#players' ring having the Player play horatio at the ending
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agentravensong · 1 year ago
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considering making a post about how horatio is... used? accounted for? in the productions of r&g are dead that i've watched and listened to cause 3/4 (not counting the movie) have, as almost certainly unintentional consequences of their choices, gotten me thinking about that one post i made and frothing at the mouth a bit, in different ways
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universal-kitty · 5 years ago
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.: Day 1 - F/O February :.
Reverse Self-Ship: You are your F/O’s F/O!!
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I’m from a video game series akin to an odd mix of Watch_Dogs and Grand Theft Auto. Things can get a little pervy, hijacking cars is involved, stealth and adventure abound...but so is a bunch of ridiculous, silly things, like a petting minigame that triggers randomly when interacting with my cat.
There’s a single-player mode focused on my background and meeting up with past friends or exes...and is story-based, allowing you to attack and kill them, befriend them again... All sorts of stuff.
Also, the option to adopt more cats and become a crazy cat lady...in spirit.
Shit, romance people if you want! Live life!
Marcus got Wrench (Reggie) the game as a birthday gift. It was mostly a joke, because Reg REALLY thought he wouldn’t like it....and what else do best friends do but give their bffs prank gifts?
Still, Marcus bought it for him new... So Reg boots it up and gives it a chance, anyways.
......holy shit, he actually likes this WAY more than he first thought he would.
First of all, he HATES animals; every one he’s ever met seems to hate him and hurt him, so he’s turned his back on animalkind. However, throughout the game, I’m NOTHING but kind to every animal and suspicious of every person I meet.... Some of which he understands completely. There are some ASSHOLES in this game!!
Also, the way I croon to my cat and get into baby talk... It’s so damn cute to him. Really makes him feel some kinda way, which he flushes over. (Haha, wow that’s embarrassing.)
The point is, he ends up hating animals a little less and starts loving cats a LOT more.
Actually had to put down the controller and walk away from the game when doing a dancing minigame. He could barely focus on the button commands with how cute I was being while doing the dances.
Proceeds to look up people who 100% the dances just so he can save them to his phone. Watch them whenever he wants.
Later deletes them, 100%s them on his own, and THEN saves them onto his phone. Is a lot more happy with them, cause they’re HIS gameplay videos and not someone else’s.
LOVES messing around with outfits. Someone on the staff was either a big fan of cats or just...made that my most out-there personality trait (second only to the games and show in my world that are obviously knock-offs of real-world games), but he’s not complaining. Running around in cat ears and a cat tail? So damn cute.
His personal favorites are the masks I have combined with the matching jackets; it makes me feel more relatable to him...but he’s a greedy man and always eventually takes them off so he can look at my face.
Has SO MANY PICTURES on Facebook of him playing this damn game. Marcus kinda thought he was pranking at first, but now the whole squad knows Reg is a bit of an addict.
They got him the other games on Christmas and he cried. Everyone was....kinda in awe.
Josh got him a t-shirt with my character on it that reads “Bee Paw-sitive~!” on it. He wears it a LOT.
He definitely started up a collection that rivaled....basically no one else in the fandom.
HATES seeing the fandom pairings. And since you can romance anyone due to my sexuality canonly being Panromantic...it’s frustrating.
(Well, he’s Bi, so some of the people he wouldn’t mind sharing with, yeah....but he’s specifically venomous over the people he’s SURE are my friends only. Or are/were super toxic to me in my past. So, so bitter that anyone likes those ships, but holds his tongue only bc he got a figurine of me doing some cutesy pose next to his monitor. It helps him keep his head.)
Literally has a savings account reserved for merchandise. If it exists, he wants to buy it. If it doesn’t, but someone’s commissions are open? He’s gonna buy it.
Has bought art, jumped on art-trades/requests to get MORE art of us together. Has two plushies of me, as well as a body pillow. Continues to seek more things.
Is honestly upset that my size is medium (and so he can’t wear my canonly fitted clothes), BUT that doesn’t stop him from owning a single shirt in my size AND getting items that mimic my wardrobe.
He likes to imagine we can match together....or I can wear HIS version of my fave shirts when mine are dirty~!
Is still debating getting a kitten. Until that day, cat plushes are among the only other plushes he has (aside from mine).
Weird as he felt about it, he later admitted to his friends that he....kinda felt romantically towards me? And was thinking about just being fictoromantic...
Josh was the first one to see no problem with it and fast. People can be hard to work with, so... You do you. (Reg then felt bad about bullying him so much....oop.)
Horatio was also quickly on board. “Hey man, they make you happy. If it helps, it helps.”
Marcus....was a little more confused, but got in the spirit of it, regardless. “man, if I knew you would’ve actually liked it, I woulda got it for you a lot sooner!! Have fun, man.”
Sitara doesn’t quite get it, but.... It sure explains why Reg kept pestering her to tag “Purrfect Anarchy” in certain places and commissioning her for stylized art of him with them.
T-Bone....kinda harasses him about it, but the group stands by Reg. Josh is pretty upset about it, though.
He also follows every piece of news and publicly shares it, after admitting to being ficto. LOTS more pictures like, “Cutie’s got good taste.” [selfie with him sticking out his tongue and wearing one of the replica shirts] “Dinner date with bae!” [screenshot of me looking at the screen of his laptop, dinner and candlelight between us]
Everyone rolled with it more and more over time, so now it’s entirely not uncommon for them to bribe Reg to do things by dragging me into it...
Sitara: Hey, you leaving? Wrench: ...yeah, why? Sitara: Can you get me a coffee while you’re out? Wrench: Wh-? Why should I get you-? Sitara: I bet Rachel would like you doing something like that, y’know. Wrench: .....That’s cruel. You’re cruel. Sitara: I know~! You know how I like it, thank you, and Rachel loves you. Wrench: [sputters audibly and shuffles out the door, muttering to himself, embarrassed]
They don’t do a LOT of crimes anymore, but... Definitely still fuck shit up w/ cops. Reg daydreams a shitton about a masked romance and the anarchy we could commit together... After all, I helped him be braver. So he could help me, too, and then..... So much glorious chaos. Maybe makeouts in his car...
Was literally the type to not give a SHIT about marriage or kids, but now nonstop thinks about our lives together. Anarchy and domestic lifestyle shit can coexist, right? We can be married, have our cute lil’ two story (three, if you count the attic AND a basement), and some kids.....and also go create anarchy and throw bricks at cop cars and cause so much damn trouble..... Right?
He’ll even get a CAT for our home. It’ll be our first kid and not only will he be SO COOL, but they’ll name her (yes, a girl) Princess Leia and I’ll probably cry in happiness!!
Reg is DETERMINED to be the best husband/boyfriend ever. Doesn’t matter which, cause whatever speed I’d like to go at? Hell yeah, he’s down for it. Just as long as he can still hold my hand and gush over how cute I am and-
Has gushed about me and my series before and WILL do so again, prompted or not.
Actually participated in the fandom a little. Mostly does reblogs and such, but has written a few stories (self-inserts are the majority), done some not too shabby art, and prides himself on being the BIGGEST fan of the series with all the merch he has AND commissions bought.
Made a select few friends who also are fans, but... Is constantly anxious about his self-shipping. Either that they might eventually think he’s weird, send more anon hate (he’s gotten some in the past for “being a creep”), or- worst yet- also self-ship with me and he’s still dealing with that idea.
Until then, he’s got a wedding ring he bought cheap at the jewelry section of some store, so.... Coping skills, babey.
