Sunday, November 15, 2015

"Hamlet"- Challenges

In this post I will be discussing how reading Hamlet has been different for me than reading other Shakespeare plays.

Shakespeare is one of my favorite authors, so I'm really excited that we are reading Hamlet. Overall, I am enjoying the play so far, but this play is much more challenging than any play I have ever read before. In the past with Shakespeare, I can read it normally like a book and pick up what it is saying (or look up a few things in the side notes).  However, so far with Hamlet, I have had some trouble understanding what is going on and have had to look at the notes frequently for guidance on what the characters are saying. I think that this challenge comes from several places. First, I haven't read Shakespeare for English class in two years (we read Macbeth sophomore year), but I have read several plays for fun in the years between, as well as for my Independent Study in Theatre this year (A Midsummer Night's Dream), which sort of negates this reason. Secondly, and I think more accurately, that Hamlet is a more complex play with respect to underlying meaning/themes than many of the others that I have read, and thus the language needs to be more complex to reflect that. I think that, as we discussed in class, that Hamlet focuses much more on the psychological (which results in more difficult readability in contemporary English) than on action. To overcome this challenge, I will read more closely and possible check things that I am still very confused on with No Fear Shakespeare (although I typically don't like their translations, but it might help clear some plot confusion up). 

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