I am an English teacher and, as such, I regularly teach Shakespeare to high schoolers. This is nearly always met with varying degrees of trepidation; even the ones who like literature and who have a good grasp of the English language find his works somewhat daunting and often boring by default. And I get it, I do, but it’s such a shame. Once you get the hang of it and manage to pierce through the – admittedly often dense – language, Shakespeare was an absolute genius at constructing gripping stories.
“Miss”, one of my students remarked recently, “Hamlet is, like, the first My Chemical Romance fan.”
She’s not wrong. Hamlet is depressed and generally insufferable, and he overthinks everything. Yet it’s the characters that really make Hamlet the great play that it is.
Hamlet’s story is convoluted and not always easy to follow. It has many layers, it toys with our perception of reality. Hamlet, as a character, is wily, insecure, and lacks vigour to carry off his intentions. He can never make up his mind; he’s depressed and moping, which is understandable – the first time we meet him is not long after his father’s death – but not exactly endearing. His attitude towards women is horribly confusing, and he projects his sense of betrayal on them whether they deserve it or not.
Other characters, too, are conflicted and multi-layered, be it brawny Laertes or duplicitous Claudius. The women, too, are conflicted and complex, and they stray beyond the initial impression we get from them. They first appear as archetypal mother and innocent waif, but Shakespeare allows them to grow, to change, to be part of the story.
Not all books that are deemed classics are worthy of the moniker, but in the case of Hamlet, it definitely merits a bit of time and effort.
