50 books to read before you die discussion

50 Books List - group read for September 2016

I started Hamlet a couple of days ago and I'm 3 acts in. It's my third Shakespeare play, having previously read Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. I loved both of those so I was excited to read Hamlet. I'm struggling to understand this one a little more than R&J and KL. I am reading some summaries online as I go but I have yet to find good ones for Shakespeare plays. It's very dramatic so far with the deceit and treachery that is going on.

Hamlet's tricky. The setting is a royal court, so we know that everybody knows something they prefer to keep hidden. The opening is almost surreal--the kingdom has gone sideways and there stands the usurped heir watching his newly widowed mother's wedding celebrations, and he's told that he is being unreasonably gloomy. Clearly, something is not right. You can feel Hamlet's relief when Horatio says, "yeah, weird" thus confirming for Hamlet that it's everybody else who is behaving unreasonably. If the characters' motives seem murky, they are. If the action keeps derailing your expectations, they are supposed to. Every time you start to get a handle on what's going on, WS throws in a scene that challenges you to square it with the characters you thought you knew.

There are lots of ways to read it--is the Ghost real or not real, seems real, but is he really what he seems, and is Gertrude really in the clear or is the Ghost just covering for her, or maybe the Ghost doesn't know the extent of her involvement and believes her innocent. Maybe she is innocent and truly trusts Claudius, though you have to wonder why a mother would trust a son to his father's murderer--Hamlet would most likely have been king if Claudius hadn't gotten between him and the throne, and Gertrude would most likely have been complicit in that. Was she reluctant to step into a queen mother retirement? Was she and easy tool, too dumb to think for herself? Stockholm syndrome? Or perhaps she perceives that Hamlet isn't quite up to being king--still in college (a fifth, sixth, uh, tenth year? What, he just won't take that last quarter of French?) Hamlet himself is more provoked by his mother's gross and hasty remarriage to his uncle (well, who wouldn't be) than he is by having his kingdom swiped out from under him. Why is Hamlet cruel to Ophelia? What is up with Hamlet and his mother's sex life? Why do R&G take the brunt of Hamlet's revenge while Hamlet passes up a perfect opportunity to let Claudius have it? Is Polonius a fond fool or a sinister counselor? The entire play shifts when you start assigning motives.

One way to read it is to pick a Hamlet--you have bad Hamlet, crazy Hamlet, hapless Hamlet, scheming Hamlet, peacenik Hamlet, fill-in-the-blank Hamlet--and then build the other characters around him. The kind of mother your Hamlet would have will have a set of motives that will explain why she takes the cup at the end of the play. What's really amazing is that somehow in the end it always makes sense. No matter how you've built the characters, they end up doing what they inevitably must do and their motives clarify.

Sophie wrote: "I started Hamlet a couple of days ago and I'm 3 acts in. It's my third Shakespeare play, having previously read Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. I loved both of those so I was excited to read Hamlet..." I was an English teacher, and we read Hamlet every year. I do not care for audio books; however, with Shakespeare's plays, I make an exception. Hearing the dialogue spoken by professional actors really helps with understanding the play. I'd have my students read along with the tape, and we'd watch the Mel Gibson version after they took their exams. (Poor Mel--it's a good version for a Christian school. The Branaugh version has nudity, and the Olivier version is in black and white.) Plays are meant to be heard and watched. Try listening to it as you read. I think that will make a huge difference in your understanding of the play.
Hamlet is my second favorite Shakespearean play. MacBeth reigns as number one!

In my day, the Derek Jacobi version was referred to as the cute Hamlet. Still my favorite.

Notice the glimpse of Ophelia lurking dreamlike (or ghostlike) in the corridor.

Donna wrote: "Sophie wrote: "I started Hamlet a couple of days ago and I'm 3 acts in. It's my third Shakespeare play, having previously read Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. I loved both of those so I was excited..."

Dona, me thinks the same way! Listening to the audio book helps a lot. But I still read quite slowly, but am trying to cope with difficulties patiently. The language is really hard to me. It was much easier with modern literature.)