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blackcatkita · 6 years ago
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Mark/Dani 💕
Thank you for asking Asti! You know how much I love Mark and I’m so glad you requested them!
who hogs the duvet- Neither. They either fall asleep in each others arms or spooning and they have a Queen sized bed because Mark thinks “It’s the perfect size to have enough room without being too far away from each other.”
who texts/rings to check how their day is going- Both, but Dani does it more because she makes her own schedule. When she’s out researching places or interviewing people for her company, she always makes sure he knows where she is, just in case, so he doesn’t really need to ask. He will text her between meetings to see if they have plans or just to say he’s thinking about her.
who’s the most creative when it comes to gifts- Usually Dani but with the work she does she has an unfair advantage and because of that Mark thinks his gifts are never good enough to show how much he loves her. He knocked it out of the park for their first anniversary, taking her on a tour of all their favorite hang out spots from their college days. At the end of the night he set up a projector screen in the back yard and they cuddled on a blanket watching Avatar under the stars, the first movie they went to see together. 
who gets up first in the morning- Mark during the week because he has to go to work and Dani can work whenever unless she has a meeting scheduled. On the weekends Mark likes to sleep in, so Dani gets up early to make breakfast.
who suggests new things in bed- Dani though it doesn’t go past a sexy outfit she knows will drive him crazy, a new position or her trusty scarf.
who cries at movies- Dani cries often during movies and Mark never really understood how she could cry in a public theater... until he saw Avengers: Infinity War. (Drabble coming soon!)
who gives unprompted massages- Both. Since they both spend a lot of time on the computer, their necks and shoulders get knotted up. Mark’s tell is when he rubs the back of his neck and Dani’s is when she rolls her shoulders. Whenever one of them sees the other’s tells, they make them take a break for a massage.
who fusses over the other when they’re sick- Dani fusses over Mark, because she feels bad that he is “dying”. He is so pitiful, it’s hard for her to not laugh at how adorable she thinks he is.
who gets jealous easiest- Neither one of them gets jealous easily. They have to attend a lot of events because of Mark’s job and he loves making his co-workers jealous, because he’s with the most beautiful woman in the world.
who has the most embarrassing taste in music- They have very similar taste in music, so it’s either both of them or neither, depending on who you ask. 
who collects something unusual- Dani inherited her grandmothers souvenir spoon collection and has continued the tradition, getting a new one when they travel to different places.
who takes the longest to get ready- They are both pretty low maintenance in their day to day lives but when they have an event to attend Dani definitely takes longer. She loves the way Mark looks at her when she’s all dressed up, like he’s the luckiest guy in the world.
who is the most tidy and organized- Mark, but Dani isn’t messy either. 
who gets most excited about the holidays- Dani, she loves everything about the holiday season, decorating, shopping, spending time with family... Mark likes the holidays but what he loves most is how excited she gets and how her eyes sparkle when they light the tree the first time. 
who is the big spoon/little spoon- Mark is the big spoon, Dani is the little spoon unless she is sleeping tucked beside him with her head resting in the crook of his shoulder.
who gets most competitive when playing games and/or sports- They are both super competitive when playing cards, board games, or red herring but Dani knows better than to play video games with Mark, he would mop the floor with her.
who starts the most arguments- They know each other so well that they don’t really argue and on the rare occasion that they do, Mark is able to discuss the problem calmly, helping Dani see things logically.
who suggests that they buy a pet- Mark. He wants their kids to have a dog so they can learn responsibility. Dani thinks they should start with a guinea pig.
what couple traditions they have- On their respective birthdays, the rule is they get to pick the movie and the other has to watch it without complaint. Mark picks a movie with a basketball player in it. every. time. Also, every Sunday, Dani gets up early to make breakfast for them but every once in awhile, Mark beats her to it and serves her breakfast in bed.
what tv shows they watch together- The Crown and the Flame, Game of Thrones and they re-watch Lost, over and over.
what other couple they hang out with- Brooke and Keo, Horatio and Tara and Ben and Amanda (OC)
how they spend time together as a couple- they make dinner together every night, they snuggle on the couch with a bowl of popcorn watching movies or their favorite shows and have “date night” at least once a week. 
who made the first move- Dani thinks she did the first time she met him, when she wrote her number on his chest but it wasn’t until years later when Mark confessed his feelings that they finally accepted they were always more than friends.
who brings flowers home- Usually Dani does the grocery shopping but when Mark goes to the store, he always brings her flowers.
who is the best cook- Dani is the better cook but after taking a few cooking classes together Mark can definitely hold his own in the kitchen.
tagging those I think like lovehacks. If you want to be added to LoveHacks writings (or if you don't) just let me know!
 @kinkykingliam @writtenbycandy @darley1101 @theroyalweisme @starstruckzonkoperatorbat @katurrade @mfackenthal @debramcg1106 @alicars @flyawayblue56 @josieschoices @alwaysthebestchoice @kennaxval @mariamatsuo @penguininapinktuxedo @endlessly-searching-for-you @sstee1 @speedyoperarascalparty @mitalijoshi @chiarace @never-ending-choices @drakelover78 @scarlettedragon
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makerof150papermasks · 6 years ago
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Hamlet Mariofied Act 3 Scene 2
Bolded names refer to the Mario characters playing the roles. The character role names remain the same in the context of the play and its dialogue.
Mario = Hamlet
Birdo = First Player
Diddy Kong, Dixie Kong = Other Players
Kamek = Polonius
Wario = Rosencrantz
Waluigi = Guildenstern
Luigi = Horatio
Bowser = Claudius
Peach = Gertrude
Wendy = Ophelia
Amazing Flyin’ Hammer Bro, Buster Beetle, Whimp = Lords Attendant
Terrapin, Hammer Bro, Fire Bro, Ice Bro, Boomerang Bro, Sledge Bro, Armored Koopa (Koopatrol), Terra Cotta = Guards
Mouser, Fryguy = Trumpeters
Clawgrip, Tryclyde = Drummers
Gooper Blooper, King Bob-omb, Eyerok, Boss Wiggler = Hautboys
Wart = Player King
Rosalina = Player Queen
Mallow = Lucianus Player
Morton, Roy, Ludwig, Booster = Mutes
Act III, Scene 2
Elsinore. Hall in the Castle.
Enter Mario and three of the Players [Birdo, Diddy Kong, and Dixie Kong]. Tune to Overworld Theme from Super Mario Bros 2
Mario. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you,
trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of our
players do, I had as live the town crier spoke my lines. Nor do
 not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all
gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say)
whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a
temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the
soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to
 tatters, to very rags, to split the cars of the groundlings, who
(for the most part) are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb
shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing
Termagant. It out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
Birdo. I warrant your honour.
 Mario. Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your
tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with
this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of
nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing,
whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as
 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show Virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his
form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though
it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious
grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance
 o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I
have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly (not to
speak it profanely), that, neither having the accent of
Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's
 journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated
humanity so abominably.
Birdo. I hope we have reform'd that indifferently with us, sir.
Mario. O, reform it altogether! And let those that play your clowns
speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them
 that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren
spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary
question of the play be then to be considered. That's villanous
and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go
make you ready.
 [Exeunt Players.]
Enter Kamek, Wario, and Waluigi. Music of Muda Kingdom from Super Mario Land.
How now, my lord? Will the King hear this piece of work?
Kamek. And the Queen too, and that presently.
Mario. Bid the players make haste, [Exit Kamek.] Will you two
 help to hasten them?
Wario. [with Waluigi] We will, my lord.
Exeunt they two.
Mario. What, ho, Horatio!
Enter Luigi.
Luigi. Here, sweet lord, at your service.
Mario. Horatio, thou art e'en as just a man
As e'er my conversation cop'd withal.
Luigi. O, my dear lord!
Mario. Nay, do not think I flatter;
 For what advancement may I hope from thee,
That no revenue hast but thy good spirits
To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd?
No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp,
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee
 Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear?
Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice
And could of men distinguish, her election
Hath seal'd thee for herself. For thou hast been
As one, in suff'ring all, that suffers nothing;
 A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards
Hast ta'en with equal thanks; and blest are those
Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled
That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger
To sound what stop she please. Give me that man
 That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him
In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart,
As I do thee. Something too much of this I
There is a play to-night before the King.
One scene of it comes near the circumstance,
 Which I have told thee, of my father's death.
I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot,
Even with the very comment of thy soul
Observe my uncle. If his occulted guilt
Do not itself unkennel in one speech,
 It is a damned ghost that we have seen,
And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note;
For I mine eyes will rivet to his face,
And after we will both our judgments join
 In censure of his seeming.
Luigi. Well, my lord.
If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing,
And scape detecting, I will pay the theft.
Sound a flourish. Enter Trumpets and Kettledrums. Danish
 march. [nter Bowser, Peach, Wendy, Wario, Waluigi,
and other Lords attendant, with the Guard carrying torches. Commence character select screen from Super Mario Bros 2
Mario. They are coming to the play. I must be idle.
Get you a place.
Bowser. How fares our cousin Hamlet?
 Mario. Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish. I eat the air,
promise-cramm'd. You cannot feed capons so.
Bowser. I have nothing with this answer, Hamlet. These words are not
mine.
Mario. No, nor mine now. [To Kamek] My lord, you play'd once
 i' th' university, you say?
Kamek. That did I, my lord, and was accounted a good actor.
Mario. What did you enact?
