Friday, December 18, 2015

What makes Shakespeare's Hamlet a play for our times?I just need a tad more indepth knowledge about what makes Hamlet timeless, why we still act...

Hamlet is the story of an idealistic, rather 'head in the clouds' young man who is forced to accept the brutal reality of life and human behaviour. It is a tale of growing up. Of the mental and emotional struggles young people face coming to terms with 'Life'.

This is an eternal story because we have all been through it (or will do).

Many many others have written about the difficulties growing up, but no-one wrote it so beautifully nor so clearly as Shakespeare. He is immortal, as long as there are people they will read Shakespeare... 

 ...so loving to my mother
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!(145)
Must I remember? Why, she would hang on him
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on; and yet, within a month—
Let me not think on't! Frailty, thy name is woman—
A little month, or ere those shoes were old(150)
With which she follow'd my poor father's body
Like Niobe, all tears—why she, even she—
O God! a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourn'd longer—married with my uncle,
My father's brother, but no more like my father(155)
Than I to Hercules. Within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to, good.
But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue!

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