Hamlet: A Norton Critical Edition (Norton Critical Editions)

Wonderful edition arrived in perfect condition overnight. Fast shipping!! Great experience. This is a great newer edition of Hamlet. Can’t wait to check out more of the sellar’s books as this was such a personal experience. Happy.

Footnotes are kind of obvious half the time.

Had plenty of additional reading like psychoanalytical theory. I had to get this for school, and it was exactly what I needed.

I didn’t get the proper edition! Now I have to reorder for school!

Book was in amazing condition and was almost as if it were brand new from the bookstore : )

Perfect condition

This edition of Hamlet has some useful commentary. Unfortunately, the editor wanted to select as many different commentators as possible which means they’re significantly abridged. Personally, I would rather have had the full commentaries than mere samples of several pages.If I were asked to provide my own brief reflections, I would wonder why no commentator has ever made the rather obvious comparison between Hamlet and Ivan Karamazov. Whereas Hamlet is obsessed with justice and the moral disorder caused by his father’s murder, Karamazov is obsessed with the suffering of innocents. Both live on the border between sanity and madness. And where Hamlet attains everlasting literary status with his soliloquies, Karamazov attains the same with the myth of the Grand Inquisitor.The characters share such a similarity that it would be interesting to know the influence of Shakespeare on Dostoevsky. It’s also interesting that both works have been criticized as artistic failures. Hamlet does not resolve the fundamental problem of the mystery of the greatness of the human animal destined for oblivion while Dostoevsky fails to complete his project of theodicy.Perhaps this is because these problems are fundamentally irresolvable (except for by the world’s religions which most of us find untenable in modern times). If anyone has described how consciousness can flower into something as noble as an adult man or woman only to be silenced by death please message me and I’ll direct readers to your work.Hamlet remains my personal favorite among the works of Shakespeare. Even in an edition with rather tepid commentary I recommend it’s close reading to all seekers after truth.

Unfortunately the book arrived with two corners already bent, not a huge deal nor big enough issue to return, but was disappointing. Other than that the product is good.

Una edición maravillosa para todo estudiante de literatura inglesa y en general para todos los amantes de Shakespeare.

Like reading Shakespeare