Josh and I finished up his Church History and Literature class this week. I finally got all the way through Hamlet! I'm quite proud of myself. I have seen the play and I have read excerpts but I've never sat down and read the whole thing from beginning to end.
I always feel very small when I read Shakespeare. There is so much there and I know most of it is going over my little ole head. But the sheer number of familiar lines from this play plus the almost painful tension as it slowly moves to its dramatic end, made it a very enjoyable read for me.
But I really want to talk about this Ignatius Press Critical Edition. If you are tired of postmodernist professors writing cockamamie literary analysis that makes you roll your eyeballs at their narrow, deconstructionistic, biased bunk, fret no more! I loved reading both Joseph Pearce's wonderfully in depth Introduction and the several essays at the end of the book. I especially enjoyed Crystal Downing of Messiah College's essay entitled: Reading Hamlet and Richard Harp's of the University of Nevada, essay entitled The Nobility of Hamlet. In fact I've decided that Professor Harp is brilliant because he clarified to me why I was always dissatisfied with seeing Hamlet's problem as one of indecision. I also enjoyed Andrew Moran's essay, Hamlet's Envenomed Foil which really illuminated the tension between Protestantism and Catholicism that Shakespeare so cleverly and brilliantly unfolds in this play. He is not sympathetic to Hamlet though and that bothered me a bit, because I really see Hamlet as the hero. My daughter is a student at the University of Dallas and had Professor Moran as a teacher. I thought his essay was well written.
So get thee to a nunnery, er rather, Ignatius Press and read this edition of Hamlet!
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