The Sadness of Reading Hamlet as an Adult

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet

Almost any erstwhile English major will confess, I suspect, to having read Shakespeare’s Hamlet before being formally assigned it for classroom reading. The kind of person who elects to study literature is likely the sort of person eager to discover new experiences, and to embark on journeys into mysterious worlds, and no “world” is more ballyhooed than reading Hamlet. It’s the Mount Everest of literature: supposedly impregnable, though the trail is well-marked and extensively traveled.

I personally read Hamlet as a senior in high school. This may surprise several classmates, since—open secret—I nearly flunked that year. Not because I was stupid, but because I was impatient with the carefully curated, low-risk “skillz drillz” approach to learning favored in American high schools. I wanted to make independent discoveries and learn what excited me. So I purchased a paperback Hamlet at B.Dalton and undertook it myself, blind and rudderless.

The book I discovered felt dangerous, scary, and frustrating. This giddy kid, angry at his discovery that life didn’t unfold with the elegant symmetry of a medieval morality play, challenged the social order which dominated him, embodied in his stepfather. Young Hamlet realized Denmark, once bold and vibrant, had rusticated and fallen asleep. King Claudius loved wine and sex, not the manful virtues of conquest and justice. Between his books and swords, Hamlet promised revitalization.

Hamlet probably electrified Elizabethan audiences for the same reasons it jolted one suburban White kid in 1991. Just as Elizabethan theatre emerged from the stultification of plays as religious instruction (and opposed the Puritans who threatened to overrun England), this paperback Shakespeare ratified my belief that the institutions dominating my life were overgrown and decrepit. Sure, like Hamlet, resisting this decay might kill me. But it remained a worthy fight, just because it was right.

Mel Gibson as Hamlet

I still own that paperback Hamlet. On a dare, I recently blew the dust off the sadly creaky binding, and reread it. What a massive disappointment. Imagine reacquainting yourself with your oldest friend, only to discover that, while you’re now approaching fifty and facing life as an adult, your buddy remains saddled with rebellious teenage angst. Your friend’s life has fallen into a rut; he keeps repeating the same melodramatic but meaningless shows of defiance.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet begins his play declaring how fat, ingrown, and dissolute Denmark has become. He promises to uproot this corruption, which he sees embodied in King Claudius, and restore Denmark’s glory, which was the person of Old Hamlet. And then...everything conspires to prove him right! Every single belief Hamlet has in Act One, is vindicated in Act Five. Nothing happens to make Hamlet change his outlook or reevaluate his principles. Hamlet just never grows.

This disappointment with Hamlet probably reflects my own life trajectory. Nearly thirty years after first reading Hamlet, I’ve realized my teenage disappointment with middle-class mediocrity was, if anything, too small. But I’ve also realized that throwing myself bodily against the system, hoping my simple mass will change anything meaningful, is foolish. Yes, like many people my age, I resent the concessions I’ve made to systems which, in principle, I hate. But adolescent tantrums change nothing.

Young Hamlet prances around onstage, delivering long monologues about how intemperate, foolish, and shameful modernity is. I felt that, at seventeen. Then, in Act Two, Scene Two, where Hamlet remains onstage for 450 straight lines (one of Shakespeare’s longest), he successfully outsmarts and embarrasses every exemplar of Old Order gerontocracy: Claudius, Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. One suspects Richard Burbage, co-owner and prima actor of Shakespeare’s troupe, demanded something that allowed him unlimited virtuoso star time.

Laurence Olivier as Hamlet

Fearful that I’d become irretrievably cynical, I reread Macbeth, King Lear, and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. Nope, these works remain complex, profound, and meaningful. Oedipus realizes his transgressions, and accepts his fate. Macbeth realizes his transgressions, and resists his fate. Lear realizes his transgressions, and gives up. Like my adult self, they realize the way life acts upon us, despite ourselves. These characters, in different ways, learn from their journeys, and emerge from the experience transformed.

Not Hamlet. He starts the play resentful and rebellious, sure his convictions matter more than everybody else’s, and he finishes vindicated in that belief. No wonder high school Kevin enjoyed this play. Hamlet reflects every black-clad teenager storming out of the house, screaming “You’re not my real dad!” And somehow, he still gets the hero’s death, so he never needs to realize his mistakes. He gets to be seventeen forever. Real life isn’t so merciful.