| | |
| | Hamlet Audio Book -- Download Your Hamlet Audiobook |
|---|
Shakespeare's Hamlet,in 1601, is the first to come in his series of four tragedies. This is the masterpiece of depth and maturity. The others in the series are Othello from 1603, Macbeth from 1606 and finally King Lear from 1605. This play is really something extra and it's said that tragedy was reinvented.
Before Hamlet
Certainly Shakespeare had already dealt with tragic themes and situations in plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Richard II and Julius Caesar, but in Hamlet he found himself able to fuse with complete artistic success the conflicting concerns of the private individual and the public state of which he is a member, or for which he may indeed be responsible - Hamlet is, after all. Prince of Denmark. This is a quin-tessentially Renaissance theme: it is no longer enough to appeal to an accepted moral or religious system, but instead each man must find out for himself a moral path through the 'unweeded garden' of life.
The first known version of the Hamlet story is found in the twelfth century Historia Danica by Saxo Grammaticus. Most of the main ingredients of the story are already present, albeit in primitive form, and some of the names, too -'Amlethus' for Hamlet. In 1576 Francois de Belleforest retold the story in his Histoires Tragiques, translated into English in 1608 and hence too late for Shakespeare to have read - but someone, perhaps Thomas Kyd, came across the story in the 1580's and turned it into a play which must have been Shakespeare's immediate source, however radically different Shakespeare's version turned out to be. We know, incidentally, that the idea of a ghost seeking revenge comes from this lost play: Thomas Lodge in 1596 writes of the 'ghost which cried so miserably at The Theater, like an oyster wife, "Hamlet, revenge. '"
One Voice Recordings Hamlet audio book
This audiobook is narrated by David Ian Davies.
1. Polonius suggests Hamlet stop mourning his father's death
2. Hamlet compares two brothers, talks of his mother's haste into marriage
3. 0! that this too, too, solid flesh would melt
4. Hamlet meets Horatio, learns of his father's ghost
5. Laertes bids good-bye to his sister
6. Polonius gives advice to his son
7. Hamlet and Horatio confront the ghost
8. Polonius tells the King and Queen that their noble son is mad
9. Hamlet's speech to the players
10. Hamlet proclaims what a rogue and peasant slave he is
11. Hamlet's speech,"To be or not to be"
12. Hamlet tells Ophelia to get to a nunnery
13. Claudius feels that Hamlet is not totally mad
14. Polonius and Claudius plot to get rid of Hamlet
15. Hamlet's speech to the players
16. At the play
17. Polonius prepares to spy on Hamlet
18. Claudius prays and Hamlet refrains from revenge
19. Hamlet's speech,"Tis now the very witching time of night"
20. Hamlet meets with his mother and kills the spying Polonius
21. Hamlet exposes the King to his mother and ghost reappears to Hamlet
22. Hamlet's speech,"How all occasions"
23. Claudius summons Hamlet and sends him off to England
24. Ophelia's mad scene
25. Laertes confronts Claudius and learns of Ophelia's drowning
26. The graveyard scene featuring Hamlet, Horatio, and grave digger
27. Ophelia's funeral
28. Osric arranges the fencing duel between Hamlet and Laertes
29. The duel
30. The final death of Hamlet |
| |
| | |
