#hamlet play

[preraphaelitepaintings]

Ophelia

Artist: John William Waterhouse (British, 1849-1917)

Date: 1910

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

[the-self-is-not-static]

I think that a really cool fanart for Hamlet would be Ivan the Terrible Holding His Son, but have it be Gertrude holding Hamlet.

[artemlegere]

Ophelia

Artist: John William Waterhouse (British, 1849-1917)

Date: 1910

Medium: Oil paint on canvas

Collection: Private Collection

[butterscotch-goat]

can someone tell him to stop looking at me like that

[bacatemlo]

Let’s all be honest…hamlet was right, sometimes he was just a silly goofy little girl💅😔

[hillbroski]

So in the production of Hamlet I’m in, the person who’s playing Laertes is this goth senior with their roots died purple and they���re always wearing this awesome outfits and recently we’ve been blocking the fight between Laertes and hamlet and its really fun to watch them and honestly I would kind of love it if they didn’t give Laertes any costumes and just let this person dress themselves cause it’s awesome.

[rayniscatstatue]

Most dramatic switch up in history

Going from being apart of Hamlet to being apart of Grease

[britneyshakespeare]

I'm curious about people's levels of familiarity; I intend no judgment or elitism and it's absolutely fine not to be a completionist, btw. I didn't think I would've intended to have read them all at age 25; it just sort of happened that after I passed the halfway point in the middle of 2023, I came out of a reading slump and was motivated to finish. Fwiw I consider myself a hobbyist (I am not involved in academia or professional theater) but I realize that that label is usually attributed to people with less experience.

I also have always loved seeing other bloggers' Shakespeare polls where they put certain plays or characters up against each other, but I'm often left wondering if it's really a 'fair' fight all the time if you're putting up something like Hamlet or Twelfth Night against one of the more obscure works, like the Winter's Tale. It's not a grave affront to vote in those polls if you don't know every play, but I am curious about it.

Please reblog for exposure if you vote; I would appreciate it a lot. Also feel free to elaborate on your own Shakespeare journey in tags, comments, reblogs, because I love to hear about other people's personal relationships to literature.

[mrs-starkgaryen]

MORE PRECISE POLLS:

Comedies

Tragedies

Histories

Please say why you chose, I'm interested and please share for bigger sample

P.s: I chose to do this poll cuz after r&j, hamlet, macbeth and midsummer's night's dream, I didnt study any of the others.

I was curious to see which one I should read first (as I want to expand my reading and I'm getting shakespeares works for christmas which I wanted after I went to see Tom Holland's r&j which blew me away and made appreciate shakey a lot more)

I'm sorry I failed you 'much ado about nothing' fans 😭

[lamentable-comedy]

my castmate, getting emotional on closing night: do you ever think about how we might be in this play again... but this is still the last time we'll ever be in this production, with these people at this time? and even within that, each show is the last time we'll ever do that specific performance. even within a given unique production, there are a thousand little things that are different night to night. different performance choices, different audience, different thoughts in our heads and ways we play off each other. it's like. theatre is by its nature ephemeral and there's no way to ever go back and experience that specific version of a play ever again.

me, who's lived through the time loop of this night 300 times: y'know--

[aq2003]

david tennant + shakespeare

[petercushingscheekbones]

..and he wrote them for David Tennant

[writtebycamus]

From a Prince to a King: David Tennant in Shakespeare plays throughout the years

Hamlet (2009) // Macbeth (2023)

[laissezferre]

Coming up, Harris is starring with Idris Elba in an untitled White House thriller directed by Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker), and playing Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, a film dramatising the Reykjavik summit of 1986, where the Soviet leader and the American president Ronald Reagan had historic talks that led to an arms control treaty… Did he have the famous Gorbachev birthmark? “Oh yes. You’ve got to go the whole way with that. It’s a very famous face.” x

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

The thing about David Tennant is that you can claim he is not the best actor in the world, you can claim that he is not the hottest actor in the world, but what you cannot deny is that he is the Most Microwaveable

[mx-myth]

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.