One little tidbit I learned about Shakespearean language. When Juliet asks "wherefore art thou Romeo," she is not asking where he is. She's asking WHY he is Romeo, in other words, why was he born a Montague, her family's enemy. This may be common knowledge, but I didn't know when I read Romeo and Juliet.

I taught two classes that were all Shakespeare--one about comedies; the other about tragedies. I made the students use an old-fashioned lexicon to look up words and phrases they didn't understand. (No googling allowed!) Seeing the understanding of the language in their faces was priceless! They also had to "translate," for the lack of a better word, the scenes they were going to perform into their teenage, American English. They performed the scenes in their translation and then again in the original. One of the best ways I ever found to help students get over the notion that Shakespeare is boring and his language too difficult.

Donna, slightly off topic, but what grade level were you teaching? I'm boggled by the very idea of a high school offering not one, but two Shakespeare surveys. That would be like, like, like a normal high school in the early 70s.

I taught high school (10-12) at a private, Christian school. The classes were one semester each, and most students were juniors and seniors, although I did have some sophomores and freshmen in the classes. These classes were in addition to their regular English classes. We had a great time! No tests or essays--everything was performance-based. They set their plays (our favorite was "As You Like It" set in the 1960's!), designed costumes, choose the music. No full-length productions, no time for that, but they choose pivotal scenes to perform. The best thing? The kids never knew how hard they were working!

Lovely. Lucky kids. For my older daughter's Romeo and Juliet performance project, her group opted to do a puppet version of their scene. Their puppets were made from McDonalds food (cheeseburger people, french fry swords, etc.) costumed and made up. The best part was when, as Juliet agonizes thrillingly over her imminent self-inflicted coma, her upper bun slid off. Best. Juliet. Ever.

She later told me she hated R&J, mostly because she thought Romeo was such a drip but also the language and the rest of the usual complaints. She told me this after a recent in-the-park performance that had her mesmerized. The lines she had to memorize came back to her--and all the background and the discussions, and it all gelled with her more mature reception of the play for an experience that totally repaid all the ninth grade discontent. She's practically a Shakespeare groupie now. Teachers can never really know all the good they do in the world.

My kids would have eaten the puppets! lol I am a firm believer in teaching Shakespeare. We were fortunate to have the Orlando Shakespeare Theater which would put on special student performances (really cheap!) and have discussion afterwards with the cast. For a long time,they performed the plays in the park, and my students would come and sit on the grass and watch for free. Just the experience of seeing the plays performed and being in the audience is a lesson in itself. I'm glad your daughter has converted to a Shakespeare lover. Mine is, as well!

Has anyone here tried No Fear Shakespeare? My 16yo used it for 9th grade Romeo and Juliet. It has the original text on one side of the page and a modern translation on the opposite side. I also had an audio version for her. I don't know what teachers think about this, but I was impressed with her ability to summarize the story in her own words.

I must admit. I wouldn't allow my students to read modern "translations" of Shakespeare or Chaucer. However, I had small classes, and I could work one-on-one with my students when they had difficulties. In a larger classroom, I can understand using something like No Fear Shakespeare?. I really encouraged students to listen to the plays. My students had to read an additional Shakespearean play and write a critical paper, so listening to the play on tapes was a real help to them.

I like No Fear, and most people reading independently need some kind of a gloss for tricky patches. The problem for students is the temptation to skip the original and just read the re-write. Shakespeare is as much about language and poetry as plot and drama. As modern adaptations go, I like to see whole new works--Ran or even She's the Man (which mine WS for their own artistic uses)--rather than weak tea versions with the language stripped to make it easier. Still, without significant help, Elizabethan plays are tough to follow, and some experience with Shakespeare is better than none at all.

