@colinthrobinson / colinthrobinson.tumblr.com
A modernization of hamlet that takes place in a bakery called “the danish king” and its kinda slapstick kinda not and hamlet is cleaning up the bakery, knocks a bag of flour, and the cloud of flour becomes his dads ghost and as their conversation ends he’s just looking at his reflection in the bakery window covered in flour and he wonders if he’s going mad
So, let’s talk male-male relationships in this time, shall we? Hey y’all! I actually am getting around to this now! Now some disclaimers overall: I am an undergrad. I’m not like an expert in any way shape or form. This is just the conclusion I reached in a 9-12 page essay for a 10 week class on renaissance literature. Additionally I feel as though I may have misrepresented the amount of this paper that is explicitly about the use of the word “sweet.” It is an important part of my paper because it complicates the topic in a weird way. I am in no way done with this paper, it’s something I want to continue to research, refine my thesis, and eventually maybe get this shit published. But for now, I’ll talk about the stuff that I have done. Probably gonna put this under a cut because this could get aggressively long.
some fun facts about the production of hamlet i’m in right now:
and finally:
OP do you have a recording
LINKS BROKEN BC THE SCHOOL DELETED MY DIRECTOR’S ACCOUNTS. did anyone ever download this production? please let me know so we can recover it!!
In honor of the Ides of March, my favorite Tiktok
"Oh, not you as well, Brutus!" in that voice is the best translation of 'Et tu, Brute?' I've ever heard.
girl I would kill myself if I did that lol
reading harry potter actively makes you less literate
j why did you censor the name of the scottish play
I think doing that is way funnier than saying the Scottish play, and I’m not going to risk actually saying the name and having something bad happen
i just realized despite me making fun of you for saying m*cbeth, i refused to say it myself. i am fucked up
even I, the op, flinched while writing it in the notes 😔
shakespeare isnt special my autistic friends can all talk in a pattern too
I think I found my new favorite rabbit hole. This voice actor does Shakespeare scenes in a southern accent and I need to see the whole damn play. Absolutely beautiful
if you're not from the us american south, there's some amazing nuances to this you may have missed. i can't really describe all of them, because i've lived here my whole life and a lot of the body language is sort of a native tongue thing. the body language is its own language, and i am not so great at teaching language. i do know i instinctively sucked on my lower teeth at the same time as he did, and when he scratched the side of his face, i was ready to take up fucking arms with him.
but y'all. the way he said "brutus is an honourable man" - each and every time it changed just a little. it was the full condemnation Shakespeare wanted it to be. it started off slightly mock sincere. barely trying to cover the sarcasm. by the end...it wasn't a threat, it was a promise.
christ, he's good.
the eliding of “you all” to “y’all” while still maintaining 2 syllables is a deliberate and brilliant act of violence. “bear with me” said exactly like i’ve heard it at every funeral. the choices of breaking and re-establishing of eye contact. the balance of rehearsed and improvised tone. A+++ get this man a hollywood contract.
yknow if romeo had just Cried on juliets corpse for a couple hours instead of drinking poison Right Then they would have been Fine
The moral of the story is: always take time to cry for a few hours before making important decisions.
So I’m more or less being facetious here, but this is actually a thing.
Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.
Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.
That’s the irony and the tragedy of the story. Hamlet knows his tropes and actively tries to avoid them, and the tropes get him anyway. It’s inevitable, the tropes are hungry.
I want a sticker that says the tropes are hungry so I can put it on my laptop
i met a scholar once who said that tragedies aren’t about a silly “flaw” or anything, it’s about having a hero who’s just in the wrong goddamn story
if hamlet swapped places with othello he wouldn’t be duped by any of iago’s shit, he’d sit down & have a good think & actually examine the facts before taking action. meanwhile in denmark, othello would have killed claudius before act 2 could even start. but instead nope, they’re both in situations where their greatest strengths are totally useless and now we’ve got all these bodies to bury.
The tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story.
I love this post.
Feels
I believe the artist is Katy Doughty.
Here’s a link to Katy’s tumblr!
This is half an MFA right here.
The tropes are always hungry and the tragic hero is just somebody trapped in the wrong damn story.
“The tropes are always hungry and the hero is trapped in the wrong story.” is a phrase I want made into a gorgeously designed giant poster I can hang on the wall.
[This is one of the funniest, most brilliant damn things I’ve ever read. It dates from very early Internet days and I thought it deserved resurrection to Le Tumble]
This recently discovered folio edition of “Hamlet” follows other known versions closely until Act V, Scene II, where it begins to diverge at line 232, as will be seen:
KING: …`Now the king drinks to Hamlet.’ Come, begin, And you the judges, bear a wary eye.
Trumpets sound. HAMLET and LAERTES take their stations
HAMLET: Come on, sir.
