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"Hamlet" (York Notes Advanced) |  | Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Longman
Category: Book
List Price: £6.99
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 484
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.7 x 0.5
ISBN: 058278428X
EAN: 9780582784284
ASIN: 058278428X
Publication Date: August 29, 2003
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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Product Description
'York Notes' offer an approach to English literature that aims to fully reflect student needs. They are filled with summaries, commentaries, exam advice, margin and textual features to offer a wider context to the text and encourage a critical analysis.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 Getting to the Heart of Hamlet? February 23, 2004
19 out of 19 found this review helpful
This is one of the most thorough study guides on the market, not likely to confuse anyone and particularly well informed on the latest developments in critical approaches to the play though never too dense for the average school student to digest. The scene summaries and commentaries are models of clarity and precision whilst the textual analyses are searching, provocative and incisive. There is an excellent bibliography and useful pointers to websites, films and theatrical tradition. An invaluable introduction to advanced studies and a handy revision tool for teachers pressurised to work on the play at short notice!
This would be a good investment March 23, 2004
ambitiousgreeneggs@hotmail.com (Wokingham, Berkshire United Kingdom)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
I'm studying Hamlet at the moment and due to the nature of Shakespeare's over descriptive and complicated yet beautiful language, it's quite hard to follow and concentrate upon the plot. Though when I got this guide, I easily grasped what was happening and was able to concentrate more on the themes and language etc which you have to comment on in exams. It is helpful and gives lots of hints and info into what you're supposed to be focusing on in the scenes. It gives you ideas and pushes you in the right direction if you are struggling. It even has a glossary to simplify meanings and words. A more thorough understanding can be made from Hamlet and in the end you'll wonder why you didn't get this sooner. For five pounds, it's worth it, if you get an 'a' in your exams.
Essential September 4, 2008
Sister G (Nottingham, England)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Really great book that can be used throughout A level study or as a last minute revision guide.
The madness of Prince Hamlet April 8, 2010
Peter Buckley (Dyfed, Wales)
"Whether Hamlet is ever mad, or considered mad, is argued over by critics long and hard. No two performances will convey the same impression of the state of Hamlet's mind after his interview with the Ghost" (p86). Every critic, of course, has a different opinion. The majority appear to concur he was mad, with most favouring the position he intended to feign madness in order to exact revenge for his father's death, perhaps without foresight as to the precise means, but rapidly succumbed to genuine madness as events unfolded. It is unclear what level of insight he had at each stage of the tragic process.
Did Shakespeare intend us to conclude madness became the inevitable result of a pretence on a susceptible disposition? It was always to be a dangerous game, as inevitably a mad Hamlet was at least as dangerous to Claudius as a sane one, and Shakespeare indubitably endowed Hamlet an intense emotional sensibility and keen sense of justice.
"Attempting a mere trifling with personal identity, assuming a little of a character other than one's own, within the bounds of normality, if this has its risks, how much more hazardous must be any sustained effort to counterfeit madness?" (Sir James Crichton-Browne).
As for Hamlets decision to feign madness, there can be little doubt. The skill displayed by Shakespeare may be illustrated in the scene with Ophelia where Hamlet clearly overdid it, this is considered very true to life for those given to malingering (a term still used for those feigning mental illness), as they tend to imitate the extreme. Later, in the scene with his mother Gertrude, we are led to believe he is genuinely mad, or is it that she is going along with the ruse?
If we remain personally convinced Hamlet feigns madness throughout the play however, we come up against a grave difficulty. If he is not responsible for his actions by reason of insanity, how can we possibly reconcile how a man of his moral sensibility should have seemingly no remorse for the deaths of Polonius, Rosencrantz and Gildenstern, his unkindness to Ophelia and behaviour after her death?
Ophelia herself, impressionable, without familial support, dependent upon a Hamlet now apparently mad, succumbed to that form of mental illness so recognizable today in so many youth suicides. Shakespeare does not moralise, or even interpret (he leaves that to his audience), but what he is doing is using Ophelia to both contrast and clarify Hamlet's madness. Whether we feel her madness follows shock and bereavement, what we might liken to Post Traumatic Shock Syndrome, in any case has a ring of truth about it, Hamlet, being well capable of satire, contempt and irony in turn, whilst mad, puts that element of doubt in our minds. Deliberately, it seems.
"Madness may be defined as being in a minority of one. Hamlet is not afraid of this position." He himself expresses confidence `in the one judicious person who may overweigh a whole theatre of others' (Act 3, Sn 2). The discrepancy between his words and his behaviour becomes increasingly apparent. Since Hamlet, the fine intellect, castigates himself a number of times of failing to live up to what is expected of him, Prince of Denmark, son of a wronged father, could it be, in the final analysis, that he took the easy option?
Hamlet unveiled November 22, 2009
Jackie Domingo (Swansea, South Wales, UK)
York Notes for "Hamlet" are an invaluable guide to the insight of the play, the period in history and the character backgrounds. If, for example the study or essay is comparing film adpatations, Olivier's 1948 black and white film version, the BBC studio production with Derek Jacobi, and the film with Mel Gibson, these notes will provide the interpretation of the text,the psychological profile and the unwritten codes and symbols that are incorporated by the directors in the productions, and why some were ommitted prior to public screenings. Why is it easier to re-create a ghost in "Macbeth" than in "Hamlet"? is revealed in York Notes
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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