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    Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
    Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
    Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
    Audiobook3 hours

    Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition

    Written by William Shakespeare

    Narrated by Full Cast Dramatization

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    FOLGER SHAKESPEARE LIBRARY
    The World’s Leading Center for Shakespeare Studies

    The Folger Shakespeare Library, home to the world’s largest Shakespeare collection, brings Hamlet to life with this new full-length, full-cast dramatic recording of its definitive Folger Edition.

    Hamlet—Shakespeare’s most popular, and perhaps most puzzling play—follows the form of a “revenge tragedy,” in which the hero, Hamlet, seeks vengeance against his father’s murderer, his uncle Claudius, now the king of Denmark. Much of its fascination, however, lies in its uncertainties.

    This new full-cast recording—based on the most respected edition of Shakespeare’s classic—expertly produced by the Folger Theatre, is perfect for students, teachers, and the everyday listener.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateAug 5, 2014
    ISBN9781442374379
    Hamlet: Fully Dramatized Audio Edition
    Author

    William Shakespeare

    William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest playwright the world has seen. He produced an astonishing amount of work; 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and 5 poems. He died on 23rd April 1616, aged 52, and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church, Stratford.

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    Reviews for Hamlet

    4/5

    6,735 ratings120 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Almost intriguing play, and not the easiest work to read. The tale of a young prince trying to come to terms with his father’s death is probably the best known of Shakespeare’s tragedies. There’s something for everyone here: high drama, low comedy, intriguing characters. I’d advise watching a video or move, or perhaps listening to an audio presentation either before or while reading this one. No matter how good your reading skills are, the enjoyment and understanding of any play is enhanced Psy seeing it performed. This time out I watched an old stage production starring Richard Burton. The highlight of that one is Hume Cronyn’s marvelously humorous take on Polonius.Highest recommendation possible.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Excellent rendition! The voice acting is amazing, I can perfectly see them in my mind.
    • 5/5
      One of the best things I've ever read. Hamlet's got it all. Shakespeare at his best, filling so few pages with so much story.
    • 4/5
      One of the bard's all time classics, so frequently performed that it occasionally needs to be re-read to experience it the way he wrote it, without all the directorial impulses to pretty it up or modernize it. It had been a long time since my last read, and I was somewhat surprised to realize that this play comes with very few stage directions outside of entrances and exits; there are so many things that directors do exactly the same, you forget they weren't mentioned in the stage directions, and have simply become habit. Anyway, this play, about ambition and revenge, still holds up well through the centuries, though many of the actions seem outdated to us now. The poetry of the language and the rich texturing of the characters, even the most minor of characters, creates a complex story that successfully holds many balls in the air at once. Shakespeare's frequent use of ghosts is noteworthy, since that is something that modern day playwrights are told to be very careful about, and avoid if at all possible. A satisfying story, and a satisfying re-read.
    • 5/5
      The Penguin edition remains the best edition for highschool students, undergrad students and actors. Not as dense as the Arden nor as casual as the RSC, but the perfect in-between for people in those categories.
    • 5/5
      What a beautiful cast of narrators! Truly enchanting! Loved it.
    • 5/5
      This dramatic reproduction proved to be my saviour. Beautifully adapted and if you follow it alongside the text, you will be not be able to remove yourself from the play. This masterpiece is obviously a must-read but the audio helps us read it the way it was supposed to be perused-like a play to be performed on stage. This is how plays should be studied in classrooms. Can't thank the people behind this enough. Loved it!
    • 5/5
      I think I finally understand the fuss about Shakespeare. I've read and enjoyed his sonnets. I'm familiar with the basic storyline of most of his plays. But I've never found the plays themselves very accessible or coherent. There were some passing Shakespeare interludes in college, but they were surface at best. I tried a personal Shakespeare regime once, reading through my Complete Shakespeare on a somewhat-regular basis. The project fizzled; I just couldn't keep my head in it. But finally, audiobooks came to the rescue. Hearing the play, with all the characters voiced by different actors, is almost as good as seeing it. I think I've found my Shakespeare remedy. This audiobook is a BBC dramatization and features an all-star cast with Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet. I really enjoyed everyone's performances. