To Be, or Not to Be...

 While it was not initially my choice to read this play, I have been wanting to read this famous Shakespearean work for quite a long time! My Introduction to Theater class has given me the opportunity to finally read it, and for that I am grateful! I was surprised to find this play incredibly relevant to someone like me, a young woman in the 21st century. I also must give a shoutout to the No Fear Shakespeare publishers who make reading very Old English a lot more enjoyable and understandable of a time. Its themes of living life to the fullest and viewing death as an unknown adventure reminded me of Peter Pan and challenged me to observe my own life and how I am living it. In essence, this play is surely a tragedy -- literally everyone dies. But I think that in this excess of death, the play, and subsequently Shakespeare, is trying to communicate how revenge can be poisonous and utterly destroy someone. The work highlights Hamlet's inability to act, a flaw that comes not only from the fact that he is a seventeen-year-old young man, but that what he has been called to do may have literally caused him to go insane. I think that a lot of readers throughout time have been able to see a bit of themselves in this character, however annoying he may be at times. All in all, I can finally say that I got to read this play, and I can most definitely say that I enjoyed it and recommend it to other readers.

Some of my favorite quotes from Hamlet:

"Listen to many, speak to a few."

"This above all: to thine own self be true..."

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

"God hath given you one face, and you make yourself another."

"To be, or not to be, that is the question."

---