Incidentally, and Donna can probably say more about this than I can, Shakespeare is technically modern English. If you sat down at the pub with him, the accent would be a bigger obstacle to understanding each other than the words or syntax. Prose written at the same time is no harder to read than Washington Irving. The plays are iambic pentameter--it's all word play shaped by meter and caesuras and enjambments and things that his actors and audiences understood though we may not. To wring as much mileage from the form as he could, he made up a lot of the words as he went, bending and conflating existing words to make them fit the line. Many of these "new" words we still use, but many didn't stick and many more are just arcane or changed (like wherefore to why), their meanings lost to us without something like No Fear or a good teacher to explain.

Here's a pretty good list of WS coinages, with the caveat that some words/phrases may have been in use before being set down by Shakespeare. Still, it's a pretty staggering inheritance for us. Hamlet is especially chock-a-block with still-familiar turns of phrase.

Thank you! Yes, Shakespeare is written in Modern English. It is my pet peeve when people complain about the "Old English" of Shakespeare.
He's coined so many words and phrases! I used to give extra credit to my students if they brought in Shakespearan allusions in music, cartoons, other books, etc.
My main thought is that people should be more exposed to Shakespeare--even if they have to read it in our vernacular or story form (like Lamb's Shakespeare for Children).

I had a couple of Shakespeare comedies in high school, (a long, long time ago) but I think they probably weren't well taught. I still have trouble with Shakespeare's language, but I never thought it was Old English - it's Elizabethan. I don't particularly care for Victorian, but it's modern English. But Elizabethan English is certainly different enough from the English we speak today for a lot of it to be difficult to interpret.

Even contemporary English is different from American. We have exit signs, theirs say way out. We have yield signs theirs say give way. At a fast food place here they say "for here or to go"; In England they say "have in or take away." I wonder if Shakespeare sounds more natural to a person who lives in England than it does to an American.

Do you have any tips for decoding the syntax? Most people I think get the talk-like-a-pilgrim rules:

art=are
thee=you (what troubles thee), thou=you (thou art fair)
thine=your (as in thee/me and thine/mine)
-eth= -es at the end of a verb (he sendeth forth)
-est= hmm, that would be slapped on the end of verbs in questions? (whither goest thou?)

Dad: The babe is mewling and puking.
Mom: Aye, the babe puketh mightily. What of it?
Dad: Hath the nurse no skill? Hark! Pukest thou again, babe?
Nurse: Verily, he will puke all night.

It might feel a little stilted because today we would say, Seriously? He's gonna puke all night. But the third line is the only one that is actually a bit mixed up for a 21st century reader. So, Hath (has) the nurse no skill? could also be Doth (does) the nurse have no skill? I (or Napoleon Dynamite) might say Doesn't the nurse have any skills? which stretches out to Does not the nurse have any skills?--just as awkward as the Elizabethan, at least. The second part would be You barfing again, Baby? or Kid, are you still hurling? We would not be inclined to say Puke you, junior? but that's a pretty common way of setting up a question in Shakespeare, I think.

Buck wrote: "I wonder if Shakespeare sounds more natural to a person who lives in England than it does to an American.."

That's a really good question. I wouldn't think so because Shakespeare was writing more than a hundred years before Independence and the language changed both here and there. I don't think Will would be less puzzled by Way Out than Exit or know which end of the Toyota was the boot. But I suspect he (and Chaucer and all those English guys) may be more woven into the Brits' education and popular culture. Dunno.

Longhare wrote: "Do you have any tips for decoding the syntax? Most people I think get the talk-like-a-pilgrim rules:

art=are
thee=you (what troubles thee), thou=you (thou art fair)
thine=your (as in thee/me and t..."

I hope you chose to use "puke" on purpose. Shakespeare coined the word "puke." :)

Thanks for letting me know about No Fear Shakespeare. It's not the thees and thous and goeths that give trouble. It's passages like "When he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear," in the famous To Be or Not to Be speech that give me grief. I really do need a translator.