Kamek. I did enact Julius Caesar; I was kill'd i' th' Capitol; Brutus
kill'd me.
 Mario. It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there. Be
the players ready.
Wario. Ay, my lord. They stay upon your patience.
Peach. Come hither, my dear Hamlet, sit by me.
Mario. No, good mother. Here's metal more attractive.
Kamek. [to the King] O, ho! do you mark that?
Mario. Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
[Sits down at Wendy’s feet.]
Wendy. No, my lord.
Mario. I mean, my head upon your lap?
 Wendy. Ay, my lord.
Mario. Do you think I meant country matters?
Wendy. I think nothing, my lord.
Mario. That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs.
Wendy. What is, my lord?
 Mario. Nothing.
Wendy. You are merry, my lord.
Mario. Who, I?
Wendy. Ay, my lord.
Mario. O God, your only jig-maker! What should a man do but be merry?
 For look you how cheerfully my mother looks, and my father died
within 's two hours.
Wendy. Nay 'tis twice two months, my lord.
Mario. So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for I'll have a
suit of sables. O heavens! die two months ago, and not forgotten
  yet? Then there's hope a great man's memory may outlive his life
half a year. But, by'r Lady, he must build churches then; or else
shall he suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose
epitaph is 'For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot!'
[Hautboys play. The dumb show enters.]
 Enter Wart and Rosalina very lovingly; Rosalina embracing
him and he her. She kneels, and makes show of protestation
unto him. He takes her up, and declines his head upon her
neck. He lays him down upon a bank of flowers. She, seeing
him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his
 crown, kisses it, pours poison in the sleeper's ears, and
leaves him. Rosalina returns, finds Wart dead, and makes
passionate action. Mallow with some three or four Mutes,
comes in again, seem to condole with her. The dead body is
carried away. Mallow wooes the Queen with gifts; she
 seems harsh and unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts
his love.
Exeunt.
Wendy. What means this, my lord?
Mario. Marry, this is miching malhecho; it means mischief.
 Wendy. Belike this show imports the argument of the play.
Enter Prologue. Cue Delfino Airstrip.
Mario. We shall know by this fellow. The players cannot keep counsel;
they'll tell all.
Wendy. Will he tell us what this show meant?
 Mario. Ay, or any show that you'll show him. Be not you asham'd to
show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means.
Wendy. You are naught, you are naught! I'll mark the play.
Pro. For us, and for our tragedy,
Here stooping to your clemency,
 We beg your hearing patiently. [Exit.]
Mario. Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring?
Wendy. 'Tis brief, my lord.
Mario. As woman's love.
Enter Wart and Rosalina
Wart. Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round
Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground,
And thirty dozen moons with borrowed sheen
About the world have times twelve thirties been,
Since love our hearts, and Hymen did our hands,
 Unite comutual in most sacred bands.
Rosalina. So many journeys may the sun and moon
Make us again count o'er ere love be done!
But woe is me! you are so sick of late,
So far from cheer and from your former state.
 That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust,
Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must;
For women's fear and love holds quantity,
In neither aught, or in extremity.
Now what my love is, proof hath made you know;
  And as my love is siz'd, my fear is so.
Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear;
Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.
Wart. Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too;
My operant powers their functions leave to do.
 And thou shalt live in this fair world behind,
Honour'd, belov'd, and haply one as kind
For husband shalt thou-
Rosalina. O, confound the rest!
Such love must needs be treason in my breast.
 When second husband let me be accurst!
None wed the second but who killed the first.
Mario. [aside] Wormwood, wormwood!
Peach. The instances that second marriage move
Are base respects of thrift, but none of love.
 A second time I kill my husband dead
When second husband kisses me in bed.
Wart. I do believe you think what now you speak;
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
 Of violent birth, but poor validity;
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
 What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
 Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
 The great man down, you mark his favourite flies,
The poor advanc'd makes friends of enemies;
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend,
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try,
 Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
 So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.
Rosalina. Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light,
Sport and repose lock from me day and night,
To desperation turn my trust and hope,
 An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope,
Each opposite that blanks the face of joy
Meet what I would have well, and it destroy,
Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife,
If, once a widow, ever I be wife!
 Mario. If she should break it now!
Wart. 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile.
My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile
The tedious day with sleep.
Rosalina. Sleep rock thy brain,
 [He sleeps.]
Rosalina. And never come mischance between us twain!
Exit.
Mario. Madam, how like you this play?
Peach. The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
 Mario. O, but she'll keep her word.
Bowser. Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in't?
Mario. No, no! They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence i' th'
world.
Bowser. What do you call the play?
 Mario. 'The Mousetrap.' Marry, how? Tropically. This play is the
image of a murther done in Vienna. Gonzago is the duke's name;
his wife, Baptista. You shall see anon. 'Tis a knavish piece of
work; but what o' that? Your Majesty, and we that have free
souls, it touches us not. Let the gall'd jade winch; our withers
 are unwrung. Enter Mallow.
This is one Lucianus, nephew to the King.
Wendy. You are as good as a chorus, my lord.
Hamlet. I could interpret between you and your love, if I could see
the puppets dallying.
 Wendy. You are keen, my lord, you are keen.
Mario. It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge.
Wendy. Still better, and worse.
Mario. So you must take your husbands.- Begin, murtherer. Pox, leave
thy damnable faces, and begin! Come, the croaking raven doth
 bellow for revenge.
Mallow. Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; Confederate season, else no creature seeing; Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy natural magic and dire property On wholesome life usurp immediately.
Pours the poison in his ears. Play The Sword Descends and The Stars Scatter from Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars
Mario. He poisons him i' th' garden for's estate. His name's Gonzago.
The story is extant, and written in very choice Italian. You
 shall see anon how the murtherer gets the love of Gonzago's wife.
Peach. The King rises.
Mario. What, frighted with false fire?
Peach. How fares my lord?
Kamek. Give o'er the play.
 Bowser. Give me some light! Away!
All. Lights, lights, lights!
Exeunt all but Mario and Luigi. Cue underground music from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island.
Mario. Why, let the strucken deer go weep,
The hart ungalled play;
 For some must watch, while some must sleep:
Thus runs the world away.
Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers- if the rest of my
fortunes turn Turk with me-with two Provincial roses on my raz'd
shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of players, sir?
 Luigi. Half a share.
Mario. A whole one I!
For thou dost know, O Damon dear,
This realm dismantled was
Of Jove himself; and now reigns here
 A very, very- pajock.
Luigi. You might have rhym'd.
Mario. O good Horatio, I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand
pound! Didst perceive?
Luigi. Very well, my lord.
 Mario. Upon the talk of the poisoning?
Luigi. I did very well note him.
Mario. Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
 Come, some music!
Enter Wario and Waluigi.
Waluigi. Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you.
Mario. Sir, a whole history.
Waluigi. The King, sir-
 Mario. Ay, sir, what of him?
Waluigi. Is in his retirement, marvellous distemper'd.
Mario. With drink, sir?
Waluigi. No, my lord; rather with choler.
Mario. Your wisdom should show itself more richer to signify this to
 the doctor; for me to put him to his purgation would perhaps
plunge him into far more choler.
Waluigi. Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame, and start
not so wildly from my affair.
Mario. I am tame, sir; pronounce.
 Waluigi. The Queen, your mother, in most great affliction of spirit
hath sent me to you.
Mario. You are welcome.
Waluigi. Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right breed.
If it shall please you to make me a wholesome answer, I will do
 your mother's commandment; if not, your pardon and my return
shall be the end of my business.
Mario. Sir, I cannot.
Waluigi. What, my lord?
Mario. Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseas'd. But, sir, such
 answer as I can make, you shall command; or rather, as you say,
my mother. Therefore no more, but to the matter! My mother, you
say-
Wario. Then thus she says: your behaviour hath struck her into
amazement and admiration.
 Mario. O wonderful son, that can so stonish a mother! But is there no
sequel at the heels of this mother's admiration? Impart.
Wario. She desires to speak with you in her closet ere you go to bed.
Hamlet. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have you any
further trade with us?
 Wario. My lord, you once did love me.
Mario. And do still, by these pickers and stealers!
Wario. Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? You do surely
bar the door upon your own liberty, if you deny your griefs to
your friend.
 Mario. Sir, I lack advancement.
Wario. How can that be, when you have the voice of the King himself
for your succession in Denmark?
Mario. Ay, sir, but 'while the grass grows'- the proverb is something
musty.
