2024: One of the finest things ever written in the English language. It's good on so many levels (political, theological, literary, dramatic, poetic, historical, classical) that I know I'm missing so much of the brilliance here, but I can keep rereading it for the rest of my life, and I fully intend to.

This time I was thinking a lot about seeming vs. being. This comes up in relation to habit and to acting, at least. A very good thing to ponder. I have only seen one production of this play, and I didn't like it very much. Recommendations for good movie versions are welcome! I want to try Ethan Hawke's.

Oh, that this too, too sallied flesh would melt,
Thaw, resolve itself into a dew,
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Use every man after his desert, and who shall scape whipping? Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.

Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all the visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing.
For Hecuba.
What's Hecuba to him, or he to her,
That he should weep for her? What would he do,
Had he the motive and that for passion
That I have? He would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty, and appall the free...

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.

2023 review (lol I was just realizing that I liked Shakespeare at this point):

Spoiler

Is it possible that I actually like Hamlet?

It seems that it is. It seems that, in fact, I find it incredibly brilliant and worth returning to and moving and deep and clever and wonderful. Maybe it was reading it aloud this time. I don't know. But I must admit it: Hamlet is marvelous. You should read it if you haven't.

I really need to reread King Lear as soon as I have the time. It used to be my favorite and I'm curious how it will hold up now. And also Much Ado and Henry V. I think I've (perhaps inevitably) become a Shakespeare fan[girl].