To Be or Not to Be (book)

Last updated
To Be or Not To Be
To Be or Not to Be (book).jpg
Author Ryan North
Illustratorvarious
Cover artistRay Fawkes, ND Stevenson
LanguageEnglish
Subject
Characters
Hamlet, Ophelia, King Hamlet, Claudius, Gertrude, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Polonius, Laertes, Horatio
Genre Comedy
Publisher Breadpig
Publication date
2013
Pages740
ISBN 978-0-9828537-4-0
Followed byRomeo and/or Juliet [1]  

To Be or Not to Be: A Chooseable-Path Adventure, also referred to as To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure, is a 2013 novel by Ryan North, retelling the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet in a choose your own adventure format and mostly contemporary language. The initial run of the book was crowd funded through Kickstarter and published by charitable "uncorporation" Breadpig. It was eventually followed by two sequels, also by North, Romeo and/or Juliet and William Shakespeare Punches a Friggin' Shark and/or Other Stories.

Contents

Development

North posted To Be or Not to Be: That Is the Adventure to Kickstarter on November 21, 2012, with a fundraising goal of $20,000, which was reached in three and a half hours. [2] North promised stretch rewards for higher fundraising amounts reached, including improving the book to be created and further prizes for backers. One promise originally made in jest was at the $500,000 level: "I will literally explode (literally)". Although made in jest, this promise was fulfilled with the assistance of Site 3 coLaboratory, where a 3D scan was taken of North's head, a replica 3D-printed out of blue plastic, and that replica exploded using a dry ice pellet in a plastic bottle. [3] North said that calling the response "'amazing and incredible' would almost be underselling it." [4] By the close of the 30-day fundraising period, the project had raised $580,905, making it the most funded Kickstarter publishing project (second-most as of May 2013). [5] The book was mailed to backers in August 2013, three months after the original proposed date. A prequel story titled Poor Yorick, illustrated by Tyson Hesse, was made available to backers. [5] [6]

Wired referred to the book's successful Kickstarter campaign as "a demonstration of the power of new media", considering it the type of project that could not have succeeded under a more traditional publishing model. [7]

Structure

To Be or Not to Be offers the reader the option to play as one of three characters: Hamlet, Ophelia, or Hamlet Sr., King of Denmark. From there the story branches frequently, with some options following the course of the original play and others providing the choice to give up on the quest to kill King Claudius, or to follow other pursuits (Ophelia, for example, is a keen scientist who can invent indoor heating, and King Hamlet, as a ghost, can choose to explore the ocean floor or tame the ghosts of dinosaurs). The choices that follow Shakespeare's play are marked with little "Yorick skulls". The story can reach any of 110 endings, each illustrated in colour by one of a wide variety of artists, including fellow webcomic artists Kate Beaton, Christopher Hastings, Jeph Jacques and Randall Munroe, among many others. [8]

The book features references to other works, including other plays of Shakespeare's (in one ending, Hamlet returns to the University of Wittenberg, befriends classmate T. J. Macbeth who nicknames Hamlet "Banquo", and returns with him to Scotland) and more recent pop culture. Occasionally the player can switch control between characters, such as taking over as Hamlet after his father has succeeded in convincing him to kill Claudius, playing as Claudius while reading a "The Adventure is Chosen by You" book-within-a-book based on play-within-a-play The Murder of Gongazo, or having a brief adventure as Horatio.

Reviewers noted that the choose your own adventure format of the book proved to be a good fit for the themes of the original Shakespeare play. Lev Grossman of Time stated that "Hamlet is all about the difficulty of choosing your own adventure: it's a story about a man caught between the urgent necessity of action and the existential impossibility of making decisions". [9] Slate's Alison Hallett referred to the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy of the original, noting that the book "puts the being vs. not-being decision square in the reader's hands". [5]

Adaptation

An interactive fiction video game adaptation of the book, published by Tin Man Games, was released in 2015 for PC [10] and iOS. [11] The iOS version received a Metacritic score of 93, indicating "universal acclaim". [12]

Related Research Articles

<i>Hamlet</i> Tragedy by William Shakespeare

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, often shortened to Hamlet, is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother.

