Shakespeare’s Hamlet
April 10 – May 1, 2021
$300/person
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s greatest play. It’s one of the world’s great treasures, like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Homer’s Odyssey. Here’s why we are going to study it together.
First, it is one of the supreme expressions of the Renaissance. The language is magical and at times stunning. Second, its influence on subsequent literature has been incalculable. The name Hamlet has some of the same mythic power as Oedipus, Don Quixote, Jane Eyre, Huck Finn, or in our time Neal Cassady (from Kerouac’s On the Road). Third, it is one of the handful of works of literature that have spoken most powerfully to me, and I am eager to share what I know. Fourth, it raises questions about death, suicide, our place in a providential universe, revenge, the balance of thinking and action in a complete life, and much more. Fifth, it is, once you understand it, just one of the great stories in the western literary canon.
We will go through the play act by act, sometimes line by line. We will watch segments from some of the many filmic adaptations of the play. We will spend a bit of time of poetic meter and the shaping of Shakespeare’s language. We will look at the play through a range of interpretive lenses, including theatrical, filmic, historical, and psychological.
I know that many of us are intimidated by Shakespeare and we feel we just cannot understand it. Believe me, I remember reading Hamlet for the first time. (It rocked and changed my life, actually, in spite of my ignorance). With the materials we have now to help us understand Shakespeare, including superb film adaptations, his plays are more accessible than at any previous time, including perhaps the Elizabethan era.
Class sessions for this four-week course will be held via Zoom on Saturday mornings April 10 – May 1, 2021 (four Saturdays, time TBD) with Zoom office hours Wednesday evenings.
