Sweet Prince: The Passion of Hamlet

by Douglas Brode

Book by Brode, Douglas

300 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Short Review: UGH
Long Review: UGH...and then some.
I picked this book up at a local Ren Fest, drawn in by the question posed on the back cover: “Was Hamlet gay?” I love queer retellings of popular stories, so this seemed right up my alley.
Except it wasn’t anywhere near my alley. It was on the other bleedin’ side of town, maybe another state entirely.
First, the writing: Apparently Douglas Brode is most successful as an essayist, and I think his skills in essay-writing actually hindered his abilities as a novelist. With an essay you want to include as much data as possible, and connect everything you say to your thesis. Brode crammed every bit of info he could into each sentence, utilizing as many commas and parentheses as he could, and felt the need to reiterate a lot of details overandoverandover again. Hamlet was 21 years old, Ophelia was beautiful, Denmark was not as deeply involved in the European Renaissance as neighboring countries. That grated on me.
Another thing that irked me was that, despite being presented as a comment on sexuality and gender, the story was focused almost entirely on cishet relationships, primarily that of Gertrude and Claudius. I don’t care about the sex lives of two middle-aged cishet folks. That’s not why I picked up this book.
But then, there was the plot twist.
Good Lord. The plot twist.

Hamlet is revealed to be a cisgendered girl who was forced to present as male for the benefit of Denmark continuing as a monarchy. Once her true identity is revealed, she rips off her fake moustache and the narrator immediately changes all of Hamlet’s pronouns to ‘she/her’. Also, Hamlet just kind of easily strips off their binding and is revealed to have ample bosoms, and anyone who has actually bound their breasts for a long period of time will tell you that is not at all how it works. Anyway, Hamlet kills this person and that person, evades death, has pages and pages of cishet sex with Horatio and everyone lives happily ever cishet after.
I just feel disappointed and led on. Pages and pages (even the back cover) insinuate that Hamlet was having an identity crisis due to their feelings for Horatio and lack of feelings for Ophelia, when it turns out Hamlet is just tired of wearing pants and a fake moustache. It’s almost insulting in a sense.
There are tons of queer interpretations and analyses of Shakespeare’s work, why couldn’t that be applied here? Why did it have to end with PSYCHE THERE’S NO QUEERNESS HERE HAHA.

Long story short: I’m really disappointed, because I was led to believe this story was going to be something it wasn’t.