One Way to Read Hamlet

I have found that the most comfortable approach to reading Shakespeare requires two editions, a handsome well-made edition with clean text, possibly illustrated, and a commentary and note laden edition. The pleasing appearance and feel of the former makes it more likely a play will be read to completion, while the bulging apparatus of the latter ensures that clouds of uncertainty won't gather to form an impenetrable fog.

The illustrated edition shown below is a Calla (Dover) reprint of a 1922 edition published by Selwyn & Blount, which can be picked up cheaply on Amazon. The artwork is by John Austen and as you can see in its manner it resembles the grotesque curlicues of Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke. The paper is cream coloured and of high quality; the printing is good but perhaps would have benefited from being a little sharper and darker. It is one of my favourite books.

For notes to the text I chose the Arden over the rival Oxford and Cambridge editions. Harold Jenkins is the editor and the edition comes from 1982, although what you see in the photos is an Arden Playgoer's edition, hardback 1997. Unusually, there are 150 pages of 'Longer Notes' in addition to the conventional same-page notes, so I have included an example from these as a photo. When it comes to criticism I tend to avoid anything published since the 1980s as I think it likely that academics who persist in faculties which promote such things as 'Women Studies' are mentally ill. Three fantastic little Oxford volumes cover criticism from Shakespeare's time to the late 19th century - D. Nichol Smith (ed.), and the periods 1919-1935 & 1935-1960 - Anne Ridler (ed.).

I have changed my mind about Laurence Olivier's 1948 film version of Hamlet having watched it closely recently on Blu-ray I was fairly captivated. There are no other worthwhile versions in my view. The Naxos audio play with Anton Lesser is the best Ive heard on CD.