 [Enter Diddy Kong and Dixie Kong with recorders. ]
O, the recorders! Let me see one. To withdraw with you- why do
you go about to recover the wind of me, as if you would drive me
into a toil?
Guildenstern. O my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too unmannerly.
 Mario. I do not well understand that. Will you play upon this pipe?
Waluigi. My lord, I cannot.
Mario. I pray you.
Waluigi. Believe me, I cannot.
Mario. I do beseech you.
 Waluigi. I know, no touch of it, my lord.
Mario. It is as easy as lying. Govern these ventages with your
fingers and thumbs, give it breath with your mouth, and it will
discourse most eloquent music. Look you, these are the stops.
Waluigi. But these cannot I command to any utt'rance of harmony. I
 have not the skill.
Mario. Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me! You
would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would
pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my
lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music,
 excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it
speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am easier to be play'd on than a
pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me,
you cannot play upon me.
[Enter Kamek.]
God bless you, sir!
Kamek. My lord, the Queen would speak with you, and presently.
Mario. Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?
Kamek. By th' mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.
Mario. Methinks it is like a weasel.
 Kamek. It is back'd like a weasel.
Mario. Or like a whale.
Kamek. Very like a whale.
Mario. Then will I come to my mother by-and-by.- They fool me to the
top of my bent.- I will come by-and-by.
 Kamek. I will say so. Exit.
Mario. 'By-and-by' is easily said.- Leave me, friends.
Exeunt all but Mario. Tune from Corona Mountain reverberates.
'Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
 Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother!
O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom.
 Let me be cruel, not unnatural;
I will speak daggers to her, but use none.
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites-
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent! Exit.
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uomo-accattivante · 7 years ago
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A little over a third of the way into the modestly dressed, disarmingly brilliant production of Hamlet now playing at the Public, Oscar Isaac as the iconic prince turns to us before one of his famous soliloquies and calmly tells us, “Now I am alone.”
I caught my breath at these four words. They were not a statement of fact — they were an invitation to the audience to imagine.
Not every Hamlet calls attention to its own theatricality. This Hamlet — beginning with its use of the company onstage as a second audience, a mirror for us out in the seats — engages us in a game that makes us contemplate the very nature of performing. When Oscar Isaac tells us, still surrounded by his fellow actors, “I am alone,” he is not describing but instructing. He is working on our imaginary forces — or, as he might say, our mind’s eye — telling us, These are the rules of this game. Come, play.
It is a mark of this production’s intelligence that its rules are inscribed in its aesthetic from the very beginning by a set of design choices that blur the line between audience and stage. The Anspacher is a strange space: a thrust configuration — which is Shakespearean enough — but surrounded by raked banks of red upholstered seats that come from an entirely different era of spectatorship. Hamlet’s set (by David Zinn), like the production itself, is unassuming and very, very smart: It extends the feel of the seating banks by covering the whole stage in red carpet. The chairs used onstage are a match to those in the front rows of the audience: modern, institutional, more red upholstery. Hanging above the playing space are additional house lights mimicking those above the audience (these the domain of lighting designer Mark Barton, whose work is a subtle, powerful complement to Zinn’s).
The main playing area — apart from the chairs and a table that looks like it could have been pulled from one of the Public’s conference rooms — is empty. The back wall is unadorned. Props are few and almost all present at the back of the stage at the show’s beginning, waiting for eventual use. There is a station for a musician (the incredible Ernst Reijseger) who creates the entirety of the production’s sonic landscape on a cello and a set of wooden pipes that play like an eerie organ. Each actor has only one costume, and if designer Kaye Voyce has not pulled directly from the actors’ own closets, she has quietly and cleverly curated a palette that feels as if she has done so. Director Sam Gold and his team of designers seem to have constructed their world in alignment with Hamlet’s advice to the Players:
--- …O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. ---
The actors likewise adhere to these instructions: Their attack on the language is clear and often conversational. They carry us deftly through the poetry without bluster or bravado — we follow the threads of their thought, and when great emotion flows it flows naturally, from a wellspring of grief or rage or shame that feels real.
Real. Ay, there’s the rub. Nothing onstage in this Hamlet is “theatrical” in the way that we have come to understand the term — as a synonym for spectacular, outlandish, or exaggerated. Rather, Sam Gold and his company are interested in a different and perhaps deeper definition of theatricality: Their Hamlet is playing a game with our notions of real and pretend, of sincerity and falseness. After all, you might think that by following Hamlet’s advice to the Players you could simply end up with a realistic TV drama — but Hamlet isn’t asking for realism, he’s asking for truth. He’s asking for honesty wrapped in the artifice of play. The heart of Gold’s production — and its genius — lies in its obsession with the paradox of the Honest Performance.
Hamlet insists that he “know[s] not ‘seems.,” but any good actor will tell you that you can feel all day long, but without seeming — without the show of that feeling — there’s no play. And Hamlet, the character, is a good actor. (This Hamlet, in the person of Oscar Isaac, at once mischievous and deeply soulful, is exceedingly good.) Part of the character’s tragedy is that he is a thoughtful comedian trapped in the bloody, archaic genre of the Revenge Play, forced into playing a role his very nature abhors. Imagine if Othello or Hotspur had been Old Hamlet’s son. Claudius would be dead and young Fortinbras defeated by Act 2, Scene 1.
Gold’s production dispenses with Fortinbras and with all references to any wider political conflict. (In interviews, he and Isaac have repeatedly described the show as “intimate.”) It’s a vision of a Hamlet in which the wider world is not Scandinavia but the theater. The company’s members are aware on some deep level of their existence both as actors and as characters in a play. Keegan-Michael Key (who makes a charming Horatio) begins the performance with a casual, endearingly silly curtain speech to the audience, but this is no mere lark: It introduces us to Horatio as a kind of narrator, a role that he will return to with much more gravity when, at the play’s end, he assumes responsibility for telling Hamlet’s story. He even adopts one of Fortinbras’s lines at the finale — ���[Let] these bodies / High on a stage be placed to the view” — and when he says it, we hear not a dictator organizing a military funeral but a stage manager preparing for a literal eternity of performances of Hamlet.
In cautioning Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s declarations of love, Laertes shows a similar subliminal awareness of the play-world he inhabits. He warns his sister that Hamlet “may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state.” By “whole state” he typically means Denmark, but in this production Laertes (the compelling Anatol Yusef) gestures to us, the audience, and around the room at the chairs, the table, the lighting grid. Laertes is warning his sister, This story depends on him, and there’s only one way it can go. Likewise, when plotting to send Hamlet to England, Claudius (the superb Ritchie Coster) growls that he can’t outright punish his troublesome stepson, because “he’s loved of the distracted multitude.” Those last two words can only mean us. We, the audience, love Hamlet, and our imaginary forces hold sway in this room; Claudius, Laertes, and the rest of this ensemble maintain an understated awareness that they are acting in Hamlet’s play. This is not nudge-nudge-wink-wink mugging; the actors are not nodding their heads at us and mouthing, as Hamlet might have it, “Well, well we know.” A showier self-consciousness of theatrical artifice is fairly common on the stage these days. There is something subtler at work here — an investigation of the paradoxical alchemy of sincerity and deceit that lies at the heart of Hamlet and of theater itself.
The layers of this theatrical onion are further multiplied by the fact that the nine-person company of players doubles as … the Company of Players. By limiting the number of bodies onstage and letting each one accumulate valences of meaning, Gold sounds Shakespeare’s play like a great resonant bell. Seeing the Player King/Player Queen scene played out in the bodies of Gertrude and Claudius (who is also the ghost of Old Hamlet) is a revelation: Often delivered with self-conscious puffy artifice, here the scene feels like a moment out of time, like watching Hamlet witness a moment that might truly have taken place between his mother and his sickly father. And the Player King’s warning to his Queen — that she won’t be able to keep her vows never to remarry — rings with pathos and prophecy: “Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” So says this false king — this actor — prefiguring Hamlet’s recognition of the “divinity that shapes our ends” and summing up in a single line the tragedy of the prince’s character. What is Hamlet if not a creature of thought, doomed to an end none of his own?
Or take the doubling of Laertes and the Lead Player, who enters into a friendly competition with Hamlet over their shared delivery of the great Pyrrhus speech. The Player astounds Hamlet with his ability to “force his soul so to his own conceit” — he can make himself weep on cue! “For nothing! For Hecuba!” — which drives Hamlet to the frenzied contemplation of his own inaction. By this point, the Hamlet who could clearly separate performance from substance is gone: He now longs to act in all senses of the word, even if it means conflating those senses. In attempting to follow the Player’s example, Hamlet substitutes performance for the real action he so craves (and fears), winding up screaming melodramatically into the winds (“Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / O, vengeance!”) and, here, doing great violence to a dish of lasagna. No wonder Isaac looks up afterwards — the clown who tried to play the avenger — and cracks a wry, abashed smile: “Why, what an ass am I!”
