Hamlet is perhaps the most notoriously enigmatic character in all of Western literature:we want to like him,we want him to find peace,and yet there are always the facts that he callously destroys Ophelia without reason -- certainly,antagonizing Polonius's daughter does not fall under the umbrella of his "antic disposition" -- and that he remorselessly murders Polonius,and even later gratuitously orders the deaths of his former school-friends,Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.We therefore cannot connect with him in the same way that we connect with other tragic heroes like Brutus.But along the same lines,Hamlet is certainly no hero-villain:he is no Macbeth,for instance.
So how should we think about Hamlet?Perhaps the best advice is to give up trying to categorize him and instead just listen to him:he thinks so well that our own thinking can only improve from exposure to his.Many people fuss over Hamlet's inaction,his inability to follow through with his vengeance against Claudius,but the more you listen to Hamlet,the more you begin to realize that perhaps fulfilling his dead father's revenge-wish is not what he wants,and THAT is why he does not act.I firmly follow Nietzsche in his observation that Hamlet does not think too much,but rather thinks too well.
Like all of the Folger Library editions of Shakespeare,this text includes useful notes on every left-hand page and a reasonable consolidation of all versions of the play on every right-hand page.Thus,the book is ideal for any classroom- or individual-based study of Shakespeare's most engimatic personage.Highly recommended.