Time, Reason and Rhyme: Shakespeare’s Hamlet

By Violet Rook

I joined the local library when I was ten years old and I remember the first book I clutched to my bosom was red and had the words ‘Hamlet, Prince of Denmark’ in gold letters on the first page. The name William Shakespeare was in smaller print just beneath the title. This little red book was the reason for my journey into the unknown, across the busy main road which ran through the centre of my home town, to the small building dwarfed by its Victorian neighbour the Civic Centre (or Town Hall as it was onced termed).

I had heard the play on the Radio and hence my parents knew no peace until the day the small red book was in my eager little hands.  The words filled my ears and my imagination with the dilemma of the prince, and seeing these words on paper was vital. It is language and words, so Chromsky, Brunner and Vygotsky tell us that make us who we are.  We learn to be human via language. One can analyse who we havebeen speaking to via the words we use.  Eliza Dolittle’s situation was not such a fable.

From listening, to reading, to seeing ‘Hamlet’ on the stage, this was the focus of my education in literature. These various methods of delivery of the work gave a rare opportunity to appreciate the depth and structure of the language while indicating a social aspect of the work in society.  How the play is viewed by the audience as a group and the individual visually, both on the stage and in film, is an aspect the author could never have  forseen.

Comparing the many versions of this play and others of the Shakepeare Canon gives much information on the social structure of Shakespeare’s time.  The recently  famous  ‘Doctor Who’,  playing the part is perhaps ironic or is the right
word, ‘funny’, or perhaps significant.

The rhyme and reason in the works of Shakespeare have given solace and encouragement, pleasure and knowledge. Studying the many aspects of the Bard brings the reader an appreciation of history ancient, global and modern.  All this while combining poetry and verse.  How many works of fiction can trace their titles from the play ‘Hamlet’? One example of course is… ‘The Mousetrap’, but there are many more.

The lessons one learns from Shakepeare is that all life is a topic for poetry and literature. Every word spoken or written is important.  In the 21st century we have the knowledge of the past four hundred years, yet the words and plot in the plays indicate a logic far beyond the author’s time.