Hamlet - Hardcover

Shakespeare, William

4.02

950,707 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1848373686 ISBN 13: 9781848373686

Publisher: Arcturus Publishing Ltd, 2009

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Hamlet guarantees a wealth of possible interpretations as well as teasing us with the promise of new meanings that always seem to be just out of reach. Playing Hamlet is considered the greatest challenge for any actor, interpreting the verses which are concerned with ideas of theatricality and performance, along with the struggle to discover one's real self.

Thought to have been written between 1599 and 1601, Hamlet relates the struggle of the individual soul set afloat on a sea of troubles and madness. Over four hundred years later, with its recurring themes of death, revenge and the impossibility of certainty, Hamlet remains enduringly relevant to, and popular with, a modern-day audience.

This handsome edition is decorated throughout with the illustrations of Harold Copping, and makes a wonderful addition to any classic library.

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Review:

Undoubtedly the most famous of all of Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet remains one of the most enduring but also enigmatic pieces of western literature. The story of Hamlet, the young Prince of Denmark, his tortured relationship with his mother, and his quest to avenge his father's murder at the hand of his brother Claudius has fascinated writers and audiences ever since it was written around 1600.

For many years interest focused on both Hamlet's inability to avenge his father's death, claiming that "the native hue of resolution / Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought", and, according to none other than Freud, his oedipal fixation with his mother. However, more recently critics have turned their attention to Hamlet's bold theatrical self-reflexivity (most famously reflected in the performance of "The Mousetrap"), its fascination with issues of theology and Renaissance humanism, and its dense, complex poetic language. What is so remarkable about the play is the way in which it tends to uncannily reflect the concerns of different epochs. As a result, Hamlet has been at different moments defined as a romantic rebel, an angst-ridden existentialist, a paralysed intellectual and an ambivalent New Man. Whatever subsequent generations make of Hamlet, they are unlikely to exhaust the possibilities of this most extraordinary play. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

"The editors' 168 pages of introduction and 103 pages worth of appendices provide an unprecedented level of contextualization on matters cultural, textual, and theatrical." - Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"The scholarship ... remains at the high standard expected from the Arden Series ... Probably one of the most ambitious scholarly editions of the play to be published in the past century or so, if only for its attempt to present the textual complexities of the relationships between quartos and folio by printing all three early authoritative versions." - Sixteenth Century Journal

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