You can’t read Hamlet. Try taking it out of your bag in a doctor’s waiting room or sitting on a train. There is no edition out there that can ambiguate that heavy-weight six-letter title or ameliorate the feeling you are somehow being silly and somehow up to something, the ultimate milquetoast pretending to read. I don’t think you could even take it out near the office of your favourite English professor without sensing you’ve committed a grave social error. Hamlet is the kind of thing only Hamlet would read (surely someone has said this before). Perhaps Hamlet would read Hamlet while waiting to renew his mental health care plan; I can imagine Polonius-the-GP’s motivational poster printed avec serif, ‘TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE’, on the background of a stock image sunset. I reckon Polonius would make a great GP. I hope the mental health care plan will help.

You can’t buy Hamlet either. Well, you can, but it won’t feel right. It won’t feel like you’re buying what would be considered a normal book. I bought a copy last year somewhere in the middle of Melbourne’s hard lockdown; I had struggled to find the copy I thought I already owned at home (shouldn’t everyone own Hamlet?), fucked around with the bizarre open-access editions you can find online, considered texting friends to source a borrowed copy, and finally settled on a plan to buy a new bloody copy that day. Because getting to the library was out of the question or at least beyond comprehension at the time, I bought a lot of books this way, following just this sort of process. But no other time felt as forcefully awkward as buying Hamlet. Readings’ click-and-collect function was either not working that day or I was impatient, because I remember how I got them on the blower. ‘Hello, Readings’, said the young man who took my call. ‘Hi. I’d like to pick up a copy of Hamlet.’ This already seemed wrong. My partner sniggered at me on the couch. ‘What was that?’ ‘Oh. HAM-let’, I said emphasising the trochee. ‘Sorry?’ I tried it as spondee: ‘HAM-LET’. I paused. ‘You know. The, um, play.’ Finally understood yet vaguely defeated, I agreed to pick up my copy later that afternoon. The man who served me took the liberty of selecting the Popular Penguins edition, quite a bold choice if you ask me. I’ve never seen a Shakespearean edition without a lengthy introduction, without annotations. I kind of like it. Quite provocatively, this edition doesn’t even retain consistent lineation. For instance, for no discernible reason, that great gloomy passage in II.4 looks like this: