Hamlet for Dummies

My wife and I took our daughter to Hamlet a while ago because we know how much teenagers love long Shakespearean plays. Actually, that’s not true. We took her to see Hamlet for the same reason I had to see Hamlet more than thirty years ago — because my mother told me that I had to see Hamlet.

Just past the first Act, when Hamlet’s father’s ghost pops up and orders Hamlet to kill his uncle, Claudius, I looked over at my daughter. She was clearly losing interest. Thinking quickly, I remembered that the two of us had recently watched The Simpsons when the show covered Hamlet in one of their Treehouse of Horrors.

For the next few minutes, I quietly went down the list of characters on the stage and matched them up with their Simpsons counterparts. The plot in The Simpsons’ Hamlet wasn’t exactly canonical, but it was close enough, and my hope was that it’d give my daughter enough of a framework to be able to follow along with the play.

And it worked. Kind of.

My daughter stayed off her phone for the rest of the performance. It could have been because I threatened to take it away, but I’d rather not dwell on that small detail. She also managed to stay awake during the entire play, which was just as impressive. I won’t say that she enjoyed the performance, but I can say that she generally understood what was going on, which I’ll take as a win. As a parent there aren’t many and I’ll take what I can get.

About the Author

derekbremer Prior to his life as a stay at home father Derek spent more than a decade performing public relations and marketing functions for financial consulting firms and found the job to be precisely as exciting as it sounds. When not tending to his wife or daughter Derek enjoys subjecting the public to his unique take on fatherhood, travel and animal husbandry. He has been published in Scary Mommy, Sammiches and Psych Meds, The Good Men Project, HowToBeADad, Red Tricycle, RAZED, HPP and the Anthology "It's Really Ten Months Special Delivery: A Collection of Stories from Girth to Birth.