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is probably Shakespeare's most famous work, a tragedy that explores madness, revenge, alienation, incest, and passion. It's an archetypal story that has been told and retold many times since (and before) Shakespeare's play, and will probably continue to be staged endlessly in various media. Disney's animated film The Lion King is a perfect example of how this story can be adapted to almost any medium and setting. One of the main objections many modern readers have to Shakespeare is the language. It can be tough, especially if you're slogging through it on your own, weighted down with the helpful but heavy annotations and footnotes of most print versions. So I was delighted when the language not only made sense to me, but astounded me with its beauty and strength. Though I struggled somewhat at times to understand, for the most part I was able to follow what was going on and appreciate the way it was written. This is probably funny, but my first thought on hearing the language of the play was that it sounded like C. S. Lewis's Narnian nobility, especially Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair. I never really made the connection, but this was entirely deliberate on Lewis's part. He describes Rilian: "He was dressed in black, and altogether looked a little bit like Hamlet." (Rilian is, of course, rather mad as well.) I have always loved the archaic dignity and grace of their speech—and it always seemed to me that there wasn't nearly enough of it in the Chronicles. Well, I've found the fountainhead now and I'm drinking eagerly. All unwitting, I was prepared for the language of Shakespeare by Lewis. Just one more reason to love Narnia and read it to my children!It's astonishing how many familiar quotes come from this play. The list seems endless: every dog has his day, to be or not to be, frailty, thy name is Woman, murder most foul, and many, many more. Half the fun of listening was to hear things I already knew, fresh where they began. Wikipedia attempts to sketch a broad outline of the authors and thinkers inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet; I don't think its influence can be measured. It's had an incredible impact on the imaginations of countless writers, and though I knew this theoretically going in, it's quite another thing to experience it for myself and hear all these everyday phrases in their original context. The theology is alternately wonderful and dreadful (with the wonderful parts being, I think, unintentional). The worst part is when Hamlet refrains from killing his uncle because he finds him at his prayers with his soul supposedly cleansed and ready for heaven—while Hamlet's father was murdered suddenly, without the chance of shriving his soul, and is therefore most likely in Hell. This is a very Roman Catholic, works-based view of salvation, and I think its innate illogic is obvious. But there are other parts that hit me hard with their spiritual resonance, like this passage:Use every man after his desert,and who should 'scape whipping?Use them after your own honor and dignity:the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.It isn't in a religious context at all, but the spiritual import of this thought is so profound. The more I think about it, the more profound it becomes. In short: Hamlet is brilliant. I know some of it went over my head, but the pieces I grasped are sharply intelligent and pithy. And the best part of this entire experience? It leaves me hungry for more Shakespeare.
    • 5/5
      Imagine my surprise when browsing through Kernaghan Books in the Wayfarers Shopping Arcade in Southport for these editions when I stumbled across Hamlet somewhat working against the purpose of me utilising these Oxfords to discover literature. Edition editor G.R. Hibbard chooses the First Folio as the basis for his text on the assumption that it was produced from a clean, revised manuscript of the play by Shakespeare himself, a final revision of the material that increases the pace but also clarifies the story in other places. His argument is sound, but I do much prefer the much later Arden 3’s approach of suggesting that all the close textual analysis in the world won’t definitively confirm which of the versions is definitive, so it’s best just to present all three (unless like the RSC edition, the mission is to reproduce an edition of the folio in particular). More inevitably posted here.
    • 4/5
      It amazes me how many people like Hamlet, no exception here, when it's really hard to relate to, but yet it's just one of those plays once you get into it, you come to love it. I read it for the first time in 12th grade and everyone would talk about it even when they didn't have to. The characters in Hamlet are amazingly complex and it doesn't just state how they are, you learn it through their actions and what they say. It's just so unique, I know everytime I read it I get a different opinion of the characters and the overall play.
    • 5/5
      There: you can all stop nagging me, I've finally read it. The plot was mostly as expected, though I think whatever version I read as a child was less kind to Ophelia, as I had a rather different image of her in mind. I had a whole book of Shakespeare retellings, now I think about it: I can't really remember many of them, but I suppose they haunt me a little in my vague ideas of what the plays are like before I read them...

      Anyway, Hamlet: justly famous, and full of phrases and quotations that even people who've never read a Shakespeare play can quote. It's always interesting coming to those in situ at last.