Though Hamlet knows in his most lucid moments that the performance of a thing is not the thing itself, he remains obsessed with the enactment of his own feelings, as if performing them paradoxically proves their honesty. When this Hamlet confronts Laertes at Ophelia’s grave (“What is he whose grief / Bears such an emphasis?”), we have already seen these two men compete in the performance of grief. First, it was for Hecuba, a mere fantasy, a play. Now, it is for Ophelia, a real woman whom they both loved. Laertes and Hamlet are both wracked by real anguish, and they are also playing at it: Who loved her more? Who can mourn her better? It’s a wrenching thing to watch — who among us has not felt something deeply and simultaneously felt ourselves performing the feeling? Acting is in our nature; we long to be witnessed.
Is such ore always there for the mining in this scene between the grieving lover and the grieving brother? Yes. But does every Hamlet mine it? No. It is the mark of a deeply intelligent production when it makes you hear anew a work encrusted with so many barnacles of historical, literary, and theatrical precedent.
They don’t call it “Poem Unlimited” for nothing. The glory of Hamlet is its unsoundable depth. Another director with another production might strike its great bell from a slightly different angle and produce completely different resonances. Another director might be as fascinated by kingship, war, and affairs of state as Sam Gold is by layers of theatricality. Still, while Gold might have stripped the play of its original political context, this “intimate” production has not been stripped of politics. Its seeming domesticity is deceptive; it has something pointed to say about the political state of our world, but its tool is a needle, not a bludgeon. By its indirections, we find directions out.
“Ay sir,” quips Hamlet to Polonius, “to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” It’s a great line, always, but at this moment I heard it cut the air with a new sharpness. That word, honest, rings out over and over in this production. The politics of this Hamlet is a politics of performance, of being and seeming, of sincerity and hypocrisy, truth and corruption. In this way, Gold’s production may well be an abstract and brief chronicle for our time. After all, how many of our highest politicians might currently be asking themselves, “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”
Hamlet is at the Public Theater through September 3.
###
@poe-also-bucky
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thatcomesandstaysfire · 5 years ago
Audio
Not that anyone asked, but I just thought I’d share where my (current) URL comes from.
It comes from this absolute BOP from Pippin, sung by the talented Patina Miller (who btw played Paylor in Mockingjay part 1 & 2. I was so excited when I saw her on the big screen I let out an audible EEK! in the theater. My worlds collided at that moment) 
Pippin is one of those shows that, while being both a spectacle and a bit superficial at times, has a message that I resonate with. If you are unfamiliar with the show, here's a brief-ish summary; Pippin, son of King Charlamagne, has finished university and he’s looking for his purpose. He is led through his journey by The Leading Player, a ring leader/Horatio/devil to Pippin’s Faust type character, who presents him with various endeavors that he thinks will grant him fulfillment (war, sex, power) all of which are fantastical, over the top. Shockingly, none of these endeavors satisfy Pippin and leave him feeling more lost than when he started. (That's where this song takes place, but more on that later). This leads him to a simple “ordinary woman” named Catherine, who is recently widowed, left with the responsibility of taking care of her young son and farm on her own. Pippin resists this life, thinking he’s above it (he is a prince after all) but he eventually comes to fall in love with Catherine and her son. Ultimately Pippin refuses the leading players definition of fulfillment and realizes that all he ever needed was someone to love and someone to love him back.
The main takeaway of Pippin is: 
Fulfillment is found through seeking, not the actual goal itself. 
Inner peace and self-worth are found in giving yourself to others, rather than selfish pursuits. 
The choice between reality and non-reality. Everything the Leading Player presents to Pippin in fantastical and “extraordinary” but it's not real. The staging of this show is quite literally a circus. Pippin finds the magic in what is real with Catherine. Love, family, and a quiet life that is dedicated to others.
I mentioned that the Leading Player is like the devil to Pippin’s Faust, which is true. But the Leading Player is not evil or seeking to harm Pippin. LP is there to help Pippin find fulfillment, albeit in a very misguided way.  The LP and the ensemble are not human. They are otherworldly and they only really care about providing spectacle, and splendor, and they want to provide this for Pippin. But like I said earlier, it’s not real, and it's not what Pippin needs.
Now, this song. It comes after Pippin’s failed attempts to find fulfillment. He’s experienced war, where finds no glory, only horror. He’s experienced meaningless sex, which rapidly becomes depraved and detached. And he’s experienced power, acquired by killing his father, and he finds he is unsuited for it. Pippin believes he will never find his purpose. That this has all been for naught. He wants to give up.  This song is the Leading Player essentially telling him that, despite his failures and the way he’s feeling, he is exactly where he’s supposed to be. The answer just hasn’t revealed itself yet. It’s about perseverance and having faith that things will work out. And the Leading Player is right. After this song, Pippin meets Catherine. Pippin needed to experience those things that seemingly left him feeling lost, in order to truly appreciate his time with Catherine.
I love this song, not only because it’s really catchy, but because it contains a theme of the show that I actively try to apply to my own life. Even when things seem completely hopeless and lost, you have to trust that you will end up where you’re supposed to and that you’re prepared to fully appreciate what comes next.
0 notes
donalsgirl · 7 years ago
Text
A Hamlet Where Everyone’s Onstage
A little over a third of the way into the modestly dressed, disarmingly brilliant production of Hamlet now playing at the Public, Oscar Isaac as the iconic prince turns to us before one of his famous soliloquies and calmly tells us, “Now I am alone.”
I caught my breath at these four words. They were not a statement of fact — they were an invitation to the audience to imagine.
Isaac was not alone, not in this moment nor ever. Hamlet as written contains seven soliloquies, but the Hamlet who is now wrestling with his fate on the red-carpeted boards of the Anspacher Theater is never a solo figure: He always has an audience. During each soliloquy, members of the ensemble sit or stand strewn about the stage, still present, giving their prince a quiet, serious attention — a company of players, watching and listening.
Not every Hamlet calls attention to its own theatricality. This Hamlet — beginning with its use of the company onstage as a second audience, a mirror for us out in the seats — engages us in a game that makes us contemplate the very nature of performing. When Oscar Isaac tells us, still surrounded by his fellow actors, “I am alone,” he is not describing but instructing. He is working on our imaginary forces — or, as he might say, our mind’s eye — telling us, These are the rules of this game. Come, play.
It is a mark of this production’s intelligence that its rules are inscribed in its aesthetic from the very beginning by a set of design choices that blur the line between audience and stage. The Anspacher is a strange space: a thrust configuration — which is Shakespearean enough — but surrounded by raked banks of red upholstered seats that come from an entirely different era of spectatorship. Hamlet’s set (by David Zinn), like the production itself, is unassuming and very, very smart: It extends the feel of the seating banks by covering the whole stage in red carpet. The chairs used onstage are a match to those in the front rows of the audience: modern, institutional, more red upholstery. Hanging above the playing space are additional house lights mimicking those above the audience (these the domain of lighting designer Mark Barton, whose work is a subtle, powerful complement to Zinn’s).
The main playing area — apart from the chairs and a table that looks like it could have been pulled from one of the Public’s conference rooms — is empty. The back wall is unadorned. Props are few and almost all present at the back of the stage at the show’s beginning, waiting for eventual use. There is a station for a musician (the incredible Ernst Reijseger) who creates the entirety of the production’s sonic landscape on a cello and a set of wooden pipes that play like an eerie organ. Each actor has only one costume, and if designer Kaye Voyce has not pulled directly from the actors’ own closets, she has quietly and cleverly curated a palette that feels as if she has done so. Director Sam Gold and his team of designers seem to have constructed their world in alignment with Hamlet’s advice to the Players:
…O’erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.
The actors likewise adhere to these instructions: Their attack on the language is clear and often conversational. They carry us deftly through the poetry without bluster or bravado — we follow the threads of their thought, and when great emotion flows it flows naturally, from a wellspring of grief or rage or shame that feels real.
