"Hamlet" by William Shakespeare: Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, has some issues. His beloved father has recently died, and his sorrow is only intensified when his mother, Queen Gertrude, quickly remarries, wedding her late husband's brother, Claudius. The whole situation has Hamlet mired in depression, contemplating life, existence, and the lure of suicide. So, basically, it's like a typical afternoon here at the offices of 70 proof.
Ah, but there's something fishy in the state of Denmark. Just when he's at his emotional nadir, Hamlet encounters the ghost of his dead father. The deceased king tells his son he was murdered. Claudius poured poison in his ear while he slept. The revelation gives purpose to Hamlet's troubled existence. He vows to avenge his father's death with the blood of his uncle. It's always nice to do things with the family.
While Hamlet contemplates how best to perpetrate his plans for revenge, he decides to feign insanity, allowing his bizarre behavior to mask his true intentions and avoid any unwanted suspicion. Yet his behavior doesn't go unnoticed. Claudius is concerned about his nephew's melancholy and consults his court councillor, Polonius, for advice. Polonius, a sagacious old sort, assures Claudius that Hamlet's woes are due solely to a troubled love for Ophelia, Polonius's daughter. To prove his theory, Polonius suggests he and Claudius spy on Hamlet during his next meeting with Ophelia. When Hamlet enters, unaware of his hidden onlookers, he delivers the legendary "To be or not to be" soliloquy (Act III, scene I), perhaps the most famous speech in the English language, once again giving voice to his thoughts of suicide and death. He becomes so impassioned that when Ophelia appears, he completely shuns her, spurning her love and spewing a vicious indictment of women and marriage, repeatedly commanding her to a nunnery. Ophelia flees, brokenhearted and afraid. Claudius and Polonius are equally shaken, neither able to explain what they had just witnessed.
Hamlet devises a scheme to confirm his uncle's guilt. He hires a group of actors to stage a play, writing a scene in which a king is murdered by his brother in order to claim the throne and queen for himself. The ploy works, as Claudius is unable to hide his guilt upon seeing the performance. Convinced once and for all of his uncle's treachery, Hamlet proceeds with his quest for vengeance, his anger beginning to rage unchecked. When his mother summons him for a private meeting, Hamlet bursts into her chamber and does little to hide his disgust with her involvement in his father's murder. The queen, fearing for her safety, screams for help, drawing forth a similar shout from behind a wall tapestry. Thinking the hidden voice belongs to his uncle, Hamlet lashes out with his sword, blindly stabbing through the curtain and slaying Polonius, who was hiding with the queen's consent in hopes of once and for all discovering the reason for Hamlet's strange behavior.
Claudius and Gertrude prepare to send Hamlet to England, saying it's the only way to protect him in the aftermath of Polonius's death. But Claudius has secretly arranged for Hamlet to be killed upon arriving in England. Then there's the matter of the councillor's surviving children. Ophelia, still reeling from Hamlet's brutal treatment, struggles with her father's passing, descending into madness. Laertes, Polonius's son, who earlier in the play was set out into the world with such words of wisdom from his father as "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "To your own self be true," is now suddenly cast in the role of Hamlet, with his own father's murder to avenge. It all culminates in a violent, bloody mess. So, once again, not unlike your typical day at the offices of 70 proof.
"Hamlet" is a spectacular achievement. An argument could easily be made that it's the single greatest work in all of literature. Not only is it a joy to read and experience, but Hamlet's struggle with existence, as seen in the "To be or not to be" speech and in a later discourse over the grave of a former friend ("Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio" - Act IV, scene I), clearly lays the foundation for existentialism and the profound philosophical works of such 70 proof favorites as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. Everything I owe, I owe to "Hamlet."
The play also has another, somewhat hidden, significance. It proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Shakespeare was in fact Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. For those unfamiliar with the authorship debate, the William Shakespeare we learned about in school, the common actor from Stratford on Avon, is a complete fraud. He had absolutely nothing to do with writing the plays and sonnets credited to "Shakespeare." Edward de Vere is the true author. The evidence in de Vere's favor is simply overwhelming. "Hamlet" practically reads like a de Vere autobiography. Edward de Vere's own father died under suspicious circumstances, his mother was quick to remarry, characters in the play are either named for or seem inspired by people in de Vere's life, and he even murdered a household servant in a shockingly similar fashion to Hamlet's stabbing of Polonius. And the "Hamlet" comparisons are only a small sliver of the enormous case for de Vere.
It's positively sickening that the public at large doesn't know the truth about Shakespeare. For giving us "Hamlet" alone, the name de Vere should be shouted from rooftops and emblazoned across the sky. Okay, well, first let's get Don Knotts emblazoned across the sky, and if there's any emblazoning dust left over we can have a go with de Vere.
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If you'd like to learn more about Edward de Vere and the truth about Shakespeare, here are a few links to get you started...
Shakespeare Oxford Society Home Page
The Shakespeare Authorship Studies Conference: Who Was Edward de Vere?