Global Sharing With Hamlet

As a final follow-up to The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear, I've posted a Goodreads review on Hamlet. It can be found here. Maybe this will be the time where I get validation from someone other than my husband.

Writing this review was interesting, because reviewing begs the question "Was it any good?" I feel like most people would say "It's Hamlet. It has to be good. It's a classic." My answer is somewhat different: It depends on who's reading it.

Hamlet is, moreso than any of Shakespeare's other plays, a blank canvas. Almost no one has a clear motivation or objective. When we read the play ourselves, we see reflections of ourselves.

When I first read Hamlet this semester, I saw Hamlet as an under-developed manchild who never had an adult relationship with his father. I thought that he was stuck in the phase where you think that your parents are perfect and immortal and superhuman. I also thought that he was using his father's death as an excuse to justify his inappropriate behavior. I still think that's a valid interpretation. That being said, I don't think I would have seen the character that way if I hadn't known a person who was just like that. I inserted my own consciousness into the character.

The text allows readers to project their own psyches onto the characters. If you're a woman with kids who is working through her second marriage, I think it's more likely that you would view Gertrude sympathetically than if you were someone whose mom married some rich guy as soon as the divorce to your dad was finalized. Either one of those people could play the character, and they would likely play her in drastically different ways. One would strongly identify with and like the character, and the other would despise the character. Neither is wrong, because Gertrude is such an ambiguous character. I think everyone in Hamlet is incredibly ambiguous, and I think that's the genius of the writing.