Real. Ay, there’s the rub. Nothing onstage in this Hamlet is “theatrical” in the way that we have come to understand the term — as a synonym for spectacular, outlandish, or exaggerated. Rather, Sam Gold and his company are interested in a different and perhaps deeper definition of theatricality: Their Hamlet is playing a game with our notions of real and pretend, of sincerity and falseness. After all, you might think that by following Hamlet’s advice to the Players you could simply end up with a realistic TV drama — but Hamlet isn’t asking for realism, he’s asking for truth. He’s asking for honesty wrapped in the artifice of play. The heart of Gold’s production — and its genius — lies in its obsession with the paradox of the Honest Performance.
Hamlet insists that he “know[s] not ‘seems.,” but any good actor will tell you that you can feel all day long, but without seeming — without the show of that feeling — there’s no play. And Hamlet, the character, is a good actor. (This Hamlet, in the person of Oscar Isaac, at once mischievous and deeply soulful, is exceedingly good.) Part of the character’s tragedy is that he is a thoughtful comedian trapped in the bloody, archaic genre of the Revenge Play, forced into playing a role his very nature abhors. Imagine if Othello or Hotspur had been Old Hamlet’s son. Claudius would be dead and young Fortinbras defeated by Act 2, Scene 1.
Gold’s production dispenses with Fortinbras and with all references to any wider political conflict. (In interviews, he and Isaac have repeatedly described the show as “intimate.”) It’s a vision of a Hamlet in which the wider world is not Scandinavia but the theater. The company’s members are aware on some deep level of their existence both as actors and as characters in a play. Keegan-Michael Key (who makes a charming Horatio) begins the performance with a casual, endearingly silly curtain speech to the audience, but this is no mere lark: It introduces us to Horatio as a kind of narrator, a role that he will return to with much more gravity when, at the play’s end, he assumes responsibility for telling Hamlet’s story. He even adopts one of Fortinbras’s lines at the finale — “[Let] these bodies / High on a stage be placed to the view” — and when he says it, we hear not a dictator organizing a military funeral but a stage manager preparing for a literal eternity of performances of Hamlet.
In cautioning Ophelia not to trust Hamlet’s declarations of love, Laertes shows a similar subliminal awareness of the play-world he inhabits. He warns his sister that Hamlet “may not, as unvalued persons do, / Carve for himself, for on his choice depends / The safety and health of this whole state.” By “whole state” he typically means Denmark, but in this production Laertes (the compelling Anatol Yusef) gestures to us, the audience, and around the room at the chairs, the table, the lighting grid. Laertes is warning his sister, This story depends on him, and there’s only one way it can go. Likewise, when plotting to send Hamlet to England, Claudius (the superb Ritchie Coster) growls that he can’t outright punish his troublesome stepson, because “he’s loved of the distracted multitude.” Those last two words can only mean us. We, the audience, love Hamlet, and our imaginary forces hold sway in this room; Claudius, Laertes, and the rest of this ensemble maintain an understated awareness that they are acting in Hamlet’s play. This is not nudge-nudge-wink-wink mugging; the actors are not nodding their heads at us and mouthing, as Hamlet might have it, “Well, well we know.” A showier self-consciousness of theatrical artifice is fairly common on the stage these days. There is something subtler at work here — an investigation of the paradoxical alchemy of sincerity and deceit that lies at the heart of Hamlet and of theater itself.
The layers of this theatrical onion are further multiplied by the fact that the nine-person company of players doubles as … the Company of Players. By limiting the number of bodies onstage and letting each one accumulate valences of meaning, Gold sounds Shakespeare’s play like a great resonant bell. Seeing the Player King/Player Queen scene played out in the bodies of Gertrude and Claudius (who is also the ghost of Old Hamlet) is a revelation: Often delivered with self-conscious puffy artifice, here the scene feels like a moment out of time, like watching Hamlet witness a moment that might truly have taken place between his mother and his sickly father. And the Player King’s warning to his Queen — that she won’t be able to keep her vows never to remarry — rings with pathos and prophecy: “Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.” So says this false king — this actor — prefiguring Hamlet’s recognition of the “divinity that shapes our ends” and summing up in a single line the tragedy of the prince’s character. What is Hamlet if not a creature of thought, doomed to an end none of his own?
Or take the doubling of Laertes and the Lead Player, who enters into a friendly competition with Hamlet over their shared delivery of the great Pyrrhus speech. The Player astounds Hamlet with his ability to “force his soul so to his own conceit” — he can make himself weep on cue! “For nothing! For Hecuba!” — which drives Hamlet to the frenzied contemplation of his own inaction. By this point, the Hamlet who could clearly separate performance from substance is gone: He now longs to act in all senses of the word, even if it means conflating those senses. In attempting to follow the Player’s example, Hamlet substitutes performance for the real action he so craves (and fears), winding up screaming melodramatically into the winds (“Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! / O, vengeance!”) and, here, doing great violence to a dish of lasagna. No wonder Isaac looks up afterwards — the clown who tried to play the avenger — and cracks a wry, abashed smile: “Why, what an ass am I!”
Though Hamlet knows in his most lucid moments that the performance of a thing is not the thing itself, he remains obsessed with the enactment of his own feelings, as if performing them paradoxically proves their honesty. When this Hamlet confronts Laertes at Ophelia’s grave (“What is he whose grief / Bears such an emphasis?”), we have already seen these two men compete in the performance of grief. First, it was for Hecuba, a mere fantasy, a play. Now, it is for Ophelia, a real woman whom they both loved. Laertes and Hamlet are both wracked by real anguish, and they are also playing at it: Who loved her more? Who can mourn her better? It’s a wrenching thing to watch — who among us has not felt something deeply and simultaneously felt ourselves performing the feeling? Acting is in our nature; we long to be witnessed.
Is such ore always there for the mining in this scene between the grieving lover and the grieving brother? Yes. But does every Hamlet mine it? No. It is the mark of a deeply intelligent production when it makes you hear anew a work encrusted with so many barnacles of historical, literary, and theatrical precedent.
They don’t call it “Poem Unlimited” for nothing. The glory of Hamlet is its unsoundable depth. Another director with another production might strike its great bell from a slightly different angle and produce completely different resonances. Another director might be as fascinated by kingship, war, and affairs of state as Sam Gold is by layers of theatricality. Still, while Gold might have stripped the play of its original political context, this “intimate” production has not been stripped of politics. Its seeming domesticity is deceptive; it has something pointed to say about the political state of our world, but its tool is a needle, not a bludgeon. By its indirections, we find directions out.
“Ay sir,” quips Hamlet to Polonius, “to be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.” It’s a great line, always, but at this moment I heard it cut the air with a new sharpness. That word, honest, rings out over and over in this production. The politics of this Hamlet is a politics of performance, of being and seeming, of sincerity and hypocrisy, truth and corruption. In this way, Gold’s production may well be an abstract and brief chronicle for our time. After all, how many of our highest politicians might currently be asking themselves, “May one be pardoned and retain the offence?”
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gamerszone2019-blog · 5 years ago
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Civilization 6 Now Has A Battle Royale Mode
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Civilization 6 Now Has A Battle Royale Mode
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What started as an April Fool’s joke has become a reality, as turn-based strategy game Sid Meier’s Civilization VI sees a battle royale mode called Red Death added to its September update. The update also features a smorgasbord of new content, and it’s free for PC owners who own the base game.
Red Death tasks you with besting up to 12 other players as you race to secure the only spot on the last ship ditching the planet. It’s not the complete Civ VI experience, as it only features eight apocalypse-themed factions with a variety of in-game advantages. Publisher 2K Games shared a detailed promotional video, below, outlining everything available in Red Death. There’s no confirmation on whether the mode will appear on other platforms.
A press release elaborated on Red Death’s origin. Multiplayer engineering lead Bradley Olson implemented the battle royale mode in an April 1 build of Civ VI. Not a single developer on the team noticed. After Olson pointed out the mode’s stealthy addition at a design meeting, a play session was set up so everyone could try it out. Not long after, with the art team developing assets and the design team expanding the scope, Red Death was born as Civ VI’s first battle royale mode.
Civ VI’s September update is available to download now and with it comes an assortment of new features, balance tweaks, and fixes. Lead producer Dennis Shirk shared what’s new and what’s changed in a YouTube video. Some of these include strengthening coastal cities, adding six new maps, giving Great Admirals new bonuses, and more. You can check out the full patch notes below.
Civilization VI September update patch notes
Features
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Red Death Multiplayer Scenario
General notes
If you still have a Civilian unit, then you are still in the game. Once your last Civilian is killed, you will have been eliminated. Be the last remaining player with a Civilian to win.
