"Hamlet" (Arden Shakespeare)

This review refers to the Caedmon Audio/Full Cast Recording edition(HarperCollins) of "Hamlet"....

The first thing I need to clarify is exactly which audio edition this is. If you are on the product page with a light purple box pictured, this is the 1963, full cast recording, complete play in 5 acts, starring Paul Scofield as "Hamlet.It is not, as the audio file editorial states the one with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. And if the Scofield performance is what you'd like to hear, you are in for a real treat.(You can enlarge the product picture to see a better view of the box)

The entire cast including Diana Wynyard as Gertrude,Roland Culver as Claudius, Donald Houston as Laertes and Zena Walker as Ophelia turn in powerful performances and will captivate your imagination no matter how many versions of this brilliant play you have heard, or seen. Paul Scofield("A Man For All Seasons") is masterful as the complex Hamlet, wanting revenge for his father's death, yet torn by his own conscience.

There are so many different versions of Shakespeare's "Hamlet", and on this taped set you will find a performance worthy of his genius.It is one you will want to listen to many times and well worth the price. After listening to it at home, I now bring it with me in my car to keep me company in traffic and on long trips.

This three tape set(6 sides) has the entire play, Ronsencrantz and Guildenstern included,in five acts. The entire play runs about 3 1/2 hours, each side of the tapes running between 30 to 45 minutes. The scenes are nicely seperated by music and the sound quality remastered(1995) in Dolby B is excellent.Although the tapes are not enclosed in their own cassette cases, there are individual cardboard holders inside the box for each.

A brilliant performance that you will remember, and one we are fortunate to have on these fabulous recordings.

more great audio book experiences:
Great Expectations (The Classic Collection)
The London Tapes (City Tapes)
Carrie
The Shipping News
A Christmas Carol
Les Miserables (Focus on the Family Radio Theatre)



Enjoy...Laurie

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, written around 1599-1601. Before the play opens, the king of Denmark has been murdered by his brother, Claudius, who has taken the throne and married the queen, Gertrude. The ghost of the dead king visits his son, Prince Hamlet, and urges him to avenge the murder. Hamlet, tormented by this revelation, appears to be mad and cruelly rejects Ophelia whom he loved. Using a troupe of visiting players to act out his father's death, the prince prompts Claudius to expose his own guilt. Hamlet then kills Ophelia's father Polonius in mistake for Claudius, and Claudius tries but fails to have Hamlet killed. Ophelia drowns herself in grief, and her brother Laertes fights a duel with Hamlet.

Hamlet's dilemma is often seen as typical of those whose thoughtful nature prevents quick and decisive action.

Hamlet contains several fine examples of soliloquy, such as " To be or not to be" and Hamlet's earlier speech lamenting his mother's hasty remarriage and Claudius' reign which opens "O! that this too too solid flesh would melt". Much quoted lined "Neither a borrower nor a lender be", "Something is rotten in the stste of Denmark", "Brevity is the soul of wit", "To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;" The lady doth protest too much, methinks," and "Alas, poor Yorick". Arguably Shakespeare's finest play and one that can be read again and again.

If you're not familiar with Hamlet, a pox on you! Hamlet is the most famous failed law student in Western culture. Go see a live production. Read the play. Or get a video, or listen to an audio version. Do all four. Versions of Hamlet have been done by Laurence Olivier, Nicol Williamson, Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, or the unattainable version done by Baylor University Theater in the 1950s - the film version won a world film festival in Brussels in 1957. (Yes, I know Jacobi plays the King in Branagh's version, but Jacobi himself played Hamlet - - about the time when Branagh was 15 years old. It's better than his I, Claudius.)

Hamlet, like Shakespeare's other plays, has created a huge cottage industry of scholars, actors, theaters and books. The force of Hamlet's personality dwarfs all others, however. To see a man driven mad, and while mad, feign madness, is one of the most clever story twists of world literature. The mind and heart of Hamlet has been thrown into great, tortured pain by several levers -- the death of his father, the overhasty marriage of his mother to his uncle, the usurpation of his throne by his uncle, the threat to the entire kingdom from Fortinbras, the horrifying appearance of the ghost of his father in purgatory torments, the news of the murder of his father from a supernatural phenomenon. The rejection by his lover, Orphelia, and his ensuing mistrust of her, adds nuclear fission to the fire.

You must experience Hamlet. Oh, for a true friend like Horatio!

Hamlet has always been thought of as one of the classics of literature. I could not think of another book which deserves this title more. The story of a Danish pricne who learns from his fathers ghost that his father, the king, was murdered by his brother, Hamlet's uncle, who then went on to marry Hamlet's mother. Hamlet is overcome by a longing for revenge, but also indecisive. Shakespeare creates a great amount of tension between the chatacters with powerful confrontatoins and biting language. It is a suspenseful tragedy, filled with anguish.

William Shakespeare was a genious when it came to breaking down the human psyche, and Hamlet is perhaps one of the most complex plays when it comes to human emotions. It is undoubtably one of his finest works, full of very complex, interesting characters, and a wonderfully chaotic plot. There are innumerable theories on Hamlet, why he is so indecisive, and if it all comes down to an oedipus complex. whatever way you interpret it, everyone can get something out of it. I feel like I am priveleged to have read such a wonderful play.

Hamlet is a character that I can relate to in some ways, being a very indecisive person myself. I felt I could connect with him better than many Shakespeare characters, MacBeth, Ceasar, Juliet, Helena or Hermia. That is one of the reasons that I enjoyed Hamlet so very much. I wish that everyone could love Hamlet as much as I did, but I know, especially being a high-school student, that it is a little much for general reading. For high school students, like me, I very strongly recommend this book, if you really like Shakespeare, and aren't looking for a quick read. Otherwise, it might be a little to much to tackle, if you don't really enjoy Shakespearian tragedies. For anyone who has time required to comprehend such a complex work, and is looking for a masterpiece of literature that will keep them thinking, Hamlet is the book for you.

All in all (not all and all, as one reviewer has it; people who write such things [and then place unnecessary commas between subjects and verbs] have no credibility), "Hamlet" is one of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, a sophisticated play which, among many other things, casts an ironic eye on those tragedy-of- blood conventions which the Bard had embraced wholeheartedly in "Titus Andronicus." Its witty, urbane, generous hero, whose struggle to balance his father's demand for bloody revenge (one of those conventions) with his own humanistic sensibilities forms a major conflict of the play, has intrigued audiences and readers for four centuries. Unfortunately for Shakespeare and his creations, the English language has changed over the past four hundred years, and people have gotten out of the habit of reading and understanding poetry. This is where Alan Durband's edition of "Hamlet" in the Barron's Books "Shakespeare Made Easy" series comes to the rescue of the inexperienced reader. Its modern "translation" of Shakespeare's text is readable and clear, making this masterpiece approachable for those who find Elizabethan English too thorny. Having watched college freshmen struggle with "Hamlet" for some twelve years, and having discovered the Barron's edition during the summer, I strongly recommended the book this past fall as a supplement to the assigned literature anthology. About half the students in my Freshman Comp classes bought the book, either from the university book store or from amazon.com. (Amazon's price was better.) To my great pleasure, I found that more students than at any time before were asking questions in class, answering my own questions with knowledge and insight, and even debating points of interpretation among themselves. It was the most fun I have ever had teaching "Hamlet," outside of a Shakespeare course. So now my syllabus suggests this book as an important supplement, and now I look forward to teaching "Hamlet" with confidence that many of the students will be able to experience the enthusiasm for literature that educators so dearly love to communicate. Any book that can facilitate such enthusiasm is high on my list, and I hope it will be high on yours as well.