I would consider ‘Hamlet’ to be one of the largest holes in my reading of the canon to this point, alongside ‘Crime and Punishment’ and ‘Moby Dick’ as titans of literature I was yet to read. I am glad to say that this ‘Hamlet’ shaped hole has now been patched. ‘Hamlet’ voices Elizabethan concerns of succession as it focuses on the changing of monarchical power after the murder of Prince Hamlet’s father, the King of Denmark, and the subsequent quest for Revenge. It was an incredibly executed revenge story with so many iconic moments and images and a wonderful depiction of the feigning of madness. It is rooted with philosophical ideas about death, afterlife and succession and soliloquies packed with Hamlet viewing himself as a recurring Heracles figure which was much enjoyable. 

I will argue that I wanted much more from Ophelia. She was done so dirty by those around her and probably both the most interesting yet worse developed of Shakespeare’s tragic heroines, having now read all the major tragedies. 

The iconic nature of ‘To be or not to be’ did not quite have the impact I expected it to, it didn’t have as much a prominence in the plot as one would assume given how much it is quoted. The play as a whole though was brilliant and among the best of Shakespeare I have read, only ‘Macbeth’ tops it; the atmosphere of ‘Macbeth’ is where such gets the leg up over ‘Hamlet’.