Why It's Different When Prisoners Perform Hamlet

For three years in college, I volunteered at a Maximum Security Prison just outside Nashville. I spent most of my visits with a man named Gary Pickle (now deceased) and we talked about everything. He told me all about what he had done to wind up there, things he had never been caught for, and what he hoped and regretted. We also talked a lot about books, reading, among other things, all of F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories together. His take on them always astounded me -- they differed mightily from my own, sometimes in a much more impatient and aggressive way.

Like this podcast. Over the course of a few months some years back, the reporter followed a larger number of high-security inmates as they were casted in and prepared for a performance of Hamlet, Act V. Many of them had been arrested for violent crimes, which makes their take on this play -- one about murder and suicide -- staggering.

My personal favorite character was Big Hutch, whose crime we don't know. He played Horatio, Hamlet's closest friend. His thoughts about him?

I think he's a chump. For real.

And when pressed on that:

Yeah, I think he a chump. I mean, he supposed to be cool with Hamlet. And they're best friends. But I think Horatio is just somebody -- a sounding board for Hamlet. I mean, the majority of his lines is, eh, my lord, yes, my lord. I mean, if we're friends, we're going to communicate better than that. I mean, you're going to tell me your deepest secrets. So I want to know what you and Ophelia did last night.

A fantastic take on Shakespeare from the minds of people who know what it's like to genuinely ponder -- and act upon -- ideas of revenge.