Prattle on Hamlet, the Universe and Everything

This is an excerpt from an example problem in a Contracts book describing Hamlet:

“He read the script, which was written in strange, complicated, old-fasioned language. From what he understood of it, it also seemed very sleazy and definitely ‘R’ rated. It was about this dysfunctional Danish family who are heavily into sex and violence. The [main character] talks too much, never has any fun....”

Brian A. Blum, Contracts: Examples and Explanations, 653 (2004). It’s amazing how much Shakespeare’s plays resemble a cross between Jerry Springer and the OC. There’s the one with the twentysomething falling in love with a fourteen year old followed by a double suicide, the wife who coerced her husband into killing the king, the ungrateful daughters who had their father thrown out in the cold, the guy who was upset about not getting picked first in kickball who caused the captain to murder his own wife, and all of the zany antics in the episode about the people falling in love in the woods. Throw in the fact that every play had men dressed as women and you would think old Bill wrote his plays with the late 1990s in mind.