hamandthewhore

[hamandthewhore]

"Put out the light, and then put out the light". - Othello

Othello has been one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, both among playgoers and literary critics. Unpublished in the author's life, the play survives in one quarto edition from 1622 and in the First Folio.

kolahaal #theatre #drama #theatrelife #theatretherapy #quotes #Othello #shakespeare #tragedy #nigiilakkaraa

[hamandthewhore]

Idea for a hamlet production:

The opening night, the program says The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark and it's performed accurately, word for word. The play, however, closes exactly after Horatio tells Fortinbras that he will tell what has happened. The lights hone in on him, cradling a dead Hamlet and wearing bloody clothes, before the play ends there.

The second night, the program says The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as Told By Horatio. The play begins with a small spotlight over Horatio in the same bloody clothes, cradling a dead Hamlet. He says, "Let me tell you how this all began." Everything much everything is the same as opening night except for a few wording changes.

But after that, it goes off the rails.

The subsequent programs say The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as Remembered by Horatio (One/Two/Three/etcetera). Each night more changes are made. Early on Polonius shows up with an absolutely ridiculous mustache. Claudius' hair colour changes at some point midway through. Towards the end Ophelia just starts naming random flowers. Laertes, when he's angry/sad/feeling a lot, just straight up starts lapsing into French.

Each night the spotlight on Horatio in the opening grows a little bigger until the audience starts seeing background nobles, then soldiers, and then a figure wearing a crown sitting on a throne who isn't facing the audience. Each night the Ghost looks less like King Hamlet and starts looking more like Horatio's Hamlet. Each night, whenever Horatio is on-scene, Hamlet stops speaking in Shakespearean and starts speaking plainly, because Horatio always understood what he meant.

On the closing night, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, as Remembered by Horatio (Finale), it's all gone wrong. People are speaking lines they're suppose to say later or earlier in the play, or they're speaking someone else's lines. The opening scene is fully lit, and the audience can finally see that Horatio is talking to Fortinbras. The Ghost is now fully Hamlet. Horatio spends the entire play wearing the bloody clothes he's worn when Hamlet's died. Every time Hamlet isn't looking at him Horatio is looking at him, heartbroken, grieving, sad. Hamlet is the only one who's still saying accurate lines, except for when Horatio is on-scene and he's speaking modern English.

At the end, the play continues after Hamlet has died. Fortinbras commands that Hamlet be given a grand funeral, and Hamlet's body is taken away, with everyone following it out like a funeral procession. Horatio is left as the last one on the stage, staring at his bloody hands.

It is very, very obvious, the closing night, that Horatio has gone mad.

[hamandthewhore]

me, shaking and nauseous: i don’t feel that good

one of my medieval peasant hallucinations keeping me company: mæg ic forleten cwycgan ænne fulle mete?

me: henry i don’t think i’d be able to keep it down at this point

my other medieval peasant hallucination: henry you know how to speak modern english. stop being pretentious

henry: nē ic wile nāt

[hamandthewhore]

I wrote a paper on why hamlet is still such a relatable character, and the majority of it focuses on his fatal flaws. Never, not even for one second did I think that pride could possible be one of them, but the way this is laid out makes literally everything click into place. I concluded with the worst of his flaws being procrastination, which so perfectly ties into his pride, and his further rash decisions. This is an amazing take on his characters and like so accurate it’s almost painful, and incredibly obvious in retrospect

gonna be honest, i never bought much into the ‘Hamlet’s fatal flaw is inaction’ take because what no one ever seems to mention is that he has a pretty good reason for said inaction (zero actual proof) and within about an hour of resolving this he’s gone and killed a man. which is very much an extreme immediate action in my humble opinion. and he follows it up with an absolute whirlwind of whatever the opposite of inaction is (more extreme and reckless action which results in the deaths of about 7 more people before the play is up).

No, I doubt inaction is the best word to describe where he went wrong. The play does leave it a little ambiguous, which is why we have hundreds of years of debates about all this, but personally, I believe Hamlet’s true fatal flaw is pride.

Which is impressive, given how much he seems to loathe himself at points. But Hamlet spends the entire play acting like he’s the smartest person in the room, looking down on and discrediting the people around him, and no matter how much reason they may give him to do so, this is ultimately what I think sends him down the wrong path.

It’s made clear with Polonius, Rosencrantz, and Guildenstern especially, given that it’s this pride explicitly that gets the three of them killed. Hamlet is shown to consider himself multiple times their intellectual superior, running circles of wit around them in acts 2 and 3, in both of their second scenes, even mocking R&G to their faces for their attempt to play him. And this sense of superiority seems to be his path of reasoning when it comes to distancing himself from and justifying their murders- when Hamlet discovers he’s killed Polonius, his first instinct is to call him a fool, and as he drags the body out of the room, his final words on the matter are to again reinforce the idea that Polonius was a ‘foolish prating knave’ and that his death was divine punishment. With R&G, he kills them without remorse, remarking to Horatio after their deaths that they are ‘not near (my) conscience’, and that their deaths were their own fault for meddling where they shouldn’t have. Even when Horatio rightly points out that killing them was of no benefit to him and actually worsened his situation as there was now a time limit on Hamlet’s plans to enact vengeance imposed by the news of their death returning and Claudius taking more drastic action, Hamlet shrugs him off. Hamlet justifies their deaths at the time by bringing up the letter meant to kill him, but before he’d even found out about the letter or been sent off at all, in the same scene as Polonius’ death Hamlet tells his mother of how he wishes and expects to see the pair ‘hoist by their own petard’, suggesting a level of premeditation. All in all, Hamlet’s intellectual pride is a large part of why these three die, and in the ways they do.