The Red Death is the radioactive mass that is consuming the planet. A Safe Zone ring will appear on the map. Periodically this ring will shrink. Keep your units inside the ring to avoid the Red Death.
On the top-left on the in-game screen is the Red Death tracker. The left portion tells the player how many turns until the ring shrinks, and the right-hand portion tells the player how much damage units will take if they end their turn inside the Red Death.
Red Death damage increases as the game progresses.
When the ring shrinks, the Red Death will advance each turn until it reaches the ring. This gives units caught outside of the ring some time to reach the safe zone.
Units cannot heal in the Red Death.
You can gain new units and supplies in the following ways:
Find and clear City Ruins to gain equipment. These appear as war-torn cities with stacks of crates and flares around them. A Ruined City can grant experience points, an Infantry, a Machine Gunner, an AT crew, or another Civilian.
Clearing a Raider Camp grants either a Helicopter Gunship, an AT Crew, or a Thermonuclear device (once you receive one, any of your combat units can use it).
Once the “Red Death” ring starts to advance, Supply Drops can appear near the ring edge (also has a notification so you can find them). These lucrative drops can grant either a Tank, a Mobile Artillery, or a Thermonuclear device.
Oceans and Lakes are corrosive and will damage your units each turn as you cross, so be quick!
Global heal rate increased from normal for fast-paced gameplay.
Units have unique promotion trees. Promoting units heals only 25 HP.
Raiders are random opponents that wander the map, making opportunity attacks on players from their camps. Raider units take no damage from the Red Death.
A typical match will take anywhere from 15-50 minutes depending on the number of players, and skill of play.
Factions:
Cultists: “Observing The End,” All units have +3 sight.
Doomsday Preppers: “Always Prepare for The Worst,” All units have +100% experience bonus.
Borderlords: “Living On The Edge,” +10 Combat Strength when 3 hexes or closer to the Safe Zone border.
Jocks: “Witness Perfection,” +5 Combat Strength.
Mad Scientists: “This Will Only Hurt A Bit,” All units heal 2x faster.
Mutants: “Radiant Personalities,” -50 Red Death damage. “Radioactive Movement,” +3 Movement for all units in the Red Death.
Pirates: “Water Logged,” All units take 50% less water damage and ignore additional movement cost from embarking and disembarking.
Wanderers: “See You Later,” Infantry and Machine Gunners, as well as Civilians in formation with them, have faster Movement on Woods, Rainforest, and Hill terrain.
UI:
Quick-join matchmaking added to front-end menu
“How to Play” section added to front-end menu.
Safe Zone displayed as a blue area on the map and mini map. Red Death displayed as a red area on the map and mini map.
Changed mini map tooltips to be more useful for the scenario. Tooltip displays whether tiles are in the Safe Zone or the Red Death.
Added mini map icons for the City Ruins, Supply Drops, and Raider Camps.
New Maps
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Mirror Map: Randomly generated, balanced four-player map ideal for competitive multiplayer matches. Has option to mirror start positions as well.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Terra: A continents map where all major civilizations start on the largest continent.
Primordial: A map from an early time with unpredictable continents and islands. More volatile conditions exist with extra coastal lowlands and volcanoes. Try it on Disaster 4!
Tilted Axis: A polar projection of a continents map.
Splintered Fractal: A highly random map that will often form thin, snaky continents and islands.
Continents and Islands: Continents with more islands.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Add Lakes map to all rulesets
Add more small lakes to the Lakes map.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Move Seven Seas and Small Continents to all rule sets (before it was Gathering Storm only).
Balance/Polish
Civs
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Exploitive Agenda: Adjusted some of the parameters on the Exploitative Agenda to make it care more about how many tiles are improved. Also bumped up the threshold for “sparsely improved”.
Maori Civ Ability: Change the production from Unimproved Rainforest and Woods. Before it read “Unimproved Woods and Rainforest are +1 Production, becoming +2 once the Conservation civic is unlocked.” Now it reads “Unimproved Woods and Rainforest are +1 Production. Additional +1 Production from Mercantilism and +2 Production from Conservation.
[XP1, XP2] Georgia Civ Ability Addition: +50% Production towards defensive buildings.
Governments
Added an extra policy card slot for each of the Tier 4 Governments: 3 Military for Corporate Libertarianism (was 2), 3 Diplomatic for Digital Democracy (was 2), 3 Economic for Synthetic Technocracy (was 2).
Great People
Great Admirals
Themistocles: Instantly creates a Quadrireme unit. +20% Production towards units of the Naval Ranged promotion class.
Leif Erikson: +1 Sight Range for all naval units. Allows all naval units to move over ocean tiles without the required technology.
Rajendra Chola: +3 Combat Strength for all naval units.
Zheng He: Grants a free Trader unit in this city and increases Trade Route capacity by 1. Foreign Trade Routes to this city provides +2 Gold to both cities.
Francis Drake: Instantly creates a Privateer with 1 promotion level. Military units get +50% rewards for plundering sea Trade Routes.
Ferdinand Magellan: Grants 1 free copy of the Luxury resource on this tile to your Capital city. Gain 300 gold (on Standard speed).
Ching Shih: Gain 500 Gold (on Standard speed). Military units get +60% rewards for plundering sea Trade Routes.
Horatio Nelson: Instantly builds a Lighthouse and Shipyard in this district. +50% flanking bonus for all naval units.
Chester Nimitz: Instantly creates a Submarine unit with 1 promotion level. Grants 1 Oil per turn. +20% Production towards units of the Naval Raider promotion class.
Grace Hopper: Unlocks 2 random technologies.
Improvements, Buildings, and Wonders
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Mausoleum at Halicarnassus: +1 Science, +1 Faith, and +1 Culture on all Coast tiles for this city. Great Engineers have an additional charge. Must be built adjacent to a Harbor district.
Lighthouse: Now also provides +2 Housing if Harbor is adjacent to City Center.
Fishery: Now also provides 0.5 Housing.
Shipyard: Now also provides +1 Production to all unimproved coastal tiles in this city.
Camp: Now provides +2 Gold. Synthetic Materials also provides additional gold.
Plantation: Feudalism now increases Plantation yield by +1 Food.
Fishing Boats: Colonialism increases Fishing Boats yield by +1 Production.
Districts
Campuses now also receive a major adjacency for Reefs.
Map Gen
Increase the Water Luxuries on Splintered Fractal.
Reefs are no longer placed adjacent to Rivers.
Rock Bands
Promotions
Album Cover Art: Performs as if 1 level more experienced on Wonder tiles (Reduced from 2 levels).
Indie: Performing a concert causes that city to lose 40 loyalty (Reduced from 50 loyalty).
Music Festival: Can now also perform concerts on National Wonders.
Pop Star: Earn Gold equal to 25% of the Tourism generated (Was 50% Gold).
Space Rock: Performs at Spaceports and Campuses for +500 Tourism and 1 level more experienced (Can play at Campuses w/ no Uni for 500 or with Uni for 1000) (Was 1000 tourism at Spaceports and 1 Level).
Surf Band: Performs at Seaside Resorts and Harbors for +500 Tourism and 1 level more experienced (Can play at Harbors w/ no Shipyard for 500 or with Shipyard for 1000) (Was 500 tourism at Seaside Resorts and 1 Level).
World Congress
Nobel Prize in Physics: (Gold tier gets the Silver tier as well which is the same for all scored competitions)
Gold Tier: 1 Tech boost, Increases the accumulation of resources in cities with a University by 1 (Updated).
Silver Tier: 1 Tech boost, Increases the accumulation of resources in cities with a Research Lab by 1 (Updated).
Bronze Tier: 1 Tech boost (same).
Diplomacy
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Protectorate War no longer triggers a Betrayal Emergency.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Unit Abilities UI Exposures
Multiple Leader and Civ assigned unit modifiers have been converted to unit abilities so they can be tracked in the UI.
Units with Anti-Air strength now have unit ability text describing its function.
Added abilities and text descriptions for Ranged and Bombard unit buffs/debuffs.
Unit modifiers granted by retiring Great Generals and Great Admirals are now applied as unit abilities so they can be displayed in the unit abilities UI list.
Natural Disasters
Reduce the likelihood of most damage effects from Hurricanes by a third.
The Veterancy Military Policy (unlocked by Military Training a Classical Civic) now includes Harbors and Harbor buildings.
UI – All Game Versions
Front End
Change “Additional Content” to be a sub-menu that hosts “MODS, Hall of Fame, and Credits”. This reduces the main menu from 10 items (information overload) to 8 items.
