The upcoming book To Be or Not to Be is an illustrated “chooseable-path adventure” version of Hamlet. Cartoonist Ryan North explains his inspiration:
“It occurred to me that [Hamlet’s] favorite speech, ‘To Be Or Not To Be’, is structured like a choice, almost like those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to write this.'” North says. So he wrote his version of Hamlet in the style of the classic children’s book series, in which the reader would be prompted to make the main character’s decisions — turn to page 3 for this, turn to page 5 for that — and take the story in many different directions.
Alison Hallett credits the Kickstarter project’s record-breaking $580,905 to North’s business savvy:
[T]hanks to North’s voluble backer updates and creative reward tiers, being a part of his campaign didn’t feel like simply preordering something, as Kickstarter so often does these days; nor did it have the faint whiff of desperation that often comes with artists asking their friends and family for money. This felt like being a part of the creative process, and having a front-row seat to an artist giddily realizing that his biggest dreams are now possible.
And she deems the result is a success:
In Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark has one of the most famous existential crises in literary history, as he ponders aloud whether suicide is worth the risk that whatever happens after death might be even worse than life itself. North’s version puts the being vs. not-being decision square in the reader’s hands, though it turns out choosing “Not to Be: turn to page 17” isn’t much of an adventure at all: It leads to artist Mike Holmes’ illustration of Hamlet chugging from a vial of poison, one pinky lifted genteelly, while Ophelia peeks from behind a curtain. There’s no sign of the terrifying death-nightmares Hamlet’s so worried about; just the words “The End.” But even asking the reader to make the decision highlights how much of the original play—and how much of life itself—revolves around possibly crazy people bumbling through situations they barely understand, possessing a fraction of the information they need to get from one scene to the next.
The Dish 