The Great Shakespearean Adventure: Hamlet

[cesario]

Well, after exhaustive market-testing and subject research, I have struck upon a way to present my Shakespearean forays to the blogosphere. I found a copy of the play online and I'm cutting and pasting lines I've got something to say about

Comments

[cesario]

SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE FOR MASSIVE US DOLLARS. Or possibly for virtual pie.

[bethbethbeth]

Why don't I have thirty of you in my Shakespeare class?

*cries*

[bethbethbeth]

[bethbethbeth]

How bizarre. Every class I've ever taught has had at least one or two yappy/brilliant students who earned A's just by...oh my god! Maybe I've been sleeping with all of them and didn't know it!

[cesario]

Sexsomnia will get you every time.

[tangleofthorns]

Oh, this is going to be awesome, because this is my favorite play.

The one time I've seen it done live, they actually did this entire scene silently and without the guards...just Horatio wandering about the ramparts reading and then getting the shit scared out of him by a ghost. It was, however, a very weird, would-be avant-garde production.

[cesario]

Huh. I can see why they would cut that dialogue, yeah---if you're going to chop, that's an obvious place, and I can see how that seen would be kind of awesome like that. Not nearly as lulzy, though.

[tangleofthorns]

The really cool thing that they did, they had the ramparts and all upstage and then brought the lights up on the main throne room floor and everyone was frozen for a minute in the position on stage where they die. Gertrude and Claudius were on the thrones, Polonius lingering in the doorway, Hamlet downstage center lounging around, Laertes nearby, and of course Ophelia wasn't onstage at all.

[cesario]

oh man, that *is* cool.

possibly ophelia ought to have been drifting in a fishpond.

Oh, btw, I have been reading Slings & Arrows fic in advance of actually seeing the canon, and your Cyril story is fucking brilliant. Have you got any others?

[swordlily]

Claudius Might Have Killed Your Dad, Hamlet, But Let's Face It---He's Really Fucking Hot.

I'm not sure whether I like Gertrude more when I think of her as a hapless pawn caught in Claudius's scheming or a true debauchee. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, really.

I've long suspected that, despite all the speculation about Hamlet having an Oedipus complex, all his loathing of women's sexuality and his reluctance to avenge his father's death make much more sense if you simply consider that OMG HE'S TOTALLY GAY FOR CLAUDIUS.

[cesario]

I think she's both. I think she is genuinely into Claudius, so much so that she's so grateful to have him instead of Old Hamlet that she just doesn't let herself think too closely about how all of that went down.

And...I would never come up with a "GAY FOR CLAUDIUS" interpretation myself, but I'm willing to entertain the theory in certain contexts. :)

[capnflynn]

Nicholas Farrel was brilliant in "A Midwinter's Tale". Have you seen it? A group of crazy actors performing "Hamlet" at Christmastime. I recommend it. :D

[cesario]

Ooh! No, I haven't seen it, but it sounds very interesting.