Not to Be. - Review - book review

One can't help guffawing, for example, when Updike renders Act I, scene 2, in his own words. This is the famous scene where Claudius eulogizes his dead brother, strains to justify his hasty marriage to the widow, and tries to ingratiate himself with Hamlet, who merely utters bitter gibes-the famous "A little more than kin and less than kind," and "Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun." All this Updike revises as follows: "Hamlet rebuffed with some muttered puns the King's fatherly inquiry after his health."

Updike has sprinkled his novel with many such delightful asides. His King Hamlet, for example-who, as we know, is later murdered while napping in his orchard-complains to Gertrude about experiencing "uncanny spells of fatigue." Gertrude replies cheerfully: "Normal aging, merely, darling. I too need a nap more than formerly. You'll live another 20 years at least." Such zingers will entertain aficionados to no end.

Ultimately, however, one wonders what Updike hoped to achieve by deflating this Danish colossus into a soap opera befitting an age in which half of all marriages end in divorce. Turning Hamlet into a spoiled suburban brat may be amusing, but in the end it's a bit like portraying Macbeth as a hen-pecked Walter Mitty. It turns the plays and characters of Shakespeare into shadows of themselves, unworthy of the sublime poetry he wrote for them. Was Gertrude and Claudius just a lark? Something Updike did for fun in his spare time? Or is it a case of a brilliant and erudite novelist good-naturedly thumbing his nose at the master? For all its pleasures, Gertrude and Claudius can't help being a disappointment to those who still find dignity and meaning in the tragic view of life.

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