With Ophelia, Hamlet’s pride wounds her as he refuses to let her even respond as he accuses her of cheating on him, and as it stops him from considering any options aside from him being correct, ever. He doesn’t listen to her, doesn’t let her explain, and doesn’t follow up with her besides sexually harassing her publicly and in front of her conservative father and then murdering said father. When he finds out about her death, and hears her brother mourning, his first instinct is to try and ONE-UP HIM, to claim that he loved her more and that he’s more saddened by her passing (after being the entire reason for her death). I’m not even kidding, he starts listing things he’d do that he thinks Laertes wouldn’t or couldn’r to try and ‘beat him’ at his girlfriend’s funeral. And Hamlet never considers in the moment that he might have played a part in her death, or might not have been a great boyfriend. He just wants to be better.

And it’s literally Hamlet’s pride that leads him to the fencing duel where he dies in the first place. It’s explicitly and obviously stated by Claudius and Laertes that they want to play on his jealousy of the attention Laertes has been receiving over his fencing skills and the pride he has in his own to offer him a challenge he can’t (and doesn’t!) refuse. It works, without a single hitch, because Hamlet cannot turn down an opportunity to prove he is better than someone at something. Horatio even tries to get him to turn it down, as they both instinctually know it’s a trap, but Hamlet is too prideful to leave.

Hamlet never considers himself to be wrong about the decisions he makes. It’s either deserved, unfortunate but ultimately deserved, or not his fault. Things happen, and everyone else knows less than he does. He readjusts his moral compass to align with whatever justifications he needs to be ‘right’, and he doesn’t look back. The closest he gets is feeling remorse for putting Laertes in the same situation he’s in, but his apology shifts the blame from himself entirely, even going so far as to victimise himself as well. He is too prideful to leave Claudius to God’s judgement, opting not to kill him in the church which is the turning point for everything going wrong.

And he never sees the consequences as the results of his actions. As he dies, he begs Horatio to live, to tell his story, as he believes it’ll save his reputation. Because it looks bad, sure, but if you just see it from his perspective, it’ll all make sense!

So that’s just my thoughts on it anyway. Hamlet does perhaps have a bit of an overthinking problem, but at the same time, it’s his spontaneity and recklessness that causes lasting damage. Hamlet may be cowardly and afraid to act in faith, but at the same time it’s often doubt that keeps him in check, and to commit murder solely based on the account of a spectre isn’t necessarily a noble act. Despite his seeming self-hatred, suicidal tendencies, and habit of beating himself up over every little thing, it’s a recurring and unsubtle theme that- when Hamlet acts on the belief that he is superior to those around him, without fail, bad things happen.

[hamandthewhore]

hmm maybe it’s the lady macbeth in me but I feel like one thing Hamlet adaptations are missing out on is the chance to make Hamlet blood-covered as a result of Polonius’ murder. And I get that the actual act of the murder itself is generally a pretty clean cut but like. for a rash and bloody deed it could be bloodier.

like why not have Polonius’ blood pool on the floor as the scene progresses? and then as the ghost appears, and Hamlet falls to his knees, trembling, he sinks right into the mess, completely unaware. He bows and presses his palms to the floor, and doesn’t even seem to notice when he rises again that his hands are dripping wet. Gertrude jerks away from his attempts to touch her face or hands when he tries to reassure her, but she can’t fully escape the stains in her clothing, in her carpet as well. Hamlet runs a hand through his hair, to brush it out of his eyes, and again gives no reaction when it drips slowly down his face.

imagine the shock of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern finding their friend like this. Of Claudius, having committed a crime with no trace, no witnesses, and no ties to him, coming face-to-face with Hamlet, his crime visibly splattered across his skin and clothing, witnessed and inescapable, both aware of the other’s sin and both suddenly knowing the other will kill them for it. Claudius who wants to feel guilt but can’t quite manage, Hamlet who doesn’t want to feel anything of the sort and can’t quite manage that either.

[hamandthewhore]

I cannot watch the Lion King prequel because I know in my heart of hearts I will be treating it like a Hamlet prequel by proxy

[hamandthewhore]

what do we think about ophelia being the older sibling because im having some evil ideas w her’s and laertes’ dynamic if laertes is younger

[hamandthewhore]

how are the fine citizens of denmark doing today?

[hamandthewhore]

Shakespearetold is truly a masterpiece. The greatest of it being Machef bc just what

Would highly recommend watching it as soon as physically possible

Just watched ShakespeaRetold's Much Ado...

...and hearing Hero say to Claudio at the end, "What, marry you? Not in a million years." healed something in me.

[hamandthewhore]

Hamlet/horatio/ophelia

ADHD/autism/anxiety?

shakespeare giving horatio autism 300 years before autism was even a thing:

[hamandthewhore]

Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet is so funny to watch because why on earth does Hamlet have bleach blond hair and why on earth did they have the kid who played young Hamlet wear such a terrible bleach blond wig

[hamandthewhore]

Too communist I believe 😔

I usually fucking loathe anyone who references 1984 on social media but I do feel like actually Microsoft deciding to underline every use of an intensifier as an error is some Newspeak bullshit. no you can't replace "very nervous" with "nervous" to make a sentence "more concise" actually, because the word "very" has an actual fuckdamn meaning that I am deliberately conveying, you soulless corporate horseshit shovelling cartoon paperclip ass motherfucker

[hamandthewhore]

Not the cat in the adage 😭😭😭😭😭

This was wildly fun to write.

[hamandthewhore]

tidbit: if you read the left and right lines together, it's hamlet's thoughts when horatio attempts to drink the poisoned liquor and join hamlet in death <3

[hamandthewhore]