I've been somewhat remiss in blogging about our sacred duty( the Gita and Hamlet). But I think I shall now, if only to say that I now have found a way to finally read Hamlet in a truly satisfying context--understand me, I do not (like TS Eliot)deny its aesthetic stature; its just never been my favorite Shakespeare play--. With an eye to epiphanic insight, Hamlet becomes very enlightening, more so than it maybe was already.

Yes, Hamlet in Act 5 is changed. He has had an epiphany, having I would guess to do with the attack on the ship by pirates, but he won't say, and the play doesn't present it to us. And at the moment of his death, Hamlet acknowledges the insight he has gained: "You that look pale and tremble at this chance,/That are but mutes or audiences to this act,/Had I but time(as this fell sargeant Death/Is strict in his arrest)-O, I could tell you-/But let it be. Horatio, I am dead."(5.2-319-322) We the mutes and audiences are left, along with Horatio, to figure out what it was that Hamlet had come to know. What was it? The necessity of right action? The need for time and playing your part within the play that is life? I ask these things because I don't know for certain. But it is so. Quite possibly so.