Rent Gertrude and Claudius

Synopsis

John Updike takes the Hamlet story as the basis for this absorbing novel about power and lust in 12th-century Denmark. Using both Shakespeare's play and original historical sources, Updike concentrates his narrative on Danish history, and on the queen and her illicit passion for her husband's brother, rather than on the disaffected young university student, Prince Hamlet; in fact, the novel ends just as Shakespeare's play is beginning. A New York Times

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