New Map Type UI when starting a new game that features filtering and icon visualizations for the different maps. Only on “Create Game” and “Advanced Setup” menus in single player.
Single Player “Jersey” Support: Setup/Advanced Setup now allows the player to select their civilization color (jersey).
Leader list is now alphabetical, rather than grouped by release.
End Game
Add quick fade up of leader portrait (without a movie it looked jarring to snap from hide to show).
Fix ESC restarting end game movie.
Pantheon Chooser
Selected pantheon can now be cleared by clicking the button in the top panel.
Chooser now plays its slide animation when opening.
Adjusted button working/style to match other Chooser screens.
The Religion keybinding will now properly open/close the Pantheon Chooser.
Misc
Government Screen: Government card policy slot icons will squish together if they overflow the Government card to avoid overlap.
Pagination for Gossip Report added.
Added hotkey for the Power Lens.
Add a confirmation dialog box for when you are going to remove a feature by settling.
AI
Domination
Improve ability to use GDR’s (or other mixed melee/range) to take cities.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Allow units to move out of threatened areas when endangered, even on neutral territory. This manifested in AI units staying still and fortified while being attacked by ranged or air until they were dead.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Some bias adjustments to improve attacks on enemy cities.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Improve range/bombard garrisoning and improve melee garrison logic to attack when it is safe.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Don’t try to assemble city attacks for target cities that have an unclear or hidden path. Improve ability to protect embarked units.
World Congress
Favor Trades: Adjust some favor trade values to make deals more viable.
Normalize evaluation of emergency projects (Send Aid was especially overvalued).
Mercenary Companies: AI no longer always chooses choice B, “Faith.”
Great Works
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Rework of how AI arranges and places Great Works to maximize culture generation. Corrected an issue that could cause the AI to “throw away” a Great Work.
Misc
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Ensure AI finds rally points that are on the map.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Try to improve culture civ’s race for Theater Squares.
Performance
Significant optimization and improvements to Volcano VFX.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Perf optimizations to both Shaka and Mansu Musa.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Reduced memory usage.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Additional graphics performance improvements.
Bugs
Production Overflow
Add the concept of ‘salvage’ production to the Build Queue. Previously, when salvaging production from a lost Wonder build, the production was added directly back to the build queue. This caused problems of not knowing where the extra overflow came from as well as causing build production to happen when the player’s turn was not active.
e. Player A and B are making the same Wonder. Player A takes their turn, then Player B takes their turn and finishes the Wonder. The salvage production would be added to Player A’s build queue immediately, possibly causing something to complete if the player had multiple things in their build queue.
Now, when the salvage production is given to player A, it is stored and then applied to player A’s production overflow when player A becomes turn active again. This also fixes the issue of losing legitimate overflow, where we force clear production overflow on turn end to prevent a user from ‘banking’ overflow by force-ending their turn when a city has no production.
Fixed an issue where production on a unit could be transferred to something else by removing that unit from the production queue.
UI
When purchasing something in a city, make sure that if it was already in the build queue, it goes through the motions of removing the item in the build queue as if it were complete, so that if it was the first item, the next item in the build queue starts building properly.
The user was able to open but was unable to close the World Congress screen while the game is paused in multiplayer.
Fixed multiple Gossip reports issues.
Fix usable scroll area and logo clipping for various resolutions.
Remove the rank border designating a score tier while participating in a non-scored Emergency during gameplay.
A misleading “Location Pin” icon was present for Projects, Competitions, and Emergencies when the player views the Active Effects menu in the World Congress.
The “previous results” icon was appearing in low resolution when voting on a Resolution that has appeared before in the World Congress.
The target civ icon was appearing low resolution when viewing a Military Emergency.
The Alliance Points appeared with a zero denominator when viewed after an Alliance expires during expansion gameplay.
Climate Screen – Use the territory name as a fallback for continent name for climate events which will usually give us names for bodies of water.
Production/Gold/Faith production buttons will now be highlighted properly based on which production panel is currently selected.
Gameplay
Fixed a bug where pillaged districts in a conquered city would cost the full production price to repair. Now they cost 25% as intended.
Fixed a bug where pillaged districts would not regain applied bonuses upon repair.
Changed Mapuche’s Toqui experience bonus ability to be permanent on units so that it remains even after the governor is removed from the city.
Pillaged dams no longer prevent flooding.
The Swap Units operation was ignoring the ZoC state of the units, giving you the possibility of an extra move for a unit in the ZoC.
Fixed an issue that was preventing units that have the appropriate ability from attacking twice in a single turn.
Don’t apply Grievances if a player conquers a City-State you have never met.
Prevent Laurier from taking the Exploitative random agenda
Eject rock bands from a player’s territory when they adopt the Music Censorship policy.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Tomyris’ heal after kill ability was incorrectly being applied multiple times.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Polish Hussar pushback ability was not working correctly.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Air units can no longer attack plots marked as impassable.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Fixed an issue with military buildings not applying their XP bonus correctly.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Fixed incorrect modifier being applied by Royal Navy Dockyard.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Fix the Colossal Heads not providing faith with every 2 adjacent woods.
Unit Abilities
Fixed missing text description for Drone unit bonus ability. Changed Drone unit Civilopedia description text to be more accurate.
Fixed missing unit ability description for Observation Balloon range bonus. Changed Observation Balloon Civilopedia description to be more accurate.
Fixed text description for Supply Convoy movement bonus ability.
Misc
Mountain Tunnels, Qhapaq Nan, and Ski Resorts (improvements on Mountains) can no longer be destroyed (or pillaged) by natural disasters.
Transfer canal navigation properties on city capture.
Crash
Multiple crash fixes as seen in the public bug collector.
Fix a crash in the Australia scenario that could occur after a random event.
Art
Adding a low-quality version of the volcano that gets used if the VFX quality setting is low.
Apply FOW blending in river overlay pass.
the game camera on the Ski Resort will now shake the snow. Why? Just ‘cuz.
Adjusted volcano visuals to feel more volumetric and rolling/boiling.
Modding
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] World Builder
Added first pass at hand-drawn river flooding.
Edge case notes:
Only works for floodplains at least 3-long.
Only works for hand-created maps, not adjusted map-script created maps.
There are a couple places where a user may place a floodplain where it will never flood (like sharing a plain with another river branch, for example).
Use our own custom overlay type for Continent mode with more vibrant colors.
Normalize order of tool hotkeys and added them to the tooltips for user discoverability.
Integrate World Builder properly into the main menu flow instead of hanging off a weird button in the mods screen.
Fix several usability issues in Map Editor.
Add tooltips to the placement and plot mode buttons.
Stop the placement panel from eating the mouse around it.
Expose wonder distance check to Lua and wire up specific error message.
Fix many bugs related to changing terrain type and having resources/features/improvements go away when they’re no longer compatible.
Show different continents in different colors when in Continent mode.
Only show spawn location icons in Advanced Mode.
Hide the tools palette when the Player Editor or Map Editor are up. This is necessary for 1024×768 screens.
Don’t show labels options in World Builder that don’t work.
Allow brush usage in Continent mode.
Fix some flipped tests that were locking out improvements unnecessarily.
Fixed text for rivers and cliffs to distinguish between placing and removing.
Split feature and Natural Wonder placement modes.
Fixup Natural Wonder undo when dealing with multi-tile features, especially ones that also modify the terrain as well. i.e. Lake NWs changing the terrain to coast.
Advanced Mode
Don’t show spurious “Wonder” district in Player Editor anymore.
Add labels to all the items in the General tab of the player editor.
Don’t create any units alongside a barbarian camp in the WB editor.
We don’t support Garrison strength editing so don’t even show it.
Districts are now placeable through the Plot Editor Districts can now be pillaged by the Placement Tool or Plot Editor.
Delete units when a player is edited.
Fix case where capital city would have no name if you changed a civ’s leader to not match (Should help with mod civs too).
Fixed issues with the Plot Editor Improvement Pillaged checkbox. Fixed null error which prevented the Placement tool from placing improvements. Pillaged checkbox for Improvements now works with the Placement tool.
Tiled Map Importer
Fix additional crashes seen in the wild when importing maps from Tiled editor.
Misc
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Removed constraint on map start positions that only allowed 1 entry for map/plot, as it was too restrictive for modders.
[ALL GAME VERSIONS] Looking up localized text in mods will now fall-back to other languages before failing.
Source : Gamesport
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