Hamlet

I know I'm a little behind but I finally finished Hamlet. I didn't like it nearly as much as I liked Macbeth. But it is always a pleasure to read Shakespeare. The words are just so well put together, and so clever. I love just the rhythm and how they sound together. That being said, Hamlet reminded me of Oedipus Rex--completely lame--where the characters have no real control of their destiny and die stupid deaths. Anyway, I'm going to be completely brief because I have loads of things to do, but here are a couple of my favorite lines.

Ham: Is this the prologue, or the posy of a ring?
Oph: 'Tis brief, my lord.
Ham: As a woman's love.

Hee. Hee. (However, that annoyed me too. Hamlet was so cruel to Ophelia when it was really his mother that had made a poor choice, and he based all women off of her.)

Ham: I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not born me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them it, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between heaven and earth? We are arrant knaves, all: believe none of us.

I just love it--every thought is so beautifully said.

Anyway, I really do have to get going. But I was surprised reading Hamlet, how many quotes and snippets are everywhere else in our culture, even besides my father's oft misquoted lines.