#hamlet posting

[grey-tumbles-and-falls-down]

i feel like im slowly dying of heartbreak every time i read anything from the tragic danish boyfriends tag like, just put poison in my ear and fence me to death why dont you

[cheezewhis]

So I'm far from an expert on Shakespeare, but I do like me some Hamlet and as much as their are adaptations and productions that I enjoy which end the play on "The rest is silence" (for example the 1948 film is one of my favorite movies ever and it ends this way), I do maintain that choosing to end Hamlet that way is sort of antithetical to thr play and to a lot of Shakespeare tragedies.

Im saying "a lot" here and not "all" because again, I'm no expert, and I haven't read or seen every Shakespeare tragedy. However, the ones I do know about (and Hamlet in particular) seem to me to have a common undercurrent that essentially says "You can't fucking live like this anymore, it is not a sustainable society."

I heard on a podcast called Adapt or Perish where they explained the difference between a Shakespeare comedy and tragedy is (and I'm paraphrasing here) that at the end of a comedy, all goes back to normal, all that's right with the world is restored, and the only major change is that some people are married. But at the end of a tragedy, something about society has been fundamentally altered.

For me, ending Hamlet without Fortinbras taking over Denmark is like ending Romeo and Juliet without the Prince giving his "all are punished" speech. Why go through all of that for nothing? Why endure and portray all that tragedy caused by shortcomings of society if there's no lesson about changing society? Why spend so much time telling us things need to change, and then change nothing? I get that part of the tragedies is sometimes that the violence in them is pointless, however the plays themselves aren't ususally pointless. Personally, I just think the whole point of how things need to change is stronger if the change actually begins. Plus, with Hamlet specifically, Fortinbras taking over ups the tragedy because it signifies and end to Denmark and Hamlet's family line entirely. A total erasure of what we've been following until now.

Anyways, like I said, I'm no expert, and there are versions of Hamlet that I still love despite them cutting the ending short. However, I will always maintain that the play is not for nothing, and to end it without a word on who takes over Denmark treats the play as senseless and pointless.

[henry-or-something]

A haunting in Denmark

[ophelias-flower-bettie]

@hamlet-the-dane-official is suspiciously quiet

[starlitblueskies]

mfs be like "do you think they explored each other's bodies" and it's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

[amochi]

[could-they-be-a-pro-wrestler]

How successful would Prince Hamlet…

Would you like to submit a character? Click this link if you do!

[mervynbunter]

And then the players arrive. Hamlet becomes, suddenly, not a manic, half-mad depressive, but a startling aesthete, who can recite whole speeches and who shows quite clearly he has long preferred what Proust called “the golden gate of the imagination” to “the low and shameful gate of experience.” Indeed, he has shown us again and again in the earlier scenes how much he despises ordinary life at court. “It is a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.” We will not see another misanthrope of his like until Swift; nor, perhaps, will we see another aesthete of his intensity till Proust. He can see, in every sense, the skull beneath the skin.

The busyness of Hamlet

[yasliadamsantiago]

“This above all: to thine own self be true.” — William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3)

[princeofallbones]

Parallels in the original castings of Shakespeare plays

One interesting thing about Shakespeare is that, as we know, he often wrote characters with a specific actor in mind, that would go o to play them (for example Hamlet his good friend, Richard Burbage. I could write an entire essay on why he was such a perfect fit for the character) This often made for very interesting situational puns during the first run of Hamlet. There are two great examples to prove this.

During Act 3 Scene 2, right after his argument with Ophelia, Hamlet asks Polonius (played by John Heminges) if he acted before, to which he replies that he did, and he played Caesar in Julius Caesar, and was killed by Brutus. The prince remarks how it must've been a 'brutal' role to kill such a 'capital a calf'. During The Globe's first year, one of it's first plays to be presented was Julius Caesar, actually starring John Heminges as Caesar, and Richard Burbage as Brutus This a great way to break the forth wall and cross-reference, but also to foreshadow the fact that Polonius will -yet again- will die by being stabbed to death by a character plaid by Richard Burbage.

The other parallel is at Ophelia's funeral, where Hamlet and Laertes begin fighting in Ophelia's grave. This is a callback to the time when same duo of actors (William Sly and Richard Burbage) previously played Paris and Romeo, who also start a fight in the mourning process of their mutual loved one, Juliet.

[ophelias-flower-bettie]

Laertes! Brother! I need you!

[marlocandeea]

can't believe im discovering new shakespearian insults. 'god bless you prince hamlet!' 'god bless you too, because your ass stinks!'

[amochi]

Duality of man

[wormchamp72]

After many trials and tribulations (#wormchamp72's trials and tribulations), I have completed the first of my many messengers of vengeance...Brayden will get his comeuppance soon enough...

What is the reason that you use me thus? I loved you ever. But it is no matter. Let Hercules himself do what he may, The cat will mew, and dog will have his day.