30-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Did We Miss the Happy Ending in ‘Hamlet'?
To the Editor:
Re 'Listen to 'Hamlet.' Feel Better,' by Jeremy McCarter (Opinion guest essay, July 23):
I appreciate Mr. McCarter's provocative thoughts on William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet.' I agree with most of them, but the conclusion is off.
Hamlet is ready to face death in the lines quoted at the end of this essay, but not because he has found peace, at least not completely. While the play can indeed be read as a coming-of-age story, 'outgrowing' gloom, whether about the past or future, is not really the point.
Mr. McCarter points out that Hamlet's curiosity has sustained him through his dark times. But it is something more than that. Hamlet is fiercely dedicated to finding out the truth, revealing it and correcting the lies and calumnies told to conceal it. When he knows his death is near, his final plea to Horatio is to 'tell my story.'
Hamlet's great life force comes from his unquenchable desire to help the truth to 'will out,' as it were. The rest, as he says in his dying breath, is silence.
Dorothy Dean WaltonMexico City
To the Editor:
I taught 'Hamlet' for 35 years, mostly to gifted high school seniors. I witnessed numerous adaptations and costume updates. Never did anyone take this tack. I love the idea of an uplifted and resolved Hamlet who has learned to live in the moment! My students would have loved it, too. Particularly in these trying and confusing times.
Dana EdenbaumBala Cynwyd, Pa.
To the Editor:
'If it be now, 'tis not to come: if it be not to come, it will be now: if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.' So says Hamlet. This is wisdom beyond common or good sense; it is elemental. And it answers another gloomy Shakespearean character's thesis by showing how to travel the way to dusty death.
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