the most important thing to know about the plot of hamlet is that it’s so convoluted that the main character is kidnapped by pirates and it’s not even really a major plot point
My favourite thing about the whole ‘no man of woman born’ thing is that it applies to a very broad church.
For example:
People born via c-section (no man of woman born, meaning natural childbirth, aka, the Shakespeare approach)
Women (no man of woman born, aka, the Tolkein approach)
Non-binary types (see above)
Aliens (no man of woman born, with the meaning of man being in the ‘mankind’ sense)
Artificial intelligences (see above again)
Transmen (no man of woman born, the man-ness appears to come later as gender is a social construct. Arguably borderline, I know.)
People carried by a man (no man of woman born)
People grown in vats (no man of woman born)
Basically, anyone who isn’t a human cisgendered male delivered via natural childbirth by a woman could kill Macbeth. (Given the equipment via science!, the child of a transwoman born via natural childbirth would still count as unable to.)
It’s odd that you can divide mankind into ‘Macbeth killers’ and everyone else, even though everyone else is in the minority, especially if aliens are real and we create AIs capable of murdering Scottish kings.
there are two genders: macbeth killers and macbeth
If anyone tries to tell you that Shakespeare is stuffy or boring or highbrow, just remember that the word “nothing” was used in Elizabethan era slang as a euphemism for “vagina”.
Shakespeare has a play called “Much Ado About Nothing”, which you could basically read in modern slang as “Freaking Out Over Pussy”. And that’s pretty much exactly what happens in the play.
It’s also a pun with a third meaning. There’s the sex sense of much ado about “nothing”, there’s the obvious sense that people today see, and then there’s the fact that in Shakespeare’s day, “nothing” was pronounced pretty much the same as “noting”, which was a term used for gossip. So, “Flamewar Over Rumors” works as a title interpretation, too.
The reason we call Shakespeare a genius is that he can make a pussy joke in the same exact words he uses to make biting social commentary about letting unverified gossip take over the discourse.
So like.
A truly accurate modern translation would be “I Cunt Believe He Said That”?
@copperbadge YOU GO AND SIT AMONG THE MUSTARDS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’VE DONE
I truly feel the ghost of Shakespeare has never been more proud of me.
I feel Shakespeare’s approval in this chili’s tonight
Romeo can’t really be blamed for Ophelia’s death.
Senior English major on a Shakespeare final. (via minininny)
WELL THEY’RE NOT WRONG
——
How about this, though?
[Editorial Note: This “theory” depends on believing the Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet take place contemporaneously. So, for the sake of argument, let’s all agree that the events of both plays occur in the Spring of 1517 (chosen because of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, and the Reformational threads that run through Hamlet).]
See, in the Second Quarto and First Folio versions of Romeo and Juliet, a[n extremely minor] character appears with Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio at the Capulet’s Party (where, if you recall, Romeo meets Juliet for the first time).
Like Hamlet’s Horatio, this Horatio is full of well-worded philosophical advice. He tells Romeo “And to sink in it should you burden love, too great oppression for a tender thing.”
Let’s imagine that Horatio has travelled down from Wittenberg (about 540 miles) to Verona for his Spring Break. He hears about some guys who like to party (because, let’s be honest, besides getting stabbed, partying is Mercutio’s main thing). So, he ends up crashing the Capulet’s ball with them.
He is then on the sidelines as Romeo and Juliet fall in love, Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo kills Tybalt, Romeo gets banished, and both lovers are found dead in Juliet’s tomb.
This tragedy fresh in his mind, he returns to Wittenberg at the end of what has turned out to be a decidedly un-radical Spring Break and discovers that his bestie Prince Hamlet is leaving for Elsinore Castle because he’s just gotten news that his father, the King, is dead.
On the trip up (another ~375 miles), Horatio recounts the tragic romance he just witnessed in Verona. He advises (as he is wont to do) Hamlet not to mix love and revenge.
Hamlet takes Horatio’s advice to heart, breaking up with Ophelia so that he can focus is energy on discovering and punishing his father’s killer:
HAMLET Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.
OPHELIA
Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET
You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of it: I loved you not.
Ophelia – burdened by the perceived loss of Hamlet’s love and his murder of her father – goes mad and drowns herself.
You see, if Romeo had waited literally a minute and thirty seconds longer (31 iambic pentametrical lines) – he, Juliet, Ophelia (and possibly the rest of the Hamlet characters) would have made it.
Afghan women prepare backstage to perform Shakespeare in Kabul for the first time since 1979.
I wish I knew more about this production or could find any information on it (is it professional? Amateur?). But these costumes are gorgeous and clearly designed to localize the production of whatever play they’re putting on.
Some witches once told me The throne was gonna hold me. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. They were looking kind of weird They were women but with beards And they said there’d be a crown upon my head.
See a dagger coming and it won’t stop coming Home to my wife and we murder King Duncan Didn’t make sense not to live for the crown Your cred goes up but your mind goes down.
So much to plot, so much to scheme So what’s wrong with taking the king’s seat? You’ll never know if you don’t go You’ll never shine till you kill Banquo.
Hey now, you’re a Scot star, get your kilt on, go slay Hey now, Thane of Cawdor, get the show on, this play And all the witches agree None of women born can harm thee.
William Shakespeare was a bisexual kid from a town a hundred miles outside London with the equivalent of a high school education who knocked up a 26-year-old out of wedlock when he was 18 and he wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets that changed the English language and the nature of Western drama and theater and if that isn’t an argument against elitism and a culture of constant perfectionism I don’t know what is
probably why people spend so much time trying to prove he didnt write his own plays
yknow if romeo had just Cried on juliets corpse for a couple hours instead of drinking poison Right Then they would have been Fine
The moral of the story is: always take time to cry for a few hours before making important decisions.
So I’m more or less being facetious here, but this is actually a thing.
Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.
Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.
That’s the irony and the tragedy of the story. Hamlet knows his tropes and actively tries to avoid them, and the tropes get him anyway. It’s inevitable, the tropes are hungry.
I want a sticker that says the tropes are hungry so I can put it on my laptop
i met a scholar once who said that tragedies aren’t about a silly “flaw” or anything, it’s about having a hero who’s just in the wrong goddamn story
if hamlet swapped places with othello he wouldn’t be duped by any of iago’s shit, he’d sit down & have a good think & actually examine the facts before taking action. meanwhile in denmark, othello would have killed claudius before act 2 could even start. but instead nope, they’re both in situations where their greatest strengths are totally useless and now we’ve got all these bodies to bury.
The tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story.
I love this post.
Feels
I believe the artist is Katy Doughty.
I want “The tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong damn story” tattooed somewhere on my person
there was a disastrous performance of Macbeth at the Old Vic by Peter O’Toole and apparently there was this one part in the play one night where a Servant comes in and should say “Your wife, my lord, is dead” but what ACTUALLY happened was
Steel Phoenix Studios 