Hamlet ...

is on my mind.

I am on Act IV now and though I expect I must have read the play back in high school or college -- certainly I know the storyline -- I am surprised by how modern a play it seems. More specifically, how modern Hamlet as a character seems. He reminds me of a university student. Well, that is what he is! but it's more than just the fact that he is just back from the university. He comes off as a university student, like some I've met -- clever, a bit desperate, throwing off jokes while their minds are occupied elsewhere, unable to get past the pain of their dysfunctional backgrounds, damaging people around them half-inadvertently in the course of dealing with their issues. Entitled and gifted, but deprived of stability by the selfishness of their parents.

Here is a Wikipedia entry on Hamlet. Even though some question Wikipedia's objectivity in some areas, I have found it a nice starting point in my mostly non-political type interests. From there I found that someone even has a Hamlet blog. Cool. The internet makes it easy to do any immersion learning project you care to do. From the Wikipedia source alone, I could even find my way to a place that has Hamlet lesson plans for teachers.

While I'm talking about the Great Books..... I have a BA in English Literature and I studied Shakespeare in college. However, when I'm reading a Great Book I try to put that aside except *as it helps me be a better reader*. I try to read simply as Myself reading a Book and listening to what the author is saying rather than as a a Modern Person reading a Classic, and waiting till I read what the experts say to form my own opinion.

CS Lewis writes about it in the introduction to St Athanasius's On the Incarnation:

"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he think of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.."

The whole introduction is well worth reading and can be found here. I almost think that his is the one introduction that should be read in front of every Great Book, or at least pondered ahead of time. This reliance on the "experts" isn't just an English Lit thing. It operates in childhood education, too, and in many other areas.

This is what I tell my children: read the book FIRST, Author speaking to Reader, THEN read the introduction and any scholarly commentary you choose to follow up with. (Sometimes, though not always, it deepens the enjoyment of the work to have a bit of historical context for the story-- for example, reading a book as part of a unit study.--- that's a different thing). Or perhaps, don't read the intro at all. Just read the classic again, more carefully, taking notes or writing out responses or questions. Maybe then go to the experts and the study guides.

Actually, I have taught this to them so successfully that I don't even HAVE to say this. Rather, they come and tell me, "I think it works better to read the book before I read the introduction -- the book's usually better written and the author knows what he is trying to say better than the commentator does." Then I just agree : ). When it comes down to the bottom, I don't think I have taught this to them except by NOT teaching them the reverse. I think people are born thinking that they are competent to understand books and stories and ideas. Then this notion of their own competence is explicitly taught out of them during their school years. Sometimes they don't ever get it back.

My children have found that their peers often don't like reading Good Books, and find them boring and difficult. "Jane Eyre? Boring. Hamlet? Boring and hard." This is sad. The last thing those works are is BORING. Someone must have had to fill out a lot of literature circle forms in order to think so. Those could be boring, I imagine, and put a taste of medicine in the fruit preserves that would be hard to shake off.