Hamlet Isn't your Neighbor's Piglet

I thought I liked Shakespeare before the class read and discussed Hamlet. Unfortunately, that was before I actually read it. Life's funny sometimes because it plays cruel jokes and then spends hours laughing at you (at least, that's what reading Hamlet felt like; it literally took hours). 

Hours into reading, I'd tripped through monologues that made no sense and somehow the plot had jumbled the mix even more. If Hamlet were the name of an omelet, I wouldn't order it. In fact, that omelet would be a five-course meal that never seems to end and progressively worsens with every bite. 

(I apologize in advance for the bad jokes...but when a literary hero comes up with the name Hamlet, out of all things, it's hard for me to take the character seriously. And maybe that was Shakespeare's point.)

However, I did like watching the clips in class because they gave a little bit more context to what was going on and things flowed in a more logical order. The stage directions confused me as I read, so it was nice to see people actually speaking in different temperaments and with different reactions than the words on the page did. I liked the more modernized version of Hamlet becuase it grabbed my attention and helped me to follow the scene. It was shocking for me to see a firearm because I am more familiar with that than a dagger. I think that using the modern elements of today (a newspaper and the firearm) helped to advance Shakespeare's story into this century. 

Something that made it tough for me to read through Hamlet, besides the (brilliantly rhymed) sonnets and the stage directions was the influx of sub-plots. It took considerable effort to keep track of what, exactly, was going on. I don't know if anyone else felt the same way, but I thought I'd get my thoughts out there to memorialize my bewilderment and frustration. 

Shakespeare might have helped his future audience if he'd followed his own advice: "brevity is the soul of wit." -Polonius, Hamlet. If Shakespeare had intended for this to be published at all, which, in its own right, is an entirely different debate, I might have had some different thoughts on the reading process.

That's all folks.