by Chris Marshall:
"I don't see why people admire that play so. It is
nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together."
I have a confession to make. I taught 8th grade
English for a while. I took an entire class on Shakespeare. I’ve been alive for
almost 27 years. And yet this was the first time I have ever seen/read/absorbed
any version of Hamlet. Of course I
knew the story, but it was learned entirely through osmosis. I think The Simpsons did a version of it. In any
event, I’d never seen it.
The quote at the beginning of the post comes from Isaac
Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare (though
he was quoting somebody else at the time), and it’s easy to see why somebody
might think that way. It seems like every line is a famous quotation or phrase
that has become commonplace in the English language. To thine own self be true.
Brevity is the soul of wit. Murder most foul. The primrose path. Mind’s eye.
And the entire “to be or not to be” soliloquy. It all came from Hamlet.
