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i'm obsessed with hamlet. serial procrastinator, famous yapper, who monologues any time anything goes even mildly wrong. he gets POISON STABBED, and instead of dropping dead like his mother, his uncle, and his opponent, he MONOLOGUES ABOUT IT. HE PROCRASTINATES DYING TO MONOLOGUE ABOUT IT. there's just something so beautiful about him clinging to life to deliver one last baller speech

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i need a production of hamlet that draws parallels between horatio and gertrude. we’re all so willing to believe and even sympathize with horatio loving hamlet despite the harm hamlet causes, why have we never considered if gertrude felt the same for claudius? just the concept of this enduring, unconditional love, love that blinds itself past the horrors the beloved commits. the only difference between them is that horatio never reached a breaking point, gertrude did. claudius tried to kill her son and suddenly that love found something it couldn’t overlook

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i know the traditional interpretation of the Yorick skull scene is the classic one handed held out dramatically pose, but consider- Hamlet gently cradles the skull of an old friend with both hands, holding it with respect for the life that was once within it, as he considers the nature of death and his own mortality.

One scene later, as Hamlet dies in Horatio’s arms, he loses the energy needed to move himself and Horatio tenderly cradles his head in the same way so he can continue looking into his old friend’s eyes as he goes. If there was time left, Hamlet might consider how as he loses feeling in his flesh, all that’s left is the hardness of his own bones, and in time that’s all that will remain. It’s the same sort of contemplation, but now he’s on the other side of death.

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Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

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One of my favourite questions for figuring out a character’s motivations is which qualities they most fear being assigned to them. Are they afraid (consciously or unconsciously) of being seen as stupid? Ungrateful? Weak? Incompetent? Lazy? Cowardly? Intimidating? Like they actually care? etc.

It’s such a fun way to explore into who they are, why they do what they do, what they don’t do out of fear, and how they might be affected by the events of the story. And I love when characters have negative motivations—trying to avoid something (in this case, being seen a particular way) as much as they’re trying to achieve a goal.

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source article

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hamlet production but every hamlet soliloquy he talks directly to the audience, like looks them IN THE EYES and talk to them like a preacher to the church !!!! He finds solace in knowing that there are people that can see what he is seeing, knowing that theres always people he can talk to that wont even have the chance to tell anyone in the play his plans. Also in said production he often says his asides or what he's saying to himself to the crowd. Like in Act l when he says "a little more than kin and less than kind." he says that TOO THE CROWD like a silly little comedian.

also to theif and steal this post, in the ending scene horatio 100% looks up and finally sees what hamlet was seeing and he finally understands.

I'll come back to this if ive got more truth to preach

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— Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

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Something about Hamlet and grief. How everything starts because of a son mourning his father, and going to extreme lengths to find some sort of resolution to fill the aching hole in his heart, to avenge his father. How in seeking this he only manages to destroy what he still has. How in his grief-stricken quest for revenge, he kills his love's father, and she in turn is made mad with grief. How her brother's grief serves as a direct parallel to Hamlet's. How both Ophelia and Laertes' mother's absence, though never directly referenced, hangs over the family's every scene. How, in the end, Hamlet and Laertes and Ophelia destroy each other and everything around them in their grief. How none of it fixed anything. Claudius dies, sure, and Denmark is rid of one asshole king in a long line of asshole kings. His successor is Fortinbras of Norway, another character mourning the loss of a father, though notably (and I think intentionally) devoid of much significant characterization. It isn't satisfying or overtly tragic that he is the one to inherit the throne. It means nothing to the audience because it means nothing in the end. Horatio is left to be the last to grieve, as Laertes grieved a sister, killed by grief of her father, killed by Hamlet seeking revenge in grief for his father, who lost a father, and that father lost lost his. All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

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The BBC is releasing over 16,000 sound effects for free download

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I read Hamlet back in high school and to this day my absolute favorite thing about it was when Guildenstern was trying to fool Hamlet into doing something or other and Hamlet’s savvy to it but rather than saying “you’re lying and trying to trick me” instead Hamlet outta nowhere whips out this flute and tells Guildenstern to play it.

And Guildenstern is all “I dont know how to play a flute, my lord”

And Hamlet takes a dramatic pause before he absolutely ruins Guildenstern with, “Well thats funny considering you thought you could play me”

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“Where’s the pathetic element?” Exactly Tom Hardy. Exactly.

(x)

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The point of writing is to put humanity on the surgical table and do the goddamn autopsy. Your pen if the scalpel and this is the work.

And inside, between that ribs and amidst the gore and the pretension do you know what you find?

Everything.

The human soul is Pandora's Box and inside that you find all the cruelty, misery and grief and sadness you can imagine, and more you can't.

And you'll also find joy.

Incredibly there are flowers growing between those ribs and the blood doesn't stain them.

You'll find humor beyond measure and grace enough to drown the rage. And you'll find happiness, too, a desperate relief at being alive.

And this is what you write about. Anything and everything in between.