In which John Green teaches you about Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s longest and most-performed play.
People love Hamlet. The play that is, not necessarily the character.
Hamlet is a Tragedy with a capital T (I guess I don’t have to point that out, since you can see clearly in the text that the T was capitalized).
By Tragedy, I mean virtually everyone dies at the end. John will talk a little bit about the history of the play and the different versions of it that have appeared in the centuries since it was written.
You’ll also learn about some of the big themes in the play, get a brief plot overview, and the all important connections between Prince Hamlet and Simba, the Lion King.
Seriously though, The Lion King is totally just a Hamlet musical with animals instead of people.
Note from Among the Fray: We will continue watching Crash Course’s Black American History series as episodes are released on a weekly basis.
An episode of Crash Course’s series on Literature – in chronological order of course – will be posted with the morning news while we wait for a new Black American History video.
Among the Fray 