This book reads like a cross between a literary detective novel and a personal conversation with a passionate Shakespeare scholar, unpacking the play that Roth calls "the seminal text of the humanist religion." It unveils new realities about the play, explores troves of long-buried Hamlet lore, untangles centuries of commentary and criticism, and delivers the punch lines for a whole raft of Shakespeare's remarkably involved in-jokes. Roth tackles old arguments like Hamlet's age (he's sixteen), lays out the intricate time structure that's embedded in the play, and unravels several of the...