The Klingon Hamlet

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Simon and Schuster, May 19, 2001 - Fiction - 240 pages

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How fun to have a parallel edition with the English text of Hamlet on the left page and the corresponding Klingon text of Khamlet on the right page! Then in the back are the textual notes because when the humans stole the work for themselves, they made various changes to fit peculiarities of human culture. Face it, humans are wimps compared to Klingons! And humans have no sense of operatic drama.
As far as the story goes, this is a tale in which nearly all of the characters are supposed to be noble, but most of the deaths are dishonorable. How can these schemers and back-stabbers even claim to be Klingon? They have no place in Sto-vo-kor!
Fortunately, there are a few deaths that are glorious and honorable. They stir the heart.
Another fun part of reading this play is that so many of the speeches and archaic phrases have come into the collective memory of a large number of people. Even the human version has a certain amount of memorable verses. School children should memorize these and their elders should review them often. Modern readers should pepper their conversation with terms such as "Odds bodkin!" Our lives would be so much the richer.
Do you want a book that will be worth the time you spend on it, even though it takes you away from weapons practice and other worthwhile activities? Then this is a book you should read.

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Page 80 - That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of?
Page 82 - Get thee to a nunnery ; why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners ? I am myself indifferent honest ; but yet I could accuse me of such things, that it were better my mother had not borne me ; I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious ; with more offences at my beck, than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in.
Page 36 - Murder most foul, as in the best it is; But this most foul, strange and unnatural. HAMLET. Haste me to know 't, that I, with wings as swift As meditation or the thoughts of love, May sweep to my revenge.
Page 164 - I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers Could not with all their quantity of love, Make up my sum.
Page 170 - Why, man, they did make love to this employment; They are not near my conscience; their defeat Does by their own insinuation grow: Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes Between the pass and fell incensed points Of mighty opposites.