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The Melancholy Monk
Mar. 12th, 2015 08:40 am“We have been so used to this tragedy that we hardly know how to criticise it any more than we should know how to describe our own faces.”
-- William Hazlitt (1817)
He is talking about “Hamlet”, and I have been in one of those moods. Every once in a while, I feel this strange allure to Shakespeare, and to this play in particular. For over a month, I have not been able to read any other books than these plays and some of the literary criticism they have spawned, and I was beginning to feel alright with that, as I cast aside all my other books. Is it not a rich enough universe for me to spend the remainder of my reading life? Maybe there is no better way to spend my reading life. Hell, I have even been buying a number of screen adaptations of the play, not to mention Al Pacino’s and Jeremy Irons’s “Merchant of Venice”. (I was especially pleasantly surprised to discover Scott Campbell’s “Hamlet” to be a delight, which is now a favorite.) I am starting to come out of this spell, though, and I am glad, because there is a much larger world of wonderful books out there. It is just that sometimes I am tempted to settle down in this cozy little literary space and block out the rest of the prosaic world - to both be and not be!
-- William Hazlitt (1817)
He is talking about “Hamlet”, and I have been in one of those moods. Every once in a while, I feel this strange allure to Shakespeare, and to this play in particular. For over a month, I have not been able to read any other books than these plays and some of the literary criticism they have spawned, and I was beginning to feel alright with that, as I cast aside all my other books. Is it not a rich enough universe for me to spend the remainder of my reading life? Maybe there is no better way to spend my reading life. Hell, I have even been buying a number of screen adaptations of the play, not to mention Al Pacino’s and Jeremy Irons’s “Merchant of Venice”. (I was especially pleasantly surprised to discover Scott Campbell’s “Hamlet” to be a delight, which is now a favorite.) I am starting to come out of this spell, though, and I am glad, because there is a much larger world of wonderful books out there. It is just that sometimes I am tempted to settle down in this cozy little literary space and block out the rest of the prosaic world - to both be and not be!
