Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library)

Hamlet (Folger Shakespeare Library) by William Shakespeare (based on 36 customer reviews)

(Mass Market Paperback)
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Washington Square Press

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Most useful review as voted by customers:
37 out of 41 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 3/10/05

Fantastic story, and excellent for new reader of Hamlet

The book has an interesting layout, with definitions of words on the left, with the text of the story on the right. The book layout is the best layout I've seen of any Shakespeare book, and the size is right (you can take it with you!).

The story is legend - even speaking literally - apparently the story of Hamlet hearkens back to even older legends that predate Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Shakespeare is so quotable, and Hamlet is no different - you often find yourself saying "Oh, that's where that comes from!" and its like finding an old friend in a new story. "To be or not to be, that is the question" is one; so is "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and so is "To thine own self be true". The book even comes with an appendix listing commonly quoted portions of the story and their source.

However, my favorite quote (but not well-known) from the play comes from Hamlet himself, and sums the character up well:

"O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!"

Get this book, and have a good read! Then get more Shakespeare from the same series: you won't be sorry.

12 out of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 7/3/07

Contemporary Relevance in a Four Hundred Year Old Play

Whatever your reason for picking up this book, or for wanting to re-familiarize yourself with it, you cannot help but be amazed at the contemporary relevance of a play penned with a goose quill by the light of candles four hundred years ago. Reading the text in its original language adds a special thrill. Shakespeare illustrates with dexterity and economy how our language can be employed to convey thought and action with precision, beauty, humor, and multi-layered meaning. You will see much that is familiar in Hamlet, because many lines have entered our contemporary usage:

Neither a borrower or a lender be...
To thine own self be true...
A custom more honored in the breach than the observance
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
Though this be madness, yet there is method in `t.
To be or not to be...
The lady doth protest too much...
Brevity is the soul of wit.
I must be cruel only to be kind.
...Hoist with his own petard
...the dog will have his day
Good night, sweet prince...

Even the time-honored concept of "innocent by reason of insanity" is one invented by Hamlet, in defense of his murder of Polonius, and it is now a cottage industry among trial lawyers.

It's a living play, and your fresh eyes will read fresh meaning into every line of it.

10 out of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 8/31/06

To thine own self be true ...

William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is arguably the most famous play ever written in the English language; presenting the world with questions and characters that have been the subject of thespian and scholarly debate ever since the Prince of Denmark's first appearance on the stage of London's Globe Theatre. Probably written and first performed in 1601 (estimates vary between 1600 and 1602), the play draws on Saxo Grammaticus's late 12th/early 13th century chronicle "Gesta Danorum," which includes a popular legend with a similar plot centering around a prince named Amleth; as well as several more contemporaneous sources, primarily Francois de Belleforest's "Histoires Tragiques, Extraicts des Oeuvres Italiennes de Bandel" (1559-1580), which expands on the story told in the "Gesta Danorum," and a lost play known as the "Ur-Hamlet" (i.e., original "Hamlet"), sometimes also attributed to Shakespeare, but equally likely written by a different author a few decades earlier. Another work frequently cited in this context is 16th century playwright Thomas Kyd's "Spanish Tragedie."

Pursuant to Shakespeare's wishes and like all of his works, "Hamlet" was not immediately published, and the original manuscript did not survive. However, in the absence of copyright laws or other forms of protection of what today would be called the playwright's intellectual property rights, first bootleg copies (so-called quartos) based on transcripts made during or after performances began to appear in 1603. Yet, it would not be until 1623 - seven years after Shakespeare's 1616 death - that his former fellow actors John Hemmings and Henry Condell published 36 of his plays (including this one) in a collection known as the First Folio.

As no print version of any of Shakespeare's plays has a bona fide claim to its author's first-hand blessings, ever since the Bard's death the world is left with numerous questions about his characters' motivations and psychological makeup; first and foremost, in this particular case: who is this Prince of Denmark anyway, and what's driving him - is he a reluctant suicide or reluctant avenger? A Renaissance man? Wrecked by Freudian guilt? Genuinely mad, or merely putting on a clever act of deception? Or is he someone else entirely? - Indeed, we're even left in doubt as to what exactly it was that Shakespeare meant his characters to say, with all attendant interpretative consequences: Does the Prince wish for his "too too sullied" or his "too too solid" flesh to "melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew" in his first major soliloquy (Act I, Scene 2)? Does he really contemplate "the stamp of [that] one defect" which may fatally taint the perception of a man's other virtues, "be they as pure as grace," before meeting his father's ghost (I, 4)? Does Polonius, when sending Reynaldo on a spying mission after Laertes, refer to his scheme as "a fetch of wit" or "a fetch of warrant" (II, 1)? Do Hamlet's musings in "To be, or not to be" (III, 1) concern "enterprises of great pith and moment" or "of great pitch and moment," whose "currents turn awry and lose the name of action" by his doubts? Does or doesn't the sight of the Norwegian army while Hamlet is on his way to England (IV, 4) prompt him, who has so far failed to carry out his purpose, to reflect "How all occasions do inform against me," and conclude his soliloquy with the vow "from this time forth my thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth"?

