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Last week we began our study of William Shakespeare so I broke out my trusty Lambs Book of Shakespeare Stories to read the tale of Hamlet to my students. As I was reading, my students periodically interjected with some bit of detail regarding the play. One student said, “Everyone is going to die.” Another followed up with, “That’s because this is a tragedy.” Little comments like these continued throughout the reading, but what was most encouraging to me was when the Lambs (authors of this abridged story) told of Hamlet’s struggle with existence and quoted, “To be or not to be,” I heard my students mumbling, “that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?…” You get the picture. The students who had been at SLO Classical Academy the previous year had memorized a long portion of Hamlet’s speech—much longer than the short phrase we all know.
