SHAKESPEARE: The Tragedy of Hamlet (New Kitteredge Shakespeare Series)
Shakespeare scholars Bernice W. Kliman and James H. Lake have carried out the important task of bringing up to date, while retaining the significant features of the text of Hamlet edited in the last century by the celebrated Shakespearean George Lyman Kittredge. They have succeeded in preserving for today's students the essence of Kittredge's legendary system of notes and scholarly apparatus while adding their own insightful performance notes. As Professor Kittredge himself understood, the nuances and complexities of Hamlet perennially invite new interpretation and speculation. Kliman and Lake have retained that spirit by stressing in their own fresh introductory essay how recent productions have in their diversity brought about a "freeing" of Hamlet. The editors' discerning analyses of performances by Mel Gibson, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Almereyda, and Simon Russell Beal drive home the point that Hamlet today remains restless and unpredictable. . It exemplifies Ben Jonson’s Shakespeare, who “. . . was not of an age, but for all time- the late Kenneth Sprague Rothwell, Professor Emeritus, University of Vermont