Hamlet (Dover Thrift Editions) [Unabridged] [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 24, 1992 | ISBN-10: 0486272788 | ISBN-13: 978-0486272788 | Edition: Edition Unstated

In this quintessential Shakespearean drama, Hamlet's halting pursuit of revenge for his father's death unfolds in a series of highly charged confrontations that climax in tragedy. Probing the depths of human feeling like few other works of art, the play is reprinted here from an authoritative British edition complete with illuminating footnotes. A selection of the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The big H comes to Penguin's great revamped "Pelican Shakespeare" line. What else do you need to know? Buy it!
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

- The Annotated Shakespeare General Editor: Burton Raffel --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Dover Publications; Edition Unstated edition (September 24, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486272788
• ISBN-13: 978-0486272788
• Product Dimensions: 0.3 x 0.4 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (214 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,235 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare's Finest October 6, 2000

By Adam

Format:Mass Market Paperback

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1599-1601. Before the play opens, the king of Denmark has been murdered by his brother, Claudius, who has taken the throne and married the queen, Gertrude. The ghost of the dead king visits his son, Prince Hamlet, and urges him to avenge the murder. Hamlet, tormented by this revelation, appears to be mad and cruelly rejects Ophelia whom he loved. Using a troupe of visiting players to act out his father's death, the prince prompts Claudius to expose his own guilt. Hamlet then kills Ophelia's father Polonius in mistake for Claudius, and Claudius tries but fails to have Hamlet killed. Ophelia drowns herself in grief, and her brother Laertes fights a duel with Hamlet.

Hamlet's dilemma is often seen as typical of those whose thoughtful nature prevents quick and decisive action.

Hamlet contains several fine examples of soliloquy, such as " To be or not to be" and Hamlet's earlier speech lamenting his mother's hasty remarriage and Claudius' reign which opens "O! that this too too solid flesh would melt". Much quoted lined "Neither a borrower nor a lender be", "Something is rotten in the stste of Denmark", "Brevity is the soul of wit", "To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;" The lady doth protest too much, methinks," and "Alas, poor Yorick". Arguably Shakespeare's finest play and one that can be read again and again.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars No Words to Describe July 23, 2008

By Nemo

Format:Paperback

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!

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hamlet, glossed. November 11, 2004

By R. J. Maxwell

Format:Mass Market Paperback

I hated Shakespeare in high school, partly because I could only understand about one word out of every three. Recently -- that is, thirty years post-high-school -- I forced myself to read it again, in the Signet edition, and was dumbfounded at how different my response was. All the difficult terms were explained at the bottom of each page in footnotes. I learned the difference between the two terms of address, "Sir" and "Sirrah," and a lot of other things as well. As an adolescent I asked myself why the hero didn't just kill Claudius right of the bat and have done with it. The reason, it seemed to me, is that there wouldn't have been any play. Hamlet refuses to use his sword on his uncle for the same reason the Indians don't shoot the horses when they're chasing the stagecoach. What a change time has wrought. I guess when you're a kid you don't know the meaning of the term "moral doubt" because so many things seem black and white. It takes a certain degree of maturation to realize that murdering a king because some ghost told you to is a bit morally -- well, fuzzy. For instance, can you be absolutely certain that you're doing it to avenge your father instead of being jealous about your mother's affections? Questions like that, which a thoughtful adult might ask himself, are enough to give anyone pause. It's a fascinating tragedy. Probably the best film about it is still Olivier's from 1947 or 1948, which won an Academy Award if that still means anything. The signet edition is extremely helpful too in providing brief critical essays that review the play from differing perspectives, the Freudian, the feminist, and so on.

48 of 68 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Key Tool for Students and Teachers January 4, 2000

By Dr. E

Format:Paperback

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. Read more ›