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Books

Will I Know Me In Heaven?

Les Reid reviews Immortality, an anthology edited and introduced by Paul Edwards.

One of Shakespeare’s lapses of concentration occurs when he has Hamlet in the course of his “To be or not to be” soliloquy describe the afterlife as “…the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns.” This is odd because two scenes earlier Hamlet had had a lengthy chat with the ghost of his dead dad who had apparently just returned from that undiscovered country. Equally odd is the news that the ghost wore a suit of armour for the journey. Was he worried that someone might try to kill him? Where did he get the armour from? Is it the ghost of a suit that he wore in life, or is it one that he picked up somewhere in the after-life? Hamlet only tells us that there are more things in heaven than we thought. Yes, we want to reply, and some of them do not make sense.

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