Just read an interesting essay about Hamlet and the digital age by Wen Stephenson on the Atlantic web site. I haven't seen the new film of Hamlet nor have I read the book by Frank Kermode which Wen reviews but the ideas were interesting.

I was particularly struck by the way in which we move away from the verbal to the digital. This may be an inevitable part of the brave new world we are creating but we need to be reminded that we don't lose the parts of the past which we value.

Finally here is a quote from Kermode's book which deserves to be pondered.

Hamlet is literature's greatest bazaar: everything available, all warranted and trademarked. The sense that it constitutes a quantum leap in the development of English poetry and drama is widely shared. Some will say that greater achievements lay ahead, but in that case Hamlet was an essential preparation for them. Whatever a critic's approach, this will remain true; for example, the whole idea of dramatic character is changed for ever by this play.... we may think we know the type or put together from experience a good idea of it, but no one much like Hamlet ever existed before. That is why images of Hamlet usually reflect what came after, not before him. To take him as the herald of a new age is neither idolatrous nor hyperbolical. In this new age we need not expect matters to be made easy for us. The new mastery is a mastery of the ambiguous, the unexpected, of conflicting evidence and semantic audacity. We are challenged to make sense, even mocked if we fail.

I'm blogging. "I just saw the strangest thing.." and I'm going to post them here.