Brainstorming 'Hamlet' questions for ENGL 102

I'm wondering what questions will connect with my students.

1. Had Hamlet and Ophelia already hooked up when Polonius prohibited their relationship?

2. Is Hamlet hallucinating, or has he seen a ghost (the spirit of a dead person), or is he being fooled by a demon?

3. Is Hamlet mad, faking it, upset but still basically normal, or what?

4. Why did Kate Winslet, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, and so many others think it was worthwhile to be in Kenneth Branagh's film version of Hamlet?

Hitchens' culturally illiterate readership?

Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, "must be banking on a readership that has not read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. These Christian authors dramatized the themes and stories of the holy book that Hitchens disparages."

So writes Mary Grabar at TCSDaily.com.

She quotes Hitchens making this paradoxical assessment:

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

Hitchens is a brilliant man and he's often a thrill to read, but in the above paragraph it seems he's cutting off the branch on which he sits. That's my assessment. Grabar makes her full case here:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=061507A

Editing the classics, even the Bible

In another dispatch from the short-attention span culture (of which I am a part), The Times of London reports:

“To howls of indignation from literary purists, a leading publishing house is slimming down some of the world’s greatest novels.

“Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackeray would not have agreed with the view that 40 per cent of Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are mere ‘padding’, but Orion Books believes that modern readers will welcome the shorter versions.

“The first six Compact Editions, billed as great reads ‘in half the time’, will go on sale next month, with plans for 50 to 100 more to follow.”

It’s hard to take this seriously. Editing great works of literature is supposed to be funny.

For example, the Reduced Shakespeare Company is touring the United States with its live performance of “The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged).” Robert Brustein, founding director of the American Repertory Theater, called it “absolutely outrageous and absolutely wonderful,” adding that it’s “totally irreverent and I think anyone who sees it is going to have a whale of a good time.”

What’s the difference between the Reduced Shakespeare Co. and Orion Books?

Orion Books isn’t trying to be funny.

The rest of The Times article on Orion Books is at http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article1652629.ece .

The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Web site is http://www.reducedshakespeare.com/ .

-Colin Burch