As an 'old' English person ie. I left school eons ago, Shakespeare was part and parcel of my schooling. We also found some of his writing hard going so don't beat yourself up about not understanding Buck. However, I am from northern England and in some parts of the north people still thee and thou etc. As part of normal language. Also we still use a hell of a lot of sayings and phrases that come from Shakespeare.

PS a bodkin is a type of needle, I haven't a clue what 'fardels'.are.

I would have like to explain this more fully but I'm on a campsite in France and the wifi is not that good.

We visited Stratford-upon-Avon recently, as tourists. Learned a bit about Shakespeare, but not much about his plays. We also saw the Globe theater in London.

My education, which I feel was terribly mediocre, included very little Shakespeare, and that only in high school, very little literature at all, or at least little has survived in my memory. In college, I had scant literature - the only authors I remember are Orwell and James Dickey - no Shakespeare. I feel deprived.

Christine wrote: "I would have like to explain this more fully but I'm on a campsite in France and the wifi is not that good."

I hope you will return to this when you get back. Or maybe we could all go there and join you around the campfire. Sigh.

Buck wrote: "My education, which I feel was terrib..."

Education is wasted on the young. We need to get kids back into the factories and IT departments so they can support those of us who want to go to school. Mmm. To be honest, I still wouldn't do my homework. But I do believe that school is for introductions and living is for learning. We did Julius Caesar in high school, and I remember being so bored--this from a kid who would have taken all English classes if I had been allowed to drop the yucky subjects (math, science, P.E., home ec, basically all of them). We did Cyrano instead of R&J. I still have a weird kink in my mental Shakespeare bibliography that persists in including Cyrano. I had a great, super enthusiastic teacher, which I know because she laid a foundation for a lot of things I came to appreciate only much later, but most of what I know about literature I learned post-school. One item that remains mysterious is bodkins. What a great word. The long two-pronged thingy you use to thread elastic through a skirt waist or sleeve end is called a bodkin (guess home ec came in handy for something), but despite the little teeth at the prong tips, I just don't see Hamlet being able to pinch himself to death with one. Isaac Newton as a reckless youth with a bright future in optics used a bodkin to push his eye out a bit to see what was back there. My impression was that his bodkin was a small knife. Goodness knows what Hamlet was playing with, but probably it was sharp and poky.

Your example is easier to digest if you break it down in little chunks:

When he himself might (that's relatively unchanged English)

his quietus make (you can just drop that Latiny -us off the end of quiet; flip the phrase around so the verb comes first: make his quiet; then think about what sort of quiet he means. At the end of the play, his dying words will be "the rest is silence.")

with a bare bodkin? (so he, himself, can make [or bring about] his own tranquil state of quiet [death] with a mere, modest whatsit)

Who would fardels bear (a fardel is some kind of a burden. Again, just switch the verb and the noun, and you get Who would bear fardels. The question mark after bodkin marks the end of the previous question, just as it would in prose. This phrase begins the next question, so break it off and stick it on the beginning of the next line and it makes sense: "Who would fardels bear, to grunt and sweat a weary life..."

So, switch up the verbs to crack the sense (you won't have to once you get used to it) and read straight past the line ends unless the line is terminated with a period or question mark.
And google archaic words. I hope that helps some.

I was thinking of my introduction to Shakespeare. It was the 1968 movie Romeo & Juliet. My neighbor took me to see it. I. Was. Blown. Away!!! I was always a reader, but this was special. I bought a vinyl of dialog from the movie; I bought the sheet music to the love theme from the movie. And the next school year, we read R&J in English class, and I was more than prepared. And that was that. No more Shakespeare until I was in college.
At the school where I taught, my administrators were very liberal with me, and I was able to add extra plays to the sophomore and senior curricula, and, of course, I had those all Shakespeare classes. I wanted my students to read at least four plays in high school. There was grumbling and groaning, but most of them developed an appreciation for the Bard. (I must give a shout-out to the Orlando Shakespeare Theater for their productions. Seeing the plays usually converts the most steadfast doubter.)

Yeah, part of the fun of in-the-park productions is eavesdropping on remarks by people who had been roped into going and left walking on air.

