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{Words by Anaïs Nin, from The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4 (1944-1947) / Cynthia Cruz }

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a one act play, o.e.l

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— Bob Dylan from When the Deal Goes Down on Modern Times (2006)

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the best improvement i’ve made is imagining all of getrude’s lines from hamlet being spoken by moira from schitt’s creek

it really adds to the ambiance

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getrude’s behavior throughout hamlet is pretty ambiguous and I think you could reasonably say she’s hiding some morally questionably choices but,, man. her last words. when she’s trying to tell hamlet about the drink. when she’s trying to choke out a warning as the poison constricts her throat. it’s so important she tells everyone what happened, she knows this, she knows she has seconds. but even though she has to get this information across in the last few seconds she is alive, even though this is the most important information she could ever communicate, even though time is running out, she makes sure her son hears her call him “my dear Hamlet” one last time and. man. that just. ,,

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i like to believe that ophelia’s madness gave her a kind of meta knowledge of the plot— that she saw the tragic ending coming, knew that hamlet’s indecision would be his hamartia, that she realised gertrude and claudius were both poisoned with corruption from the beginning and instead of the customary funeral goers laying flowers at a grave, it was Ophelia— mad, at death’s door, about to die in less than 2 scenes— who handed flowers to the king, queen and protagonist as if the dead girl was mourning the living

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thinking about how ophelia’s line "like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh” is ten syllables long, which sets it up to be perfect iambic pentameter (five pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables, i.e. "like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh"), but instead the scansion works out to "like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh," breaking the pentameter and making the line itself a sweet bell jangled out of tune

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I was thinking about Hamlet, as I do, and it occurred to me that when King Hamlet died, Claudius must have been unmarried, and almost certainly childless. So he must have either been widowed or been very young and not yet married. I have always pictured Claudius in his fifties, but given that he was childless and that he wasn't the king, making him King Hamlet's younger brother, it seems likely that he could have been on the younger side. I would love to see a production of Hamlet where Claudius is only ten or so years older than Hamlet (Let’s say Gertrude is in her 50s, Claudius his 30s, and Hamlet his 20s), and more like a cousin or an older brother to him than an uncle, and certainly not a father. It would add to his revulsion at Gertrude’s marriage to Claudius and deepen the sense of betrayal by someone who should understand. I feel like it could be supported by the text and support the subtext in turn.

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just want to call out the perfect shitty-stepdad psychology of the way Claudius calls Hamlet “our son” until he becomes a problem … at which point he’s “YOUR son” 

Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son.

He hath found / The head and source of all your son’s distemper.

There’s matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: / You must translate: ‘tis fit we understand them. / Where is your son?

 First, her father slain: / Next, your son gone

Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son.

And I swear, I SWEAR he tips his hand during the swordfight when he turns to Gertrude and says, “Our son shall win.” Because Gertrude knows that’s not how Claudius thinks of Hamlet. So she starts thinking - that means he must be playing a part, manipulating her, something’s going on, something’s fishy. And immediately after… she drinks the poisoned wine. 

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the problem with hamlet is he’s always played by a 35 year old dude and im like. in the first place why are you not already the king, get it together. and when a 35 year old makes fun of people he’s just a dick. he’s not funny he’s just annoying. like shut the fuck up and just kill your uncle like a goddamn grown up.

but 15 year old hamlet? when a 15 year old is being snarky and annoying? thats just how teenagers are. a 15 year old panicking about commiting actual murder? okay, yeah, you’re allowed to panic about this for a while. fair enough. 15 year old hamlet is actually a tragedy rather than the saga of a mid-life crisis.

nobody under thirty has played hamlet in a major film adaptation according to wikipedia and its a goddamn travesty.

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Hamlet. Faustus. Frankenstein. Raskolnikov. Love how the "university turns people into depressed, feral, ahead of their times overthinkers"-thing is perpetual. College just does that to you. For centuries now.

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john darnielle / black sails viii / pathologic 2: the marble nest / ghost quartet, dave malloy / black sails xvii / the ostereia / black sails xxxiv / the illiad, homer / no second troy, william butler yeats / black sails xxxviii / planet of love, richard siken / catherine deneuve discussing belle du jour / hannah kent, from ‘burial rites’ / the worm king’s lullaby, richard siken / true detective 01x08 / rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead, tom stoppard / pathologic / dark (2017-2020) / julius caesar, shakespeare / twin peaks 07x07 / heroes: mortals and monsters, quests and adventures by stephen fry / sherlock 04x01 / the city, c.t. cavafy (trans. edmund keeley) / la clairvoyance, rené magritte (1936) / sir gawain and the green knight (trans. james j. wilhelm) / arrival (2016) / the castle, franz kafka / dark (2017-202) / hamlet, shakespeare / the green knight (2021) / the silmarillion, j.r.r. tolkien / hadestown, anaïs mitchell

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An old piece from back in school

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literally i just can’t comprehend any interpretation of hamlet that doesn’t put grief at the center like. hamlet’s father died and he is actively grieving throughout the play that is the driver of all of his behavior. “is hamlet actually crazy or is he putting on a performance” is a boring question to me because grief is a type of insanity. grief makes you feel like you are performing even when you are all alone. it makes you feel like you’re seeing things it makes you feel completely alone it makes you cling to the people around you it makes you push them away it makes you angry and sad and hamlet wants to kill claudius for replacing his father and taking his mother from him as much as he wants to kill him for revenge.

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lady macbeth (2016, dir. william oldroyd)

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Lord Byron — To the Countess of Blessington