<i>Hamlet</i> (1996 film) 1996 film directed by Kenneth Branagh

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Gertrude (<i>Hamlet</i>) Character in Hamlet

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<i>Gertrude and Claudius</i> 2000 novel by John Updike

Gertrude and Claudius is a novel by John Updike. It uses the known sources of William Shakespeare's Hamlet to tell a story that draws on a rather straightforward revenge tale in medieval Denmark, as depicted by Saxo Grammaticus in his twelfth-century Historiae Danicae. It also incorporates extra plot elements added by François de Belleforest in his Histoires tragiques, published in 1576, and furthermore brings in various elements from Shakespeare's play itself, including the name "Corambis" for Polonius from the "bad quarto" of 1603. This story, in its three forms, is primarily concerned with Hamlet avenging his father's murder, but the story starts earlier. The novel is concerned with that earlier life of Gertrude, Claudius, and old Hamlet, and it ends at the close of Act I, scene ii of Hamlet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prince Hamlet</span> Character in Hamlet

Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet (1599–1601). He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius, and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. At the beginning of the play, he is conflicted whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes, Claudius, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two acquaintances of his from childhood. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude.

Cultural references to <i>Hamlet</i> Review of the topic

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yorick</span> Character in Hamlet

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Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

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Critical approaches to <i>Hamlet</i> Critical approaches to Hamlet

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The Gravediggers are examples of Shakespearean fools, a recurring type of character in Shakespeare's plays. Like most Shakespearean fools, the Gravediggers are peasants or commoners that use their great wit and intellect to get the better of their superiors, other people of higher social status, and each other.

<i>Rosencrantz and Guildenstern</i> (play) Play by W. S. Gilbert

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, A Tragic Episode, in Three Tabloids is a short parody play by W. S. Gilbert of Hamlet by William Shakespeare. The main characters in Gilbert's play are King Claudius and Queen Gertrude of Denmark, their son Prince Hamlet, the courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and Ophelia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ophelia</span> Character in Shakespeares drama Hamlet

Ophelia is a character in William Shakespeare's drama Hamlet (1599–1601). She is a young noblewoman of Denmark, the daughter of Polonius, sister of Laertes and potential wife of Prince Hamlet, who, due to Hamlet's actions, ends up in a state of madness that ultimately leads to her drowning.

<i>Hamlet</i> (video game) 2010 video game

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<i>Hamlets Father</i> 2008 novella by Orson Scott Card

Hamlet's Father is a 2008 novella by Orson Scott Card, which retells William Shakespeare's Hamlet in modernist prose, and which makes several changes to the characters' motivations and backstory. It has drawn substantial criticism for its portrayal of King Hamlet as a pedophile who molested Laertes, Horatio, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the implication that this in turn made them homosexuals.

<i>Ophelia</i> (2018 film) 2018 film by Claire McCarthy

Ophelia is a 2018 historical romantic drama film directed by Claire McCarthy and written by Semi Chellas about the character of the same name from William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. Based on the novel by Lisa Klein, the film follows the story of Hamlet from Ophelia's perspective. It stars Daisy Ridley in the title role, alongside Naomi Watts, Clive Owen, George MacKay, Tom Felton and Devon Terrell. The dialogue is in modern English.

<i>Elsinore</i> (video game) 2019 adventure game

Elsinore is a 2019 point-and-click adventure game developed and published by Golden Glitch for Windows, Linux, and macOS. The game follows the character of Ophelia from William Shakespeare's Hamlet. In Elsinore, Ophelia has a vision of the deaths of everyone in Elsinore Castle and relives the same four days again and again as she works to prevent the tragedy that will fall over everyone.

References

  1. ↑ "I have started work on the sequel!"
  2. ↑ Flood, Alison. "Hamlet rewritten as choose-your-own-adventure game book." The Guardian . 27 November 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  3. ↑ Maly, Tim. "Video Exclusive: Makers Help Cartoonist Keep His Kickstarter Promise to Literally Explode" Wired . 11 February 2013.
  4. ↑ Colter, Aaron. "Crowd Funding Watch: Ryan North Remixes A Shakespeare Classic With ‘To Be Or Not To Be’ [Interview]." Archived 8 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine ComicsAlliance.com. 27 November 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  5. 1 2 3 Hallett, Alison. "Outrageous Fortune." The Slate Book Review. 9 August 2013. Retrieved 28 September 2013.
  6. ↑ "Update #58: Poor Yorick and Rad Audiobook!". Kickstarter. 8 August 2013.
  7. ↑ Hudson, Laura (20 December 2012). "Record-Breaking Kickstarter Turns Hamlet Into a Choose-Your-Adventure Epic". Wired. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  8. ↑ To Be Or Not To Be: That Is The Adventure on Kickstarter
  9. ↑ Grossman, Lev (8 August 2013). "Hello, Sweet Prince". Time. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  10. ↑ O'Connor, Alice (5 February 2015). "Choose Hamlet's Own Adventure: To Be Or Not To Be". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  11. ↑ Squires, Jim (19 March 2015). "10 New iOS Games You Should Be Playing This Week". Gamezebo. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
  12. ↑ "Ryan North's To Be Or Not To Be". Metacritic. Retrieved 2 January 2019.
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