Hamlet in Purgatory Book

Picture yourself consigned to Purgatory - apparently, somewhere beneath Ireland - for some indefinite term of spiritual cleansing. You stand, perhaps, isolated on a vast desert, swept by hot winds, beneath a demonic sun. Around you, in a perfect circle, burns a ring of flames, which while never quite touching your body still serve to bake out of it the last vestiges of water. Imagine yourself here, dessicating, for a period of some hundred years, and perhaps you'll get something of a feel of the dryness of Greenblatt's work. The author - so phenomenally successful elsewhere - falls flat here, spending far too long in recounting repetitive details about the history of the concept of Purgatory before even beginning to approach the Shakespearean connection the title promises. (And when he does, it's Lear and Macbeth far more than Hamlet.) A handful of interesting bits are scattered throughout the text, but frankly he did the topic better service in the few pages he spent dealing with it in Will in the World. Reads like a stint as Tantalus, so I'd sate your interests elsewhere.