LAERTES: Come, my lord.
Enter FRED, DAPHNE, VELMA, SHAGGY, AND SCOOBY
DAPHNE: Wait!
SHAGGY: Stop the fight!
HAMLET and LAERTES put up their foils
KING: I like this not. Say wherefore you do speak?
FRED: Good lord, I pray thee, let thy anger wait. For we, in seeking clues, have found the truth Behind the strange events of latter days.
VELMA: The first clue came from Elsinore’s high walls, Where, so said Hamlet, Hamlet’s ghost did walk. Yet though the elder Hamlet met his death, And perforce hath been buried in the ground, ‘Tis yet true one would not expect a ghost To carry mud upon his spectral boots. Yet mud didst Shaggy and his faithful hound Espy, with footprints leading to a drop. This might, at first, indeed bespeak a ghost… Until, when I did seek for other answers, I found a great, wide cloth of deepest black Discarded in the moat of Elsinore. ‘Tis clear, the “ghost” used this to slow his fall While darkness rendered him invisible.
FRED: The second clue we found, my lord, was this.
KING: It seems to me a portrait of my brother In staine’d glass, that sunlight may shine through.
FRED: But see, my lord, when placed before a lantern–
KING: My brother’s ghost!
HAMLET: My father!
VELMA: Nay, his image.
FRED: In sooth, that image caught the Prince’s eye When he went to confront his lady mother. Nor did his sword pierce poor Polonius. For Hamlet’s blade did mark the castle wall Behind the rent made in the tapestry. Polonius was murdered by another. The knife which killed him entered from behind.
LAERTES: But who?
FRED: Indeed my lords, that you shall see.
HAMLET: And if this ghost was naught but light and air, Then what of that which I did touch and speak to?
The GHOST enters.
GHOST: Indeed, my son.
SHAGGY: Zoinks!
DAPHNE: Jenkies!
GHOST: Mark them not. Thou hast neglected duty far too long. Shall this, my murderer, live on unharmed? Must I remain forever unavenged?
SCOOBY and SHAGGY run away from the GHOST. SCOOBY, looking backward, runs into a tapestry, tearing it down. As a result, tapestries around the walls collapse, one surrounding the GHOST.
GHOST: What?
FRED: Good Osric, pray restrain that “ghost”, That we may reach the bottom of the matter. Now let us see who truly walked tonight.
FRED removes the helm and the disguise from the GHOST’S face.
ALL: Tis Fortinbras!
FRED: The valiant prince of Norway!
FORTINBRAS: Indeed it is, and curses on you all! This Hamlet’s father brought my own to death, And cost me all my rightful heritage. And so I killed this king, and hoped his son Would prove no obstacle to Norway’s crown. Then Claudius bethought himself the killer (As if one might be poisoned through the ear!) The brother, not the son, took Denmark’s throne, And held to Norway with a tighter grip. I swore an end to Denmark’s royal house. I spoke to Hamlet of his uncle’s crimes. Then killed Polonius to spark Laertes. This day, with poison’s aid, all might have died, And Denmark might have come to me as well As my beloved Norway and revenge. My scheme blinded them all, as if by fog But for these medd'ling kids and this their dog.
KING: The villain stands confessed. Now let us go. For much remains to us to be discussed. And suitable reward must needs be found For these, our young detectives and their hound.
EXEUNT OMNES. Copyright 1993 Michael S. Schiffer
neither to be nor not to be but a secret third thing
The question.
neither to be nor not to be but a secret third thing
how many elizabethan people do we think spontaneously realized they were lgbt after watching twelfth night be performed
imagine being a repressed teenager in 1602 and going to the theatre to see the new play that's being put on and it's about a love triangle between a man, a woman, and a woman disguised as a man who both the man and the woman fall in love with, and because it's elizabethan england both the woman and the woman disguised as a man are played by young men. I would have turned transgender on the spot I think
hot as balls 🥵
As a transgender man who is going to be having a baby, I am so glad that by technicality my child will be able to fulfil the prophecy and defeat Macbeth.
To be on the safe side, get a C-section? Macbeth really needs defeating.
Ironically I do have to have a C-section due to a hip problem I have. So it’s double accurate.
I like how this post implies that Macbeth is still out there, most likely terrorizing people, and no one has been able to stop him
do you think the medieval peasants talked about macbeth like people today talk about succession
Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube
… I am unironically here for this
this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life
This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?
Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.
So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.
Here’s the link, yall
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like not to act like it's 2014 but hamlet was written like a million years ago and people on here are still like "that's my friend hamlet". marveling at this and loving it
hamlet from the play hamlet: [insane little soliloquy]
average tumblr user: rest in peace king you would've loved ice coffee
