{"id":6523,"date":"2025-02-04T08:22:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-04T14:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=6523"},"modified":"2025-02-04T08:24:05","modified_gmt":"2025-02-04T14:24:05","slug":"updike-makes-another-best-of-reimagined-shakespeare-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/02\/04\/updike-makes-another-best-of-reimagined-shakespeare-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Updike makes another Best of Reimagined Shakespeare list"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Gertrude and Claudius, <\/em>John Updike&#8217;s &#8220;prequel&#8221; to Shakespeare&#8217;s <em>Hamlet, <\/em>has sparked interest ever since it was published in 2000\u2014which means it&#8217;s celebrating a silver anniversary this year . . . and still golden.<\/p>\n<p>Grace Tiffany named it &#8220;Best Fictional Adaptation of\u00a0<em>Hamlet\u00a0<\/em>Which Excludes Hamlet&#8221; in her\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-best-of-the-bard-nine-literary-works-that-radically-reimagine-shakespeare\/\"><em>Literary Hub\u00a0<\/em>article<\/a> &#8220;The Best of the Bard: Nine Literary Works That Radically Reimagine Shakespeare.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4832\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-300x226.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-300x226.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-1536x1157.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-398x300.jpg 398w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-768x579.jpg 768w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude-1024x771.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2019\/07\/prod_1558367587569_gertrude.jpg 1593w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>Of Updike&#8217;s novel she writes, &#8220;Mining, as did [Dorothy] Dunnett, some of Shakespeare&#8217;s own sources, Updike relied partly on Saxo Grammaticus&#8217; twelth-century saga of Amlothi for details about the characters on which his Danish king and queen are based.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We meet Hamlet Senior in the flesh (rather than as a ghost), and get to know some secrets that the play keeps hidden: like, exactly how long has Gertrude been fooling around with her late husband\u2019s brother? Updike\u2019s eloquence is consistent, and it\u2019s fascinating to assess the character of Hamlet\u2014who, when on stage, won\u2019t stop talking to us\u2014from the kind of partial, side view first presented (more comically than here) by Tom Stoppard\u2019s play\u00a0<a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/bookshop.org\/a\/132\/9780802126214\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In Updike\u2019s work as in Stoppard\u2019s, Hamlet is mostly absent, a mournful and silent young man when he finally appears. The focus is on Claudius and Gertrude, and their mutual obsession. An unforgettable scene is one in which Claudius crawls through mud and worse into a barricaded garden, to perform the murderous deed to which <em>Hamlet\u00a0<\/em>is aftermath. We already know what\u2019s going to happen, but Updike\u2019s writing compels us to turn the page.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/lithub.com\/the-best-of-the-bard-nine-literary-works-that-radically-reimagine-shakespeare\/\">Read what Tiffany has to say<\/a> about the other eight recommended literary turns on Shakespeare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Gertrude and Claudius, John Updike&#8217;s &#8220;prequel&#8221; to Shakespeare&#8217;s Hamlet, has sparked interest ever since it was published in 2000\u2014which means it&#8217;s celebrating a silver anniversary this year . . . and still golden. Grace Tiffany named it &#8220;Best Fictional Adaptation &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2025\/02\/04\/updike-makes-another-best-of-reimagined-shakespeare-list\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":818,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/818"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6523"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6526,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6523\/revisions\/6526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}