Hamlet on the Web

Language Spins Hamlet Into Two Webs

After surveying the internet for Hamlet related content, I have reached the conclusion that the play is polarly situated in the culture of the world wide web, between those who understand its language, and those who don’t. When I started my search, I initially employed the immediacy of popular engines, such as Yahoo! and Google, and expected my basic queries for ‘hamlet’, ‘hamlet blog’, and ‘hamlet on the web’ to yield a fair amount of interesting results. What the engines actually came up with frustrated me; the first couple of result pages were filled with links (in order of occurrence) to Hamlet study guides, movie synopses, teaching guides, link collecting sites, blogs dealing with show reviews, and dead blog domains; thehamletweblog.blogspot.com was one of the few working blog links on the first page of various engines’ results, so I have a hunch it will be cited in other papers. If engines are intended to display the most relevant and useful links for queries, then does that mean that the majority of people only seek out links to “short cuts” and summaries when they search for Hamlet? This seems likely, as students account for a large percentage of internet users. However, that is not to say that all guide/summary sites market themselves as a substitute for studying the text, or even that they lack original interpretations of the play. With that in mind, I categorize a very large portion of Hamlet’s internet presence, as content that relates to simplifying the play for those who are willing, unwilling, or unable to understand its language.

It makes no difference whether one types hamlet.org or shakespeare.com into the address bar, both urls redirect to sections of enotes.com; this means that enotes bought/registered ownership of those domains for the likely reason of drawing more people to their summaries. I guess I was expecting to find from such a distinctive url, a fan site or forum that offered multiple interpretations, rather than a spoon-fed analysis. Another guide site that caught my attention was sparknotes.com, with its distinctive No Fear Shakespeare section. Although no site that wants to be taken seriously would openly market itself as a substitute for studying the text, such a purpose comes to mind from that specific title. For certain, the sites own description of the section, “No Fear Shakespeare puts Shakespeare's language side-by-side with a translation into modern English – the kind of English people actually speak today,” attests to the fact that the internet provides readers with more than just the original dialogue that many struggle with. One Hamlet study site that makes a conscious effort not to spoon feed an analysis, is Pathguy.com. I only discovered its url after expanding my search beyond the initial engine recommended links. The site provides at least two dozen images of Hamlet in art and cinema to accompany the text, and explains how to go approach the play, rather than dictating an analysis – “to discern an author's intent, look for material that does not specifically advance the plot, typify the genre, or have strong mass-audience appeal.” In addition, Pathguy.com immediately addresses the initial “difficulties posed by the language,” but does not encourage one to avoid them, assuring that “once you get past [them], you'll probably enjoy Hamlet, and not just for its action.” The internet is not just a place for students to better understand Hamlet, but teachers as well. I stumbled across sites such as teachwithmovies.org and teachervision.fen.com, which share methods of teaching Hamlet, and claim that its “message about the moral and practical pitfalls of revenge . . . maximizes [its] relevance to teenagers.”

Though all of the sources I have cited so far direct their focus on analyzing the tragic implications of Hamlet, there are still sites to be found on the web that pay attention to the more ‘concealed’ aspects of the play – specifically the humor. Clicknotes.com is one such site that contains an advanced section (in addition to its summary of scenes), where you can find explanations for every pun and paradox that Hamlet recites. Rather than being an all around, school oriented study site, clicknotes is specifically dedicated to works of Shakespeare; I’ve noticed that these types of web sites tend to be less appealing in design, and therefore there is a tendency to overlook them. In addition to offering insight about the humor in play (for those who know where to search), the internet enables those familiar with the text to share their own jokes/satires about the play. More often than not, the jokes acknowledge the difficulties of comprehending Elizabethan English, and therefore require one to have undergone the experience of reading/analyzing the original text to fully appreciate them. I had to surf through several links until I found Fox in Socks, Prince of Denmark (www.seuss.org/seuss/seuss.shakes.html), a rewriting of the play that fuses together the writing styles of Dr. Seuss and Shakespeare. The end result is harder to follow than Elizabethan English, but very fun to read – “O that these too too solid six sick bricks would tick, thaw and resolve these six sick chicks which tock.” Green Eggs and Hamlet, is yet another rewrite I came across that does basically the same thing (www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/97/May/geandh.html) – “Could I, should I end this strife? Should I jump out of a plane? Or throw myself before a train?” To me it seems as though there are those people who desperately want to avoid confronting Shakespearean language, and then an even fewer number of people who are glad they did, and now can share their interpretations and experiences of the play with others over the web.