To Be or Not To Be: North, Ryan: 8601405001795: Amazon.com: Books

I was taking a Shakespeare class in college, and I heard about this book on the Colbert Report, how it used to be on Kickstarter. And so I looked it up, because I love bringing in outside material to my classes, and this was perfect. I told my class about it, and when the book came I brought it to class 10 minutes early every day, and let people check it out, and everyone loved it.
I wrote about it in a post for the class, and that review is given below. I haven’t even really gotten to sit down with the book for more than 15 minutes at a time, but I think it is one of the coolest takes on Hamlet I have ever seen.

“To Be Or Not To Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure” is a choose your own adventure version of Hamlet, and it’s fantastic. I haven’t gotten to play with it much (so much school work), but what I have been able to go through is pretty darn funny. You can play as either Hamlet, Hamlet Sr, or Ophelia. I’ve mostly played through as Hamlet Sr, since he has the least to do in the play.

When you play as Hamlet Sr, you die instantly. Go figure. But then you get to choose whether or not to become a ghost. If you become a ghost, you then choose whether or not to search around and listen in to people to find your killer. You read some lady’s diary, then talk to her, and find out that your brother killed you. Then you walk across the bottom of the ocean to get to Denmark, and on the way you can decide to give up your quest for revenge to go hunting through shipwrecks and become a ghostly marine biologist. It’s tons of fun.

I accidentally went to the wrong page, and ended up playing through Ophelia once (I thought I was possessing her… turns out I just made a mistake). One of the paths you can go down with her (and of course, I have no idea how you get here…) you end up playing a trivia game against Fortinbras, and if you win you become the Queen of Denmark.

Now of course, these paths are all separate from the play, but still pretty fun. A quick jump into Hamlet’s game shows that it does follow the play (while it’s not explicitly stated, there are skulls next to the choices that seem to match with what happens in the play, so I think that’s how you follow the play). First you choose whether to ask to go back to school or not, and if you do – you follow the play (dad calls you out). If you don’t, he insults you, and leaves you in an empty room (in which you can make decisions that will get you back on track for the play). BUT! If you follow the play all the way through (start to ask Kingy if you can stay, but he calls you out first), you then can choose to “Insult him under your breath by saying you’re more than kin (ie You’re related more than once now as both father/son and uncle/nephew), but less than kind (ie this relationship you’re in is unnatural). In real life people think up zingers like this on the spot all the time, so this totally makes sense” (91). But then “He straight-up ignores your zinger” (317). Then he leaves you, and you end up in a room alone (just like before), and you can choose to kill yourself or not.
And it continues on.

This book is really cool, because it means a couple of awesome things about Shakespeare.
First, it shows that Shakespeare is an adaptable medium. It’s not just about reading simply the lines, watching the plays on stage, or watching movie adaptations, but there’s room to make it into a narrative. And not just any narrative, but possibly one of the coolest narratives ever – a choose your own adventure book, which gives you the chance to stay totally canon if you so choose.
Second, this book creates another avenue for new audiences. Like Bowlder’s “Family” editions, this medium can widen the audience. Not only has the play made fully immersive for readers, since they can literally do whatever they want (provided it’s given as a choice with a page number to turn to), but it also uses some key lines and even explains what they mean (I haven’t been able to find the “To Be or Not To Be” speech, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere).
And lastly, it’s a choose your own adventure book, which I just really think is awesome.

When I find things like this, I am just constantly amazed that Shakespeare has lasted this long. And that he has inspired so many people to write, act, and direct, and that they show that through their personal adaptations of his work.