Hamlet: Variorum Edition, Vol. 1
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,History & Criticism
Hamlet: Variorum Edition, Vol. 1 Details
Combined with Volume II, here is the most fully annotated edition of the play. Volume I contains First Folio text plus variant readings, commentary, emendations, and more from First Quarto of 1603 to Moberly's Rugby edition of 1873. Notes and commentary by Johnson, Coleridge, Goethe, other critics. Preface. Index.
Reviews
First off, let's clarify one thing: when rating Shakespeare, I'm rating it as opposed to other Shakespeare, otherwise, the consistent "5 stars" wouldn't tell you much. Granted, there ARE Shakespearean plays that I do NOT rate five stars, even as compared to the normal scale; "Taming of the Shrew" comes to mind. But the majority are certainly in the 5-star class, and this is one of them.It's a real shame that the language has changed so much since Shakespeare wrote that his plays are no longer accessable to the masses, because that's who Shakespeare was writing for, largely. Granted, there is enough serious philosophizing to satisfy the intelligensia, but there's certainly enough action and enough broad-based, unsubtle humor to satisfy any connoiseur of modern hit movies. Unfortunately, while the plots are good enough to be lifted and reworked into modern stories in modern language (and they frequently are, sometimes more subtly than others) once you change the language, it's no longer Shakespeare, until and unless the rewriter can be found who has as much genius for the modern language as Shakespeare had for his own. And to date, at least, that hasn't happened, and I don't see it happening any time soon."Hamlet" is not an easy play to read, even by the standards of Shakespeare. There are a LOT of turns of phrase that will have even the competent modern reader scanning the footnoted explanation for a translation, and unfortunately, much of the value of Shakespeare's double-entendres is lost when somebody has to explain them to you. Still, the plot is a classic one, the dialogue is still (in spite of its occasional impenetrability) sparkling, and it has a remarkably high amount of (admittedly dark) humor for a classic tragedy; the scenes in which Hamlet acts the manic fool in order to keep his own counsel are delightfully funny (to say nothing of the gravediggers, and the verbal sparring between them and Hamlet.)One of the many "must read" Shakespearean plays. There is simply too much here that one MUST be familiar with in order to understand references in later literature. And it is worth the effort, but it is certainly not an easy read.