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Speaker’s Choice: Suggested by Dr. Jane Freeman

1599: A Year in the Life of by James Shapiro. Harper Collins, 2005.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare. Ed. G.R.Hibbard. Oxford University Press, 1987.

“Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem” by C.S. Lewis. British Academy Lecture, 1942 (often reprinted, such as in Studies in Shakespeare, (1964), ed. Peter Alexander, pp. 201-18.)

Shakespeare, Time and Conscience by Grigori Kozintsev. Dennis Dobson, 1966.

Hamlet

Hamlet. [DVD] Castle Rock, 1996. Directed, written by, and starring Kenneth Branagh; also starring Julie Christie, Billy Crystal and Gerard Depardieu. A dramatization of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Hamlet. [DVD] Criterion, 2000. Directed, produced and written by, and starring ; also starring Felix Aylmer, Eileen Herlie, Terence Morgan, and Jean Simmons. A dramatization of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

To Be or Not to Be by Douglas Bruster. Continuum, 2007. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy is quoted more often than any other passage in Shakespeare. This book carefully unpacks the individual words, phrases and sentences of Hamlet’s soliloquy in order to reveal how and why it has achieved its remarkable hold on our culture.

Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Literature by Tony Howard. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Crossing national and media boundaries, this book addresses the history and the shifting iconic status of the female Hamlet in writing and performance.

Shakespeare:

Shakespeare and Co.: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, and the Other Players in his Story by Stanley Wells. Allen Lane, 2006. A thorough yet enjoyable examination of the Bard’s various competitors and collaborators written by one of the greatest Shakespeare scholars.

Shakespeare and Son: A Journey in Writing and Grieving by Keverne Smith. Praeger, 2011. The first full-length study to explore the possible effects of the death of his only son, Hamnet, this book approaches Shakespeare's works in light of the psychology of grief, combining psychological insights with literary analysis.

Related Reading:

Cinematic Hamlet: The Films of Olivier, Zeffirelli, Branagh, and Almereyda by Patrick Cook. Ohio University Press, 2011. Hamlet has inspired four outstanding film adaptations that continue to delight a wide and varied audience and to offer provocative new interpretations of Shakespeare’s most popular play.

Hamlet in Purgatory by Stephen Greenblatt. Princeton University Press, 2001. Stephen Greenblatt sets out to explain his long time fascination with the ghost of Hamlet's father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey takes him through surprising intellectual territory.

Murder Most Foul: Hamlet through the Ages by David Bevington. Oxford University Press, 2011. Excellent survey of Hamlet productions through history, both readable and informative.

The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet: a novel by Myrlin A. Hermes. Harper Perennial, 2010. Horatio prides himself on his ability to argue both sides of any intellectual debate but is himself a skeptic. That is, until he meets the outrageous, provocative, and flamboyantly beautiful Prince of Denmark.

Go Digital: Shakespeare Collection. Full-text electronic database from Gale Publishing, including The Arden Shakespeare, criticism, performance, literary and interdisciplinary journals. Remote access available through the Toronto Public Library website. http://www.tpl.ca/ or directly: http://bit.ly/XPft3b [TPL library card required to login.]

Shakespeare the Bard's Guide to Abuses and Affronts. by Running Press 2014. Available in eBook format from the Toronto Public Library via OverDrive. http://bit.ly/1Kf7XWs [TPL library card required to login.] Presenting a most civilized way to silence boors, deflect rudeness, and chide churlish lovers: Our mini book of insults culled from the dramatic works of English literature's most gifted wordsmith.