arrantknave

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[arrantknave]

first youtube analysis i've wanted to watch voluntarily

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The body of a post is where Hamlet talks to Claudius. The tags is where Hamlet talks to the audience

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the grief of growing

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this is so cool and also rosencrantz and guildenstern's sign names are killing me lol

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touching grass isn't enough we should be staging small community productions of shakespeare

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horatio’s epilogue

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You've killed me. You have stabbed me through the tapestry of the world wide web and I now am dead.

I like to think that Hamlet, in his madness, has the energy of an unruly pet bird.

[arrantknave]

hmm maybe it’s the lady macbeth in me but I feel like one thing Hamlet adaptations are missing out on is the chance to make Hamlet blood-covered as a result of Polonius’ murder. And I get that the actual act of the murder itself is generally a pretty clean cut but like. for a rash and bloody deed it could be bloodier.

like why not have Polonius’ blood pool on the floor as the scene progresses? and then as the ghost appears, and Hamlet falls to his knees, trembling, he sinks right into the mess, completely unaware. He bows and presses his palms to the floor, and doesn’t even seem to notice when he rises again that his hands are dripping wet. Gertrude jerks away from his attempts to touch her face or hands when he tries to reassure her, but she can’t fully escape the stains in her clothing, in her carpet as well. Hamlet runs a hand through his hair, to brush it out of his eyes, and again gives no reaction when it drips slowly down his face.

imagine the shock of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern finding their friend like this. Of Claudius, having committed a crime with no trace, no witnesses, and no ties to him, coming face-to-face with Hamlet, his crime visibly splattered across his skin and clothing, witnessed and inescapable, both aware of the other’s sin and both suddenly knowing the other will kill them for it. Claudius who wants to feel guilt but can’t quite manage, Hamlet who doesn’t want to feel anything of the sort and can’t quite manage that either.

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mmm.

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icon update

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"If the name Hamlet comes from the play's sources, one thing that is distinctive about Shakespeare's naming in the play is the doubling of the name Hamlet for both the dead father and the living son. In none of the sources is the burden of the past, the psychic overlap between the two generations, so stressed as in the play. [...] Old King Hamlet symbolizes the past: familial, political, cultural and temporal. And his appearance pulls Hamlet away from the future and into the past. In the play's second scene we see two young men setting off on different courses. Laertes, son of Polonius, requests permission to go to France and is granted it [...]; Hamlet, by contrast, allows himself to be persuaded to stay at home rather than return to university, and in that decision he fixes himself for ever as a child."

—Dr. Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare (emphasis mine)

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[arrantknave]

this is the opposite of a new observation but hamlet's uncle really is such a bitch. if i were grieving someone i had complex and intense feelings about and someone told me, IN PUBLIC IN AN ASSEMBLY OF MY FAMILY AND THE GOVERNMENT AND ALSO IN FRONT OF MY MOM, WHO THEN JOINS IN, to get over it already because uwu well everybody dies </3 i would have started throwing hands in the throne room. claudius didn't even like take him aside. he gave this lecture in front of god and everyone. we undersell hamlet's self-control

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hey.

[image description: two sections of text from shakespeare's Hamlet. the first reads:

BARNARDO  How now, Horatio, you tremble and look pale. Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on ’t?

"you tremble and look pale" is underlined in blue. the second reads:

HAMLET  Heaven make thee free of it. I follow thee.— I am dead, Horatio.—Wretched queen, adieu.— You that look pale and tremble at this chance, That are but mutes or audience to this act, Had I but time (as this fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest), O, I could tell you— But let it be.—Horatio, I am dead. Thou livest; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.

"you that look pale and tremble at this chance" is underlined in blue. end description]

[arrantknave]

Jamie Parker's take comes pretty close to this!

I could never forget how broken up he sounds near the end.

see there's one specific reading of hamlet that I need and adore, and am always looking for in any production

when hamlet's calling the ghost. by the line "I'll call thee Hamlet, King, father, royal Dane" (usually the "royal dane" part is cut from productions)-- I need each title to be said with increasing uncertainty and desparation

"I'll call thee Hamlet!"

"King!"

"...father?"

and when 'father' is said with infinite softness.

and 'father' is said with yearning and longing and grieving.

and hamlet is reaching out to his father, who is standing right in front of him and won't respond.