish Tragedie."

Pursuant to Shakespeare's wishes and like all of his works, "Hamlet" was not immediately published, and the original manuscript did not survive. However, in the absence of copyright laws or other forms of protection of what today would be called the playwright's intellectual property rights, first bootleg copies (so-called quartos) based on transcripts made during or after performances began to appear in 1603. Yet, it would not be until 1623 - seven years after Shakespeare's 1616 death - that his former fellow actors John Hemmings and Henry Condell published 36 of his plays (including this one) in a collection known as the First Folio.

As no print version of any of Shakespeare's plays has a bona fide claim to its author's first-hand blessings, ever since the Bard's death the world is left with numerous questions about his characters' motivations and psychological makeup; first and foremost, in this particular case: who is this Prince of Denmark anyway, and what's driving him - is he a reluctant suicide or reluctant avenger? A Renaissance man? Wrecked by Freudian guilt? Genuinely mad, or merely putting on a clever act of deception? Or is he someone else entirely? - Indeed, we're even left in doubt as to what exactly it was that Shakespeare meant his characters to say, with all attendant interpretative consequences: Does the Prince wish for his "too too sullied" or his "too too solid" flesh to "melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew" in his first major soliloquy (Act I, Scene 2)? Does he really contemplate "the stamp of [that] one defect" which may fatally taint the perception of a man's other virtues, "be they as pure as grace," before meeting his father's ghost (I, 4)? Does Polonius, when sending Reynaldo on a spying mission after Laertes, refer to his scheme as "a fetch of wit" or "a fetch of warrant" (II, 1)? Do Hamlet's musings in "To be, or not to be" (III, 1) concern "enterprises of great pith and moment" or "of great pitch and moment," whose "currents turn awry and lose the name of action" by his doubts? Does or doesn't the sight of the Norwegian army while Hamlet is on his way to England (IV, 4) prompt him, who has so far failed to carry out his purpose, to reflect "How all occasions do inform against me," and conclude his soliloquy with the vow "from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth"?

How you answer any of these questions, and how you consequently view the play's characters, depends in no small part on the text you read. Like all Folger Shakespeare editions, this one is based on what the editors have deemed the "best early printed version," while allowing the reader a unique direct comparison of the available (reliable) versions by including a text essentially combining these versions, with unobtrusive markers characterizing those passages appearing only in one particular version. For "Hamlet," the editors eschewed the play's very first (1603) quarto, which was possibly compiled by a journeyman actor and whose inconsistencies with all subsequent versions (textually as well as plot-wise and even regarding character names) have caused it to be generally considered a "bad" quarto, in favor of the 1604 Second Quarto, which some even believe to be based on Shakespeare's own first draft of the play and which, in any event, while more extensive than the 1623 First Folio (in turn, thought by some to be closest to the version(s) actually produced on the Globe Theatre stage), boasts about as secure a claim of authenticity as the latter. In some instances, the text follows the Second Quarto (Q2) without visually alerting the reader to the differences vis-a-vis the First Folio (F1), thus compelling those more used to the latter version to seek out the extensive end notes to reassure themselves that (in the examples given above) it might indeed be "solid flesh," "warrant," and "pith and moment" (F1) instead of "sullied flesh," "wit," and "pitch and moment" (Q2). In other instances, however, the First Folio's language is given preference over that of the Second Quarto; while crucially, the text also includes all those passages *only* contained in the latter, including the "stamp of one defect" and "bloody thoughts" monologues, whose interpretation has such a direct bearing on many a reader's understanding of Hamlet's character.

The text is amplified by illustrations and annotations for those unfamiliar with 16th century English, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a short biography of Shakespeare, and introductory and concluding essays on this and the Bard's other plays and on Shakespearean theatre, as well as extensive suggestions for further reading, and a key to the play's most famous lines. While it is unlikely that after 400 years of debate any one version, be it in print, on stage or on screen, will be able to generate unanimous acceptance as the "definitive" rendition of this complex play, this is an excellent starting point for an in-depth excursion into the Prince of Denmark's world.

My daughter gave me the One Page Book of "Hamlet" for Christmas since I teach high school English. I had it mounted on foamboard, framed, and have it hanging in my classroom. My students are so intrigued by it and will stand in front of it reading even though they sometimes complain of having to read Shakespeare from a "book." The personnel at the store that did the framing for me were also impressed with it and wanted to know where they could buy one. I will definitely buy more of these wonderful one-page books!

If you are not used to Shakespeare's style of writing, this is a great way to start getting used to it. When I started reading this book, I had to look at the 'modern English' translation of each line, but by the end it was a lot easier to understand Shakespeare's writing, and now I can read Shakespeare's plays without a 'modern' translation!

I've been teaching Hamlet for 15 years. I picked up this book about 8 or so years ago. I love it. Each left-hand page has an explanation of difficult or archaic words or phrases that appear on the right-hand page. This has really helped my students not be quite as intimidated. It's been great addition to my teaching resources.

Prof. Prosser's historical research and insightful analysis of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" are simply marvelous. In her initial historical survey, Prosser succeeds in challenging and overturning many myths and misconceptions about Elizabethan revenge ethics that have caused "Hamlet" to be frequently misunderstood. After her historical review is complete, Prosser then provides an historically-based textual analysis of "Hamlet" which is even more remarkable.

While giving due respect to the theatrical nature of the original play, she interprets the text in a careful, scholarly fashion. In the end, her interpetation of the play is persuasive, comprehensive, and ultimately profound. If anyone wishes to truly understand "Hamlet" in the way that Shakespeare must have intended it (and the way in which Elizabethans must have understod it), "Hamlet and Revenge" is certainly the best book on the market. (Another good book with a similar historical survey is Fredson Bowers' "Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy")

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

This Kindle edition of "Hamlet" is great fun to read. The ebook is useful to anyone interested in Shakespeare, or theatre in general.

I am a student of Dr Lavender's and the book was on the reading list for his course at the Central School of Speech & Drama. I purchased the book tentatively considering selfish factors such as sales and authorial royalties. However despite this initial reticence and cynicism this is a thoroughly researched and crafted piece of theatrical commentary.

Lavneder focuses on three of the great contemporary theatrical visionaries and places their working methods under a sharlply focused scholarly microscope. His remarks on Brook's working methods are particularly insightful when reading The Shifting Point concurrently.

This is a fine piece of work and one that any student of directing, contemporary theatre practice or indeed Shakespeare would do well to read.

Andy didn't pay me to say write this. Go buy it!