Hamlet Revisited
Over time, I have come to love a lot of things I used to dislike strongly - opera, Debussy, Moby-Dick , and poetry. Perhaps Shakespeare will grow on me, too - perhaps. As I was reading Hamlet yesterday, I was aware of two things. One, it was not painfully slow or cringeworthy like Romeo and Juliet . Two, I actually cared about the characters. As long as they were "on screen," they were very much alive (terrible, terrible pun), and even now, I would be interesting in watching an adaptation, which usually indicates a good story. The plot starts out with some exposition explaining that the king of Denmark has recently died and his brother Claudius is serving the office in his stead. Part of this "office," according to Claudius, is marrying his brother's wife, Queen Gertrude. (Wiki would have you think this is a Levirate marriage ; however, since Hamlet is the son of Gertrude and the late king, this does not appear to qualify as such, by Old Testament standards...