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I don’t have a firm stance on whether hamlet is “mad” or just acting and I also think that’s not a great question because obviously there’s degrees and I don’t think it can be answered with “he is” or “he isn’t.” but there are two moments in hamlet where I always think “oh, he’s really lost it.”

the first is when he’s making jokes about Polonius’ dead body in front of the whole court, when he won’t tell them where he’s hidden his corpse. even the fact that he’s hidden it is horrific and makes no sense—obviously his mom knows, obviously she’s telling everyone, obviously there will be consequences. so why did he do it? why did he drag polonius from behind the curtains in his mother’s room to the stairs, drag his body up the stairs, and into the lobby—he’s got to have blood all over him from the struggle, there’s got to be blood all over the stairs. is ophelia nearby? is anyone taking care of her? does anyone usher her away? or is she around the corner, listening? does she hear hamlet joking about how her father will be food for the worms, and that is how she finds out her father is dead?

the second moment is when hamlet is talking about what he’s done to rosencrantz and guildenstern. it’s not really clear there’s something off from anything he says, but from the way horatio responds. all of horatio’s responses are remarkably short, mostly one sentence, monosyllabic replies—go look at the scene in V.2, he’s almost speechless. there’s something wrong with hamlet, really wrong, horatio can tell—and it disturbs him. maybe he call tell from his tone, maybe from the way hamlet brings up conscience twice and asks horatio to confirm that his own is “perfect,” maybe something in his face or his eyes. we don’t know. we’re not told, by stage directions or otherwise, that something’s wrong. but we know from horatio’s replies. horatio sees something that the audience can’t quite distinguish, something really, deeply wrong with his friend—he sees he’s not acting.

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the curse of local theatre is that a show can change you forever and there is no recording of it anywhere at all and after a few years all you have are scattered memories and the knowledge that you were different before.

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$1 butch odysseus comm for @measureformeasure! this was a treat. for both of us

interested? check out my commission sheet here!

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hamlet, bouncing onstage for his fifth unwanted soliloquy of the day:

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hamlet x ophelia mixed messages amv

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from a conversation with @butchhamlet

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they are Cancelling me for dealing with my grief as best i can . also for the vicious war Crimes

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i’m very emotional about the contradictions inherent in how Hector and Andromache deal with living through a war and knowing that every day might be the day Hector doesn’t come home

I see people discussing the quote about Andromache and her attendants mourning Hector as though he is already dead and how grim that is, and I see people discussing the implications of her having a bath drawn for him and how there’s hope there despite everything, and these are both true! Hector and Andromache (and everyone else in the city) have to live with the possibility that anyone who leaves the city to fight will die, but they also have to prepare for the possibility that they’ll survive!

Andromache might believe deep down that Hector is going to die, but she can’t actually live each day as if he’s already dead - she keeps making clothes for him, she still gets things ready for his return every day because so far every day he HAS returned. And Hector might feel in his bones that he won’t survive this war, but he doesn’t know when it will happen, and he has to keep making decisions and plans with the intention that he will live to carry them out.

It’s Hector telling Andromache that he hates thinking about what will happen to her if the city falls and he dies (because lbr even if the city falls when he’s still alive, there’s no way he survives the sack of the city), and then later in that very same conversation telling her not to worry too much because he won’t die until he’s fated to and there’s nothing either of them can do about it. It’s Andromache lamenting for Hector while he’s still alive because she’s afraid he won’t come back, and days later ordering water heated for a bath so he will have some comfort when he returns from battle. They’re hopeful and hopeless by turns and simultaneously, and it feels so real to me. 

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Happy pride month to whatever those two had going on

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reading bad adaptations will have you sitting in your kitchen at midnight typing shit like "i could do king lear set in a high school drama club easy" but i could. understand me. i could

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hey does anyone else think about how everybody goes on and on about richard iii's creepy cursed ominous birth but henry vi's birth was also prophesied to bring about his family's destruction?

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does anyone else feel normal about the fact that henry calls richard "less than a mother's hope" when he himself is textually less than his father's hope for his future?

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does anyone else go crazy about narrative foils in the histories? hello? is this thing on?

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hitting dorian gray with a car and he stands up completely fine meanwhile in his attic a painting flies off the wall and lands in a splintered heap

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Posters for National Theater of Korea's production of Macbeth, designed by Yuni Yoshida and photographed by Noh Juhan. [1][2]

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Iphigenia (1977) dir. Michael Cacoyannis