      Still terribly glad I don't have to study Shakespeare now. If I end up somehow forced to read Shakespeare in my MA, I may scream. Much happier to come to his plays now, in my own good time.
    • 4/5
      Excellent voice acting even if the sound effects could occasionally be cheesy. Overall well done I enjoyed it
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite Shakespeare works.
    • 4/5
      It was a very interesting story. It wasn't boring as I thought it would be.
    • 5/5
      Hamlet is so well known. So many phrases that are still so frequently used today. When my brother passed a few years ago, a friend gave me rosemary, "for remembrance". I had forgotten that line, but now it is one of my favorites. Shakespeare was brilliant.
    • 4/5
      Vertaling van Komrij. Uiteraard een tijdloos stuk met een ongelofelijke diepgang, maar geen gemakkelijke lectuur. Ligt me minder dan de iets eenduidiger stukken King Lear of Macbeth.
    • 3/5
      This was an OK production. An all American cast that at times feels like they are uncomfortably reading the lines. Some of the actors/actresses do very good jobs, others make the listening to and the flow of the story choppy and tough. Good enough for fans of the Bard, but I wouldn't use this for a classroom or early students of Shakespeare. Probably would turn them away...
    • 5/5
      I've read it about 3 times. Great play. Love the language.
    • 4/5
      On rereading classic plays - I found Hamlet to be, well Hamlet. As in any book that gives extra information, much of it is useful, a lot of it repetitious. I found the information about the folio's vs the quarto's and the difference between the two fascinating. For example, some of the editions were put together from actor's memories well after the last performance. So parts are added, removed, and expanded on. Putting this all together in the way Shakespeare intended it is always a lot of guessing and arguing.
    • 4/5
      More of the action seemed to happen off-stage than on! Excellent notes, and again many familiar lines I have seen referenced another literature and in everyday speech. Most of the cast dead by the end...
    • 4/5
      Hamlet, perhaps the best known of Shakespeare's tragedies, follows the title character as he seeks revenge upon his father's assassin--an uncle. The number of well-known lines from this work attests to its enduring influence. I chose to listen to the fully dramatized audio book produced from a performance of the Folger Theatre. It was well-done, but I do recommend either reading the book along with it or watching the recorded production to help sort cast members when you lack the name cues of the written format.
    • 4/5
      I feel I would have got more from this if I'd read it as a physical book instead on on my iPad, as there were a few times when I would haved liked to check back on things or make notes in the margins (I like to annotate books) so I will probably read this again at some point.

      I like reading plays. They go to show that a story still works when all you have is dialogue. Writers of huge novels with reams and reams of unnecessary discription should take note.

      Anyway, I really enjoyed Hamlet. It was full of interesting characters and events and I don't really think the story could have ended any other way! And the way Shakespeare wrote his plays was superb.
    • 3/5
      It will be one of life's mysteries, I think, how Hamlet can be likeable.
    • 5/5
      Well, what can you say about this book that has not already been said.

      it was good :3
    • 5/5
      Few stories are likely better known to most fans of literature or the theater than that of Hamlet, Shakespeare’s legendarily morose Danish prince. As the play begins, Hamlet’s scheming and duplicitous uncle has killed his father to assume the throne and, adding insult to injury, has also married the widowed mother. Hamlet is then visited by his father’s ghost, who demands revenge for his murder. This sets in motion a complicated series of events in which Hamlet wrestles with the morality of the request and the responsibility he feels to his father. Of course, nothing ends well for almost anyone connected to the main plot—this is one of the Immortal Bard’s tragedies, after all. Along the way to the fatal ending, though, the reader is treated to some of most memorable scenes in fiction, including those involving spectral visitations, sword duels, deceitful alliances, philosophical introspection, the quest for revenge, unrequited love, a descent into madness, and the loyalty of friends.Beyond its merits as a great stand-alone story, Hamlet is notable for the profound impact it has had on the creative arts over the past few centuries. There have been countless adaptations and retellings of this tale, both in literature and in film, which is certainly a mark of how enduring the play’s themes and central message are. Also, the text is packed with phrases and quotations that have become staples in the common lexicon, such as ‘to thine own self be true’, ‘neither a borrower or a lender be’, ‘to the manner born’, ‘something is rotten is the state of Denmark’, ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, ‘though this be madness, yet there is method in’t’, ‘the lady doth protest too much, methinks’, and, of course, ‘to be or not to be, that is the question’. (In fact, Shakespeare must rival the Bible for providing aphorisms to the English-speaking world!) In short, this is altogether great stuff that really is essential reading for any lover of the written word.
    • 5/5
      Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
    • 5/5
      I was expecting Hamlet to be more like the Lion King, but Hamlet ended up being one of the most enjoyable Shakespeare plays I've read. He really is a pun master.
    • 4/5
      An excellent audio production with Michael Sheen in the title role. Full of all the angst, gorgeous speeches, and tragedy that I love about this play. Honourable mention to Ellie Beaven's choices for Ophelia when she goes mad - she opts for a lot of childlike delight intermixed with sudden moments of grief as opposed to other versions I've seen where Ophelia is just devastatingly sad throughout. If you like the play, this is a decent way to experience it.
    • 4/5
      I find it much easier to listen to Shakespeare than to read it.
    • 4/5
      Love listening to Classical!!!