Customer Reviews

Hamlet (Oxford School Shakespeare)

5 star:		(131)
4 star:		(36)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

Bravo to the writers, editors, and publishers of the entire No Fear Shakespeare series. Rendering Shakespeare into prosaic, colloquial American English not only explains what Shakespeare was saying, but reveals how much better he said it! Here's a few examples from HAMLET:

Hamlet sees the Ghost, but his mother doesn't. In modern lingo, she says, "This is only a figment of your imagination." That's a cliche. In the original, she says, "This is the very coinage of your brain." That's vivid.

Rosencrantz tells Hamlet in modern lingo, "You're not doing yourself any good by refusing to tell your friends what's bothering you." Sounds like a reprimand. The original line sounds like a threat: "You do surely bar the door upon your own liberty if you deny your griefs to your friend."

Hamlet remembers his mother's relationship with his father: "She would hang on to him, and the more she was with him the more she wanted to be with him; she couldn't get enough of him." Sounds good, but the original sounds disturbing: "Why, she would hang on him / As if increase of appetitite had grown / By what it fed on . . ." Change the word "she" to "it" and you have the image of a parasite. That alone says a lot about Hamlet's view of women and sex.

I know of no better guide to reading, understanding, and appreciating Shakespeare than Spark Notes' No Fear Shakespeare series.

All in all (not all and all, as one reviewer has it; people who write such things [and then place unnecessary commas between subjects and verbs] have no credibility), "Hamlet" is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, a sophisticated play which, among many other things, casts an ironic eye on those tragedy-of- blood conventions which the Bard had embraced wholeheartedly in "Titus Andronicus." Its witty, urbane, generous hero, whose struggle to balance his father's demand for bloody revenge (one of those conventions) with his own humanistic sensibilities forms a major conflict of the play, has intrigued audiences and readers for four centuries. Unfortunately for Shakespeare and his creations, the English language has changed over the past four hundred years, and people have gotten out of the habit of reading and understanding poetry. This is where Alan Durband's edition of "Hamlet" in the Barron's Books "Shakespeare Made Easy" series comes to the rescue of the inexperienced reader. Its modern "translation" of Shakespeare's text is readable and clear, making this masterpiece approachable for those who find Elizabethan English too thorny. Having watched college freshmen struggle with "Hamlet" for some twelve years, and having discovered the Barron's edition during the summer, I strongly recommended the book this past fall as a supplement to the assigned literature anthology. About half the students in my Freshman Comp classes bought the book, either from the university book store or from amazon.com. (Amazon's price was better.) To my great pleasure, I found that more students than at any time before were asking questions in class, answering my own questions with knowledge and insight, and even debating points of interpretation among themselves. It was the most fun I have ever had teaching "Hamlet," outside of a Shakespeare course. So now my syllabus suggests this book as an important supplement, and now I look forward to teaching "Hamlet" with confidence that many of the students will be able to experience the enthusiasm for literature that educators so dearly love to communicate. Any book that can facilitate such enthusiasm is high on my list, and I hope it will be high on yours as well.

This review refers to the Caedmon Audio/Full Cast Recording edition(HarperCollins) of "Hamlet"....

The first thing I need to clarify is exactly which audio edition this is. If you are on the product page with a light purple box pictured, this is the 1963, full cast recording, complete play in 5 acts, starring Paul Scofield as "Hamlet.It is not, as the audio file editorial states the one with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. And if the Scofield performance is what you'd like to hear, you are in for a real treat.(You can enlarge the product picture to see a better view of the box)

The entire cast including Diana Wynyard as Gertrude,Roland Culver as Claudius, Donald Houston as Laertes and Zena Walker as Ophelia turn in powerful performances and will captivate your imagination no matter how many versions of this brilliant play you have heard, or seen. Paul Scofield("A Man For All Seasons") is masterful as the complex Hamlet, wanting revenge for his father's death, yet torn by his own conscience.

There are so many different versions of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", and on this taped set you will find a performance worthy of his genius.It is one you will want to listen to many times and well worth the price. After listening to it at home, I now bring it with me in my car to keep me company in traffic and on long trips.

This three tape set(6 sides) has the entire play, Ronsencrantz and Guildenstern included,in five acts. The entire play runs about 3 1/2 hours, each side of the tapes running between 30 to 45 minutes. The scenes are nicely seperated by music and the sound quality remastered(1995) in Dolby B is excellent.Although the tapes are not enclosed in their own cassette cases, there are individual cardboard holders inside the box for each.

A brilliant performance that you will remember, and one we are fortunate to have on these fabulous recordings.

more great audio book experiences:
Great Expectations (The Classic Collection)
The London Tapes (City Tapes)
Carrie
The Shipping News
A Christmas Carol
Les Miserables (Focus on the Family Radio Theatre)



Enjoy...Laurie

The Shakespeare Made Easy series makes reading the Elizabethan English understandable with the use of side-by-side text as oppose to traditional footnotes and annotation. By removing what is a reading obstacle for many, the plays of Shakespeare can be enjoyed for their brilliance and depth.

With the side-by-side text, I found myself unconsciously bouncing between the 'old' and the 'new' English based on my interest and comprehension of the words and the play. With the translated version, for example, it made reading Hamlet's famous soliloquies a pleasure to ponder and to begin to understand.

