"It's not really fair to say, 'Look at this guy who died 400 years before I was born. He certainly had different opinions than me about the value of women.'" North says. "There's stuff that doesn't age as well, and what you do is you either adapt it so it works better now, or you ignore it."
For the purists, the original storyline remains in To Be Or Not To Be. A Yorick skull, one of the most iconic elements of the play, appears next to each choice that takes the reader through the original plot — the choices that Shakespeare made (as North jokes, "when he plagiarized my book").
"I honestly thought there'd be people saying, 'Oh my God, who are you to rewrite Shakespeare?' and that hasn't really happened." North explains. "I think people realize that the original story is still there."
The best-known monologues appear in Shakespeare's original language too — if you so choose. You can instead have characters rap their famous speeches. "I surprised myself with some raps that I wrote." North says.
Of course, seeing the characters make different choices is all part of the fun, and also makes for a unique new way to understand Hamlet.
"If Ryan's version gets us to ask why the characters in Hamlet make certain choices — and maybe don't even see that they are making choices, but think that they have no choice — that can help us rethink things that Hamlet (the play) takes for granted." William N. West, Northwestern University Professor of English, Classics, and Comparative Literary Studies, wrote to us. "It might also help us see what we take for granted."
And what better way to study these choices in one of the most studied stories written in the English language than with a Choose Your Own Adventure book?
"The story, I think, is timeless in that not many of us are plotting to kill our stepdad, but a lot of us face choices we don't really want to have to deal with," North says. "The idea of taking command of your life and doing something that you're not sure if you can do and you're not really sure if you should do it, I think is pretty timeless. We all face those doubts often, if not constantly."
Ryan North's To Be Or Not To Be is available from the publisher's website, where some of the proceeds will go towards the Canadian Cancer Society.