Required Reading Revisited: Hamlet

Hamnet. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The Lion King. Grand Theft Hamlet. There’s been so much noodling on the Bard’s 1600s tragedy, it’s easy to lose sight of the potency of the original. Enter BookPeople’s Required Reading Revisited book club, which blows the dust off a classic – like, say, the story of a Danish prince undone by his father’s murder and determined to hold all guilty parties accountable – and chews over what makes it so enduring. The idioms alone – “to thine own self be true,” “brevity is the soul of wit,” “there’s the rub”– make Hamlet one for the books. – Kimberley Jones