This was an incredible read. I had just read Tempest before this one. Although I also really enjoyed Tempest, Hamlet is special. We see a true master of literature at work. Shakespeare could've mastered language in any form.

Tempest is a weird play, but it does give us the last line of the Maltese Falcon so it's all good.

Some people see it as Shakespeare's farewell to the theater, especially keeping in mind Prospero's admonition to the audience at the very end. I dunno, but if you interpret Prospero to be WS's stand-in for himself it kind of becomes a riff on the powers of the playwright to make anything possible--love, revenge, comic imbroglios, redemption--and a tip of the hat to the creative agents that make play writing magical. In which case, Prospero is not so much a tyrannical jerk as a man playing god for the entertainment of an audience. From there, you can skip over to Hamlet telling the professional theater troupe how to do their business. One gets the feeling that Hamlet would rather be an actor or a director than a king. His "antics" may be his own improvisational theater, a more natural reaction for him than bloody revenge.

I love that about Hamlet. We had really good discussions about Hamlet's madness--was he or wasn't he? I identified with Hamlet's feelings about his parents. My mother died, and my dad married her sister. No murders, though, just a nasty divorce. And I wouldn't have spoken to Daddy like Hamlet did to Gertrude. Polonius dies in that scene; I would have been taking my own life into my hands.

I look at Prospero as WS's stand-in. What power an author welds! The reason I love to read, I suppose.

My own theory is that Hamlet was a sort of proto-Method actor, for whom the difference between acting crazy and being crazy is a moot point. What I find interesting is that he feels he needs to investigate and uncover the truth, to penetrate people's motives, and he uses his crazy act as cover. In so doing he treats everybody as a suspect or a spy, and he becomes quite paranoid and even cruel. He needn't have put himself (or Ophelia or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern or even Polonius, let alone Laertes) through any of that if he had simply taken the Ghost's word for it. But, you know, the play's the thing.

That's a good point. Though doesn't he take the ghost's word for it and wants to find convincing evidence to spring a trap?

Definitely see a lot of this is how to act sections.

Ah, but why does he need to spring a trap? What he was supposed to do was waltz up to Claudius and stick him with his sword. All the "trap" can do is prove that the Ghost was not a fiend or a fraud; all he's done is to reveal to Claudius that he knows about his murdering his father. He makes it so that Denmark isn't big enough for the both of them and one must kill the other. Like Hamlet, Claudius has to overcomplicate things, and he spins a plot to rid himself of Hamlet instead of just having him hauled off and murdered by some handy assassin. Old Hamlet or Young Fortinbras would have dealt directly with the immediate problem, but Hamlet and Claudius must engage in a battle of wits.

Yeah that's what I thought was a good point. At the same time, I think he was gathering proof to support him sticking Claudius with a sword (if anyone happened to object).

Also, from the first act, I thought that Horatio had seen the ghost but not might have heard all the details of which the ghost spoke. Maybe Hamlet had indeed wanted to ensure that he both wasn't crazy and that Horatio could testify on his behalf.

The ghost, I think, is one of the characters who really depends on the director's view of him. Is he real? A figment of Hamlet's melancholy nature? Proof of his madness?
I think the reason I can keep returning to Shakespeare's plays is because each director, and the actors, interpret his words based upon their own interpretations and experiences. Shakespeare's lack of detailed stage directions also lets the directors really run with his works.

BTW, you want lots of comments on FB? Post about food. Lots of comments on Goodreads? Post about Shakespeare.

Duly noted Donna :) food is the way to our hearts and Shakespeare to our soul. Seems like something like that

I think Shakespeare had a particular vision though I havent read a play yet with a lot of detail in stage direction. This one as Longhare noted only spoke to actors

Shakespeare's stage directions are usually built into the dialog. (Exit, pursued by a bear being the famous exception.) Hark! What's that knocking? is obvious enough. But also, think of Hamlet nose to nose with Yorick--it doesn't actually say what to do physically, but the lines compel certain actions. That's definitely part of his genius, though I can't believe he didn't run around shouting directions at the actors too, like Hamlet.

