I Hate Hamlet

Maybe it’s because I don’t fully understand it, or maybe it’s because I just flat out don’t like it, but I am really hating Hamlet at the moment. Over the weekend I’ve really tried to read it and like it, but I always just end up throwing it across the room or giving up and sleeping. I understand what’s going on, it just bores me to death and I keep hoping that it will get better but so far it has not. Perhaps I’m just not a Shakespeare person, I never really enjoyed Romeo & Juliet, and Macbeth was only slightly cool because of the macabre nature, but so far I haven’t been very entranced with any works of Shakespeare. I really hope that at some point, though, I learn to like at least something Shakespeare related so I’m not completely exiled from the English world.

That’s another thing, too, I’ve watched many friends of mine hide their dislike for canon English works in some pretentious attempt to seem more intelligent to other people or construct some sort of persona. I would rather openly dislike something in the canon than have to fake my way through liking it just to impress people who probably don’t really care. Pretending to like Shakespeare won’t make you any more intelligent or well read than pretending to like Bukowski makes you deep. It’s okay to not like things and if people make you inferior about it then that makes them the uneducated asshole, not you.