The editor's Introduction gives a concise overview of the life and times of William Shakespeare. It is certainly enough for the casual reader, and but just a rudimentary beginning for any serious student.

I have a better understanding of Hamet today than I did when I was in college more than two decades ago. The Shakespeare Made Easy series makes reading these great plays fun at any age; and probably a prerequisite for the undergraduate.

Hamlet is, by far, the most complex of Shakespeare's many plays. Many of the themes covered are love vs hate, action vs non-action, revenge, and jealousy. Hamlet discovers that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark" when he encounters the ghost of his father, the King, who has recently been killed in battle. From here, Hamlet goes on a search for the discovery of what happened to his father. However, Hamlet not only uncovers secrets of the past, but also the depths of his own being.

The Folger Edition of Hamlet is a great edition to buy, especially for those who are studying this play in high school or college, because it is relatively cheap in price and is very "reader-friendly" with side notes and footnotes that accompany each page of each scene. So, even if you aren't a Shakespeare lover or if Shakespeare is just a little intimidating (we all know how this feels), this version at least allows you to get the gist of what is going on. Also, there are summaries of each scene within each act, to let you know in layman's terms what is taking place. I highly recommend this edition.

In my eyes, Shakespeare could do almost no wrong, but some of his plays were decidedly better than others--Hamlet, for example--for reasons of literary style, subject matter, etc. In my case, his tragedies are far more interesting than his romances/comedies/histories given the wide range of emotions you're made to feel upon reading them.

In any case, Hamlet has the best quotes, and has spawned a million books/movie versions/spin-offs. "Get the to a nunnery", "something rotten in Denmark", "To be, or not to be", "A hit; a very palpable hit"... the list is endless. If nothing else, it's the kind of material that's easily visualized and easily understood. I might have been 15 years old when I first read it, but it all made sense.

Moral dilemma--ethics--deceit--virtue--honour--revenge... these are all things that make a story classic, not rustic. Over 400 years later, the source material is as vital as ever. Excellent stuff.

To say that Hamlet is good would be the understatement of the decade. Hamlet proves to be a masterpiece of masterpieces -a shining paradigm of unparalleled magnificence unlike any other play ever written. I thoroughly enjoyed Julius Caesar, Othello, Macbeth, Henry V, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo & Juliet, The Tempest, etc.

Nonetheless, I unquestionably rate Hamlet as Shakespeare's crowning achievement - his magnum opus.

Hamlet proves to be a prodigiously powerful and profoundly potent play incredibly chock-full of amazing quotes and axioms that I memorize and incorporate into everyday life - from Polonius's sanctimonious speeches spoken to Laertes and Ophelia("To thine own self be true") to Marcellus("Something is rotten in the state of Denmark") to of course the avenger himself Prince Hamlet("Frailty, thy name is woman!").

Although Hamlet's faults of inaction, procrastination, and paradoxical impetuosity preclude our protagonist from overcoming his impending and unalterable doom, I unavoidably empathize with him and his inevitable plight. Hamlet is grievously wronged by so many in his life - his uncle Claudius, his mother Gertrude, his love Ophelia, the ostensibly wise Polonius, shamefully by his traitorous "friends" Rosencrantz & Guildenstern, and lastly by his murderous foil(no pun intended)Laertes. The undeniable central theme of uncontrollable fatalism pervades throughout Hamlet. I felt as if Hamlet was on an unstoppable one way train going 200 miles/hour straight into a brick wall. Sadly, he knows he shall soon meet his untimely demise as he picks up his foil to fight Laertes. Fittingly, the victorious young Fortinbras proves to personify what could have and should have become of our tragically departed hero.

To be read time and time again - even if just for the supremely witty quotes. Recommended AFTER reading: Kenneth Branagh or Laurence Olivier's film versions - both long, but undeniably superb.

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.

There is little need to review the actual text: it is undoubtedly (along with many other of Shakespeare's plays) an extremely influential work of the human mind, and very well may be the best work of literature ever written, period.
The actual presentation and annotation of the text is rather indivdual as well. Whereas most annotated texts of Shakespeare place annotations on the other side of the page, here they are at the bottom. Considering your eyes spend much more time across the lines and down the page, instead of the small amount of time your eyes take jumping to another page, this annotation makes for a very fluid and efficient way of reading. I think this is the best annotation I've ever seen of Shakespeare. The quality isn't just present in form, however: the substitutions and explanations are always accurate and almost never redundant (to the average reader, not the average professor =]).
The introduction by Burton Raffel and the concluding essay by the legendary Harold Bloom only add to the benefits the book presents, and help to understand the book from a wider perspective once your ideas and feelings reconcile with theirs.
All in all, a great product for anyone who loves Shakespeare, literature, or expanding their minds!

Man, I wish I would've had this book 25 years ago!

I've always been interested in Shakespeare but it's been hard introducing anyone else I know to the greatness of his plays: the language is just too hard for most people to follow.

Thankfully, the No Fear Shakespeare books have come along, and I've been buying them for myself as well as others. It's wonderful to have a side-by-side comparison of the Bard's original lines with a modern translation that makes the play easy to read.

I hope the publishers do this with all of Shakespeare's plays!