I am so impressed by (dare I say envious of) the sophistication and astuteness of the contributors to this thread. Very edifying.

I read Hamlet about three years ago. Not being an aficionado of Shakespeare, I was surprised by how much of Hamlet was familiar to me.

Thanks Buck! Shakespeare can always be an entertaining discussion because he remains an incredible talent and polarizing figure.

That's also a really good point Longhare. The lines can often help create the scene's action.

I think with famous dialogues and narratives, there is often a lot that permeates our culture. Things such as "I think therefore I am" and "to be or not to be" etc.

They're so perceptive that these concepts or ideas become a part of our modern society's foundation. Would be impossible to escape having heard something from Hamlet if a person leaves his/her house. :)

Chris wrote: "Thanks Buck! Shakespeare can always be an entertaining discussion because he remains an incredible talent and polarizing figure.

That's also a really good point Longhare. The lines can often help ..."

"I think therefore I am" is from Renee Descartes, not Shakespeare. Just sayin'.

yeah... I know.

I am referring to another example of a culturally enigmatic quotation that becomes in essence a part of one's influences through the proliferation of the message regardless of whether you sit down to read the whole passage in context. You cannot escape Shakespeare in the same manner that you can't escape Descartes among others.

Now I understand why Hamlet is so popular. Just finished reading the No Fear Shakespeare version. I'm afraid all those big paragraphs and many small ones would be indecipherable otherwise.
Prince Hamlet is such a puzzling character - split personality? manic, depressed, energetic, possessed, cynical, shrewd, devoted - so many things.. Such great scope for an actor.
Glad this book was nominated and I finally got to reading it.
Tragedy plays look interesting. Maybe I should try Macbeth next.

I like to watch how different actors and directors approach Hamlet. One of the best I've seen was at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, back when they performed at Lake Eola Park. Jim Helsinger was Hamlet. His performance was better than Gibson, Banaugh, or Olivier's performances. No wonder he is the director of the OST now.
We went to see "West Side Story" this weekend. He was the director, and it was brilliant! They dedicated each show to various victims of the Orlando Pulse shooting, and there was a ballet during "Somewhere" that brought the audience to tears. Nothing beats live theater.

Donna wrote: "I like to watch how different actors and directors approach Hamlet. One of the best I've seen was at the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, back when they performed at Lake Eola Park. Jim Helsinger was H..."
Its been a decade since I saw live theater. Something else to add to my list.
I will also take your tip about listening to audio versions of plays for my next read.

How do you cope with difficult language? I'd like to finish Hamlet, but for now it is postponed, and the whole month not a page was read.

Have you tried to write some notes, perhaps, to summarizes you thoughts?

My way of reading was very slow and certainly not pleasant. I moved scene by scene. At first there was a listening to the audio book. Though, I can't catch any word. The second step is reading the text of the current scene. At first you look up for unfamiliar words in the vocabulary, and then read the text itself. Usually, it was enough to achieve good understanding. The second attempt with audiobook confirms that, because you easily follow the speech and understand it.

But It took me about 2 and half a month to finish the first 3rd acts and partially the 4th. For now I gave it up, and read more modern literature.

I am not a native english speaker. And don't speak yet, just read and write.

Siarhei wrote: "How do you cope with difficult language? I'd like to finish Hamlet, but for now it is postponed, and the whole month not a page was read.

Have you tried to write some notes, perhaps, to summarizes..."

Siarhei

I think the archaic 400-year-old English has a lot to do with why Shakespeare lovers love Shakespeare.

You may get some relief from these sites:
http://www.shakespearemadeeasy.com/ha...
http://nfs.sparknotes.com/hamlet/
they translate Hamlet into modern English.

Are there no Russian translations that would help you get the meaning?

I need to try that.

I can't get away from desire to read everything in its orignal form. And actually what I was doing worked fine.