were one to have the profound hatred, were one to avenge and harm his family who seems too far to harm, he would be either a hero or a monster. should he fight the unbeatable foe and right the wrong, should he bear with unbearable sorrow, should he ruin himself in twisted enthusiasm, he would be hamlet.

　　among all the masterpieces of william shakespeare, “hamlet”， undoubtedly is worshipped and as one of the most successful and admired tragedies, while the character hamlet remains one of the most loved dramatis personas in all-time history of literature.

　　to have read shakespeare's “romeo and juliet” by the age of 16, i was moved to tears, while having no empathy with his another great one “tempest”。 presumably when i get 60 or older, i could be wise enough to understand the latter, but find it nothing worthwhile to go over the former one, where lays a romantic story that the only youngsters are addicted to. but it's a fact that whenever in our lifetime after gaining such experiences as getting through hard times, or, finding a real self, from “hamlet”， we always find something that we consider as perpetuation, which is worth deep thoughts. this is because it highlights hamlet's choices of life, choices made under certain circumstances of history and society, requested by the fate extraordinary to hamlet himself, but ordinary to mankind. that is, to some extent, his experiences make a similar one to ours and, his destiny is something we're facing sometime in our own lives.

　　we're possibly the same. we explore the truth in the dark. we discover facts from the mist. we lose ourselves in determinations. we trespass on which we're forbid to be, hesitates at love and hatred, and struggle to rebuild system of values and spiritual prop in a world without standards and scales of standards.

　　hamlet couldn't have been perfect. he is very much a person motivated by irrational enthusiasm, impetuous enough to kill polonius only to find it's a mistake as the victim is not the king. but somehow it is for his poor enthusiasm, his weakness of humanity, that hamlet touches countless readers, as everyone makes out himself from the ill-fated prince.

　　hamlet's “revenge” isn't so much simply the killing of claudius, as it is the purging of all the rottenness in the danish court. and although it costs him his life, he succeeds.

　　at some time, we all consider how much wrong there is in the world. “hamlet” gives us a chance to watch an ordinary person consciously choose to say “no!” to the world's wrongness and falsities, and to strike back with power. william shakespeare held up the mirror to something in us that is precious.

　　i hear hamlet thinking, “too many people waste too much effort doing things that are not worthwhile. it's a bad world, and i am far from a perfect human being. we all end up dead in the end. so i am going to do something worthwhile, and do it right.”

　　i hear him wondering, “what is a man, if his chief good and market of his time. is but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.”

　　i hear him whispering “to be, or not to be, aye, there's the point. to die, to sleep, is that all? aye, all.”

　　that makes a hero to me, regardless of his blindness and madness which haunt everyone for a while in his time. thousands of readers may have thousands of their own hamlet, but there's something that stays the same, that hamlet dares to run, where the brave dare not go. that's his quest.

　　thinks about it.

　　by ted