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review of Nicki Greenberg's Hamlet

Sandra Hogan
 

Hamlet by Nicki Greenberg

Hamlet as an inkblot in a shape resembling a lion cub, his mother as a multi-breasted seahorse? These are among the surprising images in Nicki Greenberg’s graphic novel of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

I was one of those children who were ‘protected’ from comic books so I needed to read this book slowly to adjust my ideas and senses to a new form of literature. In case you were similarly deprived, I should explain that the term ‘graphic novel’ is used in contemporary literature for comic books of high quality, even if they are plays or non-fiction. It took a while to adjust to the oddness of it but, in the end, Greenberg’s illustrations seduced me.

Greenberg is a writer and illustrator from Melbourne who works as a lawyer ‘in her spare time’. Her adaptation of The Great Gatsby was one of the first literary graphic novels to be published by a mainstream publisher when it was released by Allan & Unwin in 2007. The book, which took her six years to produce, won a great deal of favourable attention in Australia and overseas and now she has followed up that success with Hamlet, ‘staged on the page’.

I came to the book with the idea that Shakespeare’s plays belong on the stage and a book was just a way for actors to learn their lines or for school students to be tormented. The idea that the book could be a lively, absorbing experience in itself seemed unlikely, however beautiful the illustrations. But Greenberg has converted me.

The comic form has the enormous advantage that the text – in which Greenberg has stayed true to the original play – is broken up into small balloons, making it easy to quickly apprehend the meaning and to appreciate the humour and vividness of the imagery. For people unfamiliar with Shakespeare’s work, the language can be intimidating when they encounter it in great blocks of text, or even when they hear it spoken quickly on stage or screen.

It would be delightful to read this book with children, even very young children, who are always willing to accept new words if they are presented in a spirit of fun in a suspenseful story. For that reason alone, I’d encourage schools to recommend this version of the play to their students. P&Cs could invest in bulk copies, perhaps at discounted prices, and watch the sullen resentment of their children at having to study Shakespeare turn to the deep, ruminative pleasure which is usually reserved for computer games.

The thing that required most adjustment for me was the use of inkblot cartoon characters. I longed for gorgeous period costumes and beautiful heroes and heroines. As I got acquainted with them, though, I came to realise how expressive a cartoon character can be. I wondered if Greenberg chose the inkblot idea in the Freudian sense that we can imagine deeply all kinds of surprising things into inkblots. By halfway through, I came to think that the inkblot character was the ideal way of showing the boyish bravado, the courage and simplicity of Hamlet and his struggle with madness and grief. This interpretation now feels very personal and close to me.

Shakespeare loved burlesque and puns and plays on words and some of the earthiness of his language gets lost in highbrow versions of the play. A graphic novel brings back all the fun of it as well as the adventure and melodrama.

I haven’t mentioned the beauty of the book. It is no surprise to discover that it takes years to illustrate a book like this. Each page is a work of art, from the starlit spookiness of the first ghost scene to the terrible, monochromatic carnage of the final battle. Loveliest of all are the flower-strewn pages of Ophelia’s madness and, at the end, Greenberg has added am exquisite compendium of the flowers and herbs mentioned in the play. The play within the play is in brilliant, sun-bright colour.

At $50.00, it is a big investment for a child’s book but, for anyone who had time to read it slowly with a child, it could give pleasure for months and introduce the child easily and deliciously into the work of the great cultural icon of the English language.

At the moment, my copy is for me alone and I relish the ownership of a lovely object and am grateful to it for opening up new feelings and sensations around this strange, crazy old tragedy.

 

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