Category: Hamlet

Hamlet endures due to its complex characters, psychological depth, and exploration of universal themes such as death, revenge, and the human condition. Its enduring popularity is also attributed to its poetic language, memorable quotes, and its influence on literature, film, and popular culture. Hamlet’s themes and characters continue to be studied and adapted in various forms, making it one of Shakespeare’s most famous and frequently performed plays. Its timeless appeal lies in its ability to speak to audiences across generations, cultures, and languages, and its place as a cornerstone of Western literature.

Browse the text of Hamlet entire play here.

Silent Hamlet

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What did Hamlet look like in 1910?  I’m not talking about the Sarah Bernhardt version (1900), although it’s awesome that we have that.

No, I’m talking about this Italian production, which at first confused the heck out of me until I realized that it is just a collection of scenes, and not the whole play:

How many scenes do you recognize? I see Hamlet enter, reading. I see crazy Ophelia with her flowers. The special effects for the ghost scenes are lovely!  Wonderful to get an example of how they were experimenting with the medium over a century ago. There’s not even any sound, but they’re making ghosts.  Awesome.

The YouTube description calls this an Italian production, so I was surprised to see a card that reads “Der Wahnsinn Der Ophelia,” which I’m gonna go ahead and guess is actually German. Google translate happily tells me it means, “The madness of Ophelia.”

I could sit and watch this all night.  They actually add a scene where Ophelia discovers the dead body of her father!  How cool is that, that even without any text to work with, they’re still open to the interpretation of adding new scenes?

I tried to get more details on who these people are, but would you believe that IMDB lists two different 1910 Hamlets?

Shakespeare Take 2 : Hamlet and Ophelia in Couple’s Therapy

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I was sent this video from the producer/creator/Ophelia, Emily Newhouse, and I found it amusing enough to post for Shakespeare Day.

What if Hamlet and Ophelia went to couples therapy?  Yes, “You killed my dad!” / “Why can’t you let that go?!” does come up.

[ Full link here, in case the player’s not working properly for you. ]

I think my favorite part (which happens to be in the screenshot, I notice) is when Hamlet shifts over to puppets, and puppet Hamlet is also manning tiny puppet Ophelia and puppet Hamlet.

Of course, counseling or psychoanalyzing Shakespeare’s characters has been popular fodder for ages. Who can forget Monty Python’s Hamlet at the Psychiatrist?

See Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet Live This Thursday!

~ duane ~ 1 Comment

This Thursday, October 15, you might be lucky enough to see Benedict Cumberbatch’s Hamlet in your local theatre!

This is a Hamlet for a world on the edge: a warning from history, and a plea for new ideas from a new generation

-Variety

A fresh, dynamic staging with a vivid, supple performance at its heart.

-Financial Times

Is anybody going to get to see this?  I have an event at my kids’ school that night (and it may be with gritted teeth but kids come before Shakespeare), but the web site does say Encore Performances on Oct 22, so maybe I’ll get lucky!

UPDATE : After relating this story to my kids they were all, “Daddy, of *course* you go see the Shakespeare.  This school thing happens every year, and you’ve already been to them the last couple of years anyway. Shakespeare over this.”

Huzzah!

I then discovered that all my local showings are sold out. šŸ™

On the one hand I’m happy that there’s this much interest in a Shakespeare event!  But, of course, bummed that I’m not going to be a part of it.  Hoping for a DVD release hot on the heels of the live show :)!

Hamlet Didn’t Have A Tragic Flaw, He Just Had Bad Luck

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At any point during a Shakespeare tragedy should we just kind of look at it and think, “Dang, you know, that was just really unlucky”?  How about Polonius being behind the arras in the first place? Sure, it was pretty impulsive of Hamlet to just go all stabby all of a sudden, if he’d done that literally any other time when somebody wasn’t back there, the play would go totally differently.
The article linked above asks why we feel obliged to pretend luck doesn’t play a factor.  Luck suggests that even if you don’t do the right things, you can still come out ahead (people like to cite Bill Gates, college drop out, as a great example here). Or, that you can do everything right and still one day tragedy strikes and you lose everything. It’s hard to accept that sort of randomness, because it acknowledges a complete lack of control.  If I choose a certain path, I want to expect that certain things will happen. If an unexpected thing happens, my brain wants to go back and create a new path that I must have taken to get myself to that spot.
Personally I believe in the theory that says, “At any given time, you are the sum total of your experiences and decisions up to that point.”  I always take issue when people say something like, “I’m happy with my life, I just wish that X had been different.”  You can’t have it that way, because if X had been different, then everything that came after X would also be different.
Luck, therefore, is part of the definition — a thing happened at a certain time because of conditions that all your previous decisions got you into. Luck is basically the uncontrollable bit.  Sure, Hamlet decided to go to his mother’s room, get all upset, and murder the tapestry.  But nothing he did was responsible for putting Polonius back there. Sure, sure, you could argue that the whole play-within-a-play, which deliberately pissed off Claudius, set Polonius into action, but ultimately Polonius has free will as well that Hamlet does not control.
I guess the whole point is, does the tragic flaw exist? Or is it just a construct we put in place after the fact, to rationalize what is ultimately just a series of uncontrollable events, making your choices like waltzing through a mine field and hoping your next one doesn’t blow up in your face