How you answer any of these questions, and how you consequently view the play's characters, depends in no small part on the text you read. Like all Folger Shakespeare editions, this one is based on what the editors have deemed the "best early printed version," while allowing the reader a unique direct comparison of the available (reliable) versions by including a text essentially combining these versions, with unobtrusive markers characterizing those passages appearing only in one particular version. For "Hamlet," the editors eschewed the play's very first (1603) quarto, which was possibly compiled by a journeyman actor and whose inconsistencies with all subsequent versions (textually as well as plot-wise and even regarding character names) have caused it to be generally considered a "bad" quarto, in favor of the 1604 Second Quarto, which some even believe to be based on Shakespeare's own first draft of the play and which, in any event, while more extensive than the 1623 First Folio (in turn, thought by some to be closest to the version(s) actually produced on the Globe Theatre stage), boasts about as secure a claim of authenticity as the latter. In some instances, the text follows the Second Quarto (Q2) without visually alerting the reader to the differences vis-a-vis the First Folio (F1), thus compelling those more used to the latter version to seek out the extensive end notes to reassure themselves that (in the examples given above) it might indeed be "solid flesh," "warrant," and "pith and moment" (F1) instead of "sullied flesh," "wit," and "pitch and moment" (Q2). In other instances, however, the First Folio's language is given preference over that of the Second Quarto; while crucially, the text also includes all those passages *only* contained in the latter, including the "stamp of one defect" and "bloody thoughts" monologues, whose interpretation has such a direct bearing on many a reader's understanding of Hamlet's character.

The text is amplified by illustrations and annotations for those unfamiliar with 16th century English, scene-by-scene plot summaries, a short biography of Shakespeare, and introductory and concluding essays on this and the Bard's other plays and on Shakespearean theatre, as well as extensive suggestions for further reading, and a key to the play's most famous lines. While it is unlikely that after 400 years of debate any one version, be it in print, on stage or on screen, will be able to generate unanimous acceptance as the "definitive" rendition of this complex play, this is an excellent starting point for an in-depth excursion into the Prince of Denmark's world.

8 out of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 1/4/07

Perfect Student Edition

The Folger Libray edition is very useful for students who are unfamiliar with Elizabethan language, customs, and other oddities. The opposite page of the script acts as prompter, dictionary, and general explainer. My students found the edition easy to use and helpful.

5 out of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 4/12/06

Best Shakespeare

It's a good edition in terms of footnotes that help to describe what is happening throught the course of the play. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play and in my opinion his best. The speaches are beautiful and everything comes together so nicely. Hamlet is such a great character brcause he is so colpletely loveable and yet ridiculously frustrating. I definitley reccomend this if you are starting out with Shakespeare because it is likely to leave you wanting to read more of his works!

5 out of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Review Date: 12/24/03

To Buy or Not To Buy Should Not Be The Question

Hamlet is without a doubt Shakespeare's finest work. Aside from being a true romantic and a captivating poet, Shakespeare could also pass as being a psychological genius. Though there are numerous characters in this play, (as in most of shakespeares works) Hamlet is the main focus of the play and it is seen that his internal struggles often overshadow many of the other subplots throughout the story (though in no way does it leave the reader oblivious to the other happenings in the story). The story is about the prince of Denmark whose father was killed by Hamlet's malicious Uncle Claudius who has seized control of the throne after his brother's death. Afterwards, Hamlet undergoes a series of internal conflicts and questions the validity of his father's ghost and is ultimately thought to be insane by those around him who witness his unorthodox actions and bizarre coments. After he is ordered sent away and returns, killing Rozencrantz and Guildenstern aboard the England-bound ship, Hamlet is pushed further into his own realm of "insanity" and soon after helps catapult one of the greatest climatic endings of Shakespeare's works. The final scene of this play is appropriate as it puts an end to the spiral downfall of Hamlet and those around him.

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