dozens's review of Hamlet

dozens reviewed Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Giunti classics)

William Shakespeare: Hamlet (2001, Giunti)

In this quintessential Shakespeare tragedy, a young prince's halting pursuit of revenge for the murder …

Review of 'Hamlet' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Nostalgic re-read. I remember reading this as it was being created, waiting for new updates to show up in my RSS reader.

Why I picked it up

First of all, this was hard to pick up! First of all, it's kind of hard to google "What was the name of that 'great' webcomic about ramen?" Secondly, the website is down. Luckily, all the material was preserved by archive.org's Wayback Machine, so I was able to download it and make a CBZ to read on my iPad.

I thought about it initially because I just finished Good to Great, and thinking about greatness in general, I remembered Mr. Phipps and how much I enjoyed this story. It was shorter overall than I remembered, but it was still really good.

What I want to remember

I still really like how the characters age and change over the course of the story. Lyle himself goes through so many changes and identities.

I thought, and continue to think, that Mr. and Mrs. Phipps's relationship is really interesting. I'm not even sure whether they're still actually together at the end. They both clearly love each other. They are wise enough to know that they are not really that great for each other. Mr. Phipps is too unreliable for Mrs. Phipps at the end, and if he doesn't resent her coddling him and carrying him success, then he at least recognizes it and chooses to do without it. And her. When she says she'll continue to be there for him "sometimes" is one of my favorite parts of the whole story, as is the fact that she keeps her word when you see her leaving and saying, "See you again next month, Lyle!" It's just a really interesting take on what makes a relationship successful.