Classic of the Week: Hamlet

Today’s Classic of the Week is probably my favourite Shakespeare play, and certainly one of the most famous. One of the reasons I love it so much is that David Tennant (the best Doctor ever) performed as the lead character a couple years ago and did an amazing job. Also, I just love the style of play. It’s a revenge tragedy, but instead of having a blind desire for revenge, the hero is a university student who would much rather be studying than trying to kill his uncle. The play is….

Hamlet holding the skull of Yorick, the jester

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Almost everyone will know the basic plot of Hamlet. Two months before the play starts, Hamlet’s Uncle Claudius kills his father and marries his mother, becoming king of Denmark. Hamlet isn’t very happy about this, but when his father’s ghost appears to him and tells him it was murder, he decides to get revenge. The problem is, he’s not sure if the ghost is telling the truth. So he gets some actors to put on a play of the murder to see if Claudius will look guilty. Claudius ends up leaving halfway because he can’t stand to hear it, so Hamlet is sure that Claudius is a murderer. Then, due to some complications that I couldn’t mention earlier, Hamlet ends up getting in a fencing match with another young man at court, and, thanks to a lot of poison, everyone ends up dying.

Hamlet creeps up behind Claudius while he's praying

Hamlet could have been a normal revenge tragedy. Uncle murders father, Hamlet murders uncle, everything works out fine. In fact, this is how it all works out in The Lion King, which is basically just Hamlet re-done with lions. But what Shakespeare does that is so brilliant is create a hero that is very poorly suited to a revenge tragedy. Hamlet is a quiet young man, a university student. At the beginning of the play, his one request is to go back to Wittenberg, a center of learning. Hamlet is saddened by his father’s death but he has no interest in getting revenge, until his father’s ghost appears.

Then it takes a good long while before Hamlet actually decides to kill Claudius. Hamlet has several opportunities to get revenge but he decides to wait for two main reasons. First of all, he’s not sure that Claudius did in fact kill his father and he wants to be sure before he kills someone. Secondly, he chooses not to kill his uncle while he’s praying because he wants the uncle to go to hell, not heaven. This may sound really cruel, but it’s not as bad as it sounds. After all, Hamlet thinks that his father was murdered without time for prayer, sending him to purgatory. If Hamlet kills his uncle only to send him to Heaven, then that’s not revenge at all.

Hamlet and Ophelia

All in all, I would highly recommend Hamlet to anyone. It’s not actually as hard to understand as some of Shakespeare’s other plays, especially if you watch a film along with it. Kenneth Branagh has a wonderful uncut version of the play, making it easy to read along, but I personally prefer the David Tennant version which is absolutely hilarious. Before I watched this I never thought Shakespeare could be that funny, but it certainly is. Shakespeare somehow manages to combine tragedy and hilarious comedy to create Hamlet.

Classic of the Week: Macbeth

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth

If you’ve been reading the blog over the past few days, you might have noticed me talking a fair bit about the summer course I’m taking at UPEI: Intro to Shakespeare. I read a couple of his plays while I was homeschooled (Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet) but now I’m learning five new ones for this course. This particular one is a fairly famous tragedy, with a scene that is so well known I was able to use it in my short story, ‘Because You Laughed’ without having ever read the play. This week’s classic is:

Macbeth by William Shakespeare

First off, I’ve got to say that this is not a nice play. It’s very good, but extremely disturbing. It chronicles the life of Macbeth, a Scottish thane who meets three witches and is told that he’ll be King someday. Hearing this, Macbeth decides to kill the King. He then becomes king, but he has to deal with several other predictions by the witches; that his friend’s son would become king (rather than Macbeth’s offspring; he has no children yet) and that he will be killed by one not of woman born. Macbeth’s obsession with stopping these other predictions leads him to murder his best friend and many other people. In the end, it’s Macbeth who ends up dead.

The Ian McKellen Macbeth

Since this is a play with so many deaths, it’s obviously going to be very bloody. Many of the murders actually happen offstage, but the characters still end up covered in blood. While this is all very symbolic, it means that this is not a play for children.

What hurts me the most about this story is Macbeth’s decent into darkness. At the beginning of the play he is a genuinely nice guy. He’s a war hero, fighting for his country against a traitor. Throughout the play, he grows worse and worse. He stops questioning the morality of his actions and instead plunges into them wholeheartedly. All he seems to be worried about is the possibility of getting caught. Shakespeare is an expert at crafting a drama that begins with a likeable protagonist, but then progresses until we have lost all sympathy for Macbeth.

Macbeth and his wife, deciding to kill the King

So far I’ve seen one film version of this play, the 2010 Patrick Stuart version. It’s set in modern day but the dialogue is unchanged (they did cut some lines, but every version does that.) I thought this version portrayed the feeling of the play extremely well. It was so intense that while I was watching it I had to stop myself every so often and go on Facebook or Twitter… anything to take my mind off the story. That’s one thing about Macbeth; it’s not very funny. Hamlet, for instance, is hilarious. There is virtually no ‘comic relief’ in Macbeth.

(Please note, there are bloody images in this trailer. Nothing too graphic, but not for younger viewers)

Would I recommend that you read this play? Yes, I most certainly would. If you don’t study this in school, then take the time to read it yourself. Immerse yourself in it. Perhaps read a synopsis first, so you have some idea of what’s going on, and then read the play. Make sure to watch a film version, as well. The Patrick Stuart version is excellent, and Ian McKellen (Gandalf from Lord of the Rings) also played Macbeth back in the 70s. Nothing by Shakespeare is an easy read, but he has invaluable insights into human nature. This is a chilling story, not just because of all the violence, but because it feels so true.