Customer Reviews

Hamlet (Signet Classic Shakespeare)

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I read somewhere that the first HAMLET one sees, experiences on stage or film, remains one's favorite Hamlet. Although I have a special fondness for the cinematic beauty of Sir Laurence Olivier's cinematic presentation of the Prince, Derek Jacobi's was my first, when as a young man I sat entranced and watched the BBC Shakespeare productions on public telly. And so, although I had this Signet Classic edition in my library, I bought this edition for the DVD. But the book itself is excellent, as are all of the Signet Shakespeare. They remain my favorite mass market paperback Shakespeare because of easy-to-read presentation of the text and especially because of all the extras. For example, here is the description of the opening essay as presented on the Contents Page:

Shakespeare: An Overview vii
Biographical Sketch vii / A Note on the Anti-Stratfordians, Especially Baconians and Oxfordians xi / The Shakespeare Canon xv / Shakespeare's English xviii / Shakespeare's Theater xxvi / A Note on the Use of Boy Actors in Female Roles xxxiii / Shakespeare's Dramatic Language: Costumes, Gestures and Silences; Prose and Poetry xxxvi / The Play Text as a Collaboration xliii / Editing Texts xlix / Shakespeare on the Stage liv

This is followed by an interesting and knowledgeable Introduction by editor Sylvan Barnet, who bravely tackles this amazing play. Playfully, he writes: "So many commentators on HAMLET have written so many words on one particular question, 'Is Hamlet mad, or only pretending to be?' that Oscar Wilde was moved to ask yet another question, 'Are the commentators on HAMLET mad, or only pretending to be?'"

Some few of those myriad Commentators are presented at the end of the book:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, from The Lectures of 1811-1812, Lecture XII;
A. C. Bradley, from SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY;
Maynard Mack, THE WORLD OF HAMLET;
Robert Ornstein, from THE MORAL VISION OF JACOBEAN TRAGEDY;
Carolyn Heilbrun, from THE CHARACTER OF HAMLET'S MOTHER;
Catherine Belsey, from THE SUBJECT OF TRAGEDY;
Sylvan Barnet, HAMLET on Stage and Screen.

It is these Commentaries that make this series of the plays from Signet such a joy for me. As the decades stagger forth, new editions of the series replace certain older essays with more recent ones, thus I am always buying the newer editions just for the Commentary. I imagine this series would be an ideal Introduction to they who are approaching the Bard for the first time. The DVD is a wonderful bonus: one of the finest ways to first come to Shakespeare is through excellent productions of the plays; for although he gains added potency when read as text, these are plays that come fully to life when performed.