Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1599)

Two of my four sons read Hamlet this semester, so I too returned to the play.  The last time that I read it we watched all the readily available film productions at the time, and I was struck by two things.  The first was the depiction of Hamlet's state of mind--mad or not mad, that is the question?  The second was that they all omitted scenes.  'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' was eye opening because their scenes get eliminated routinely, and without having read the play recently you might miss that (I know that I did).

This time around the first act struck me.  Hamlet is by all accounts taking the death of his father very hard, and then his mother, Gertrude, marries his father's brother, Claudius, who becomes king. I am exceptionally poorly schooled in royal ascention, but suffice is to say that the Scandanavian countries shared kings at various times in the centuries leading up to the time of Hamlet, and Denmark had a charter (a sort of constitution along the lines of the Magna Carta) and kingships were appointed rather than inherited.  Hamlet is morose and it could be solely because of his father's death and it could be over the whole family situation.  When he hears the ghost of his father tell him  that Claudius and Gertrude colluded to poison him and requires that Hamlet avenge his death his behavior becomes noticably more erratic.  Crazy or crazy like a fox, that is the question.  Also, did the ghost appear to Hamlet or was it his imagination?  Horatio, Marcellus, and Bernardo also caught glimpses of the ghost on more that one occasion, but after Hamlet's encounter we don't hear from it again--a clue about how to exact revenge would have been useful, especially as Hamlet does a very poor job of it when all is said and done.  The older I get the more Shakespearean tragedies seem to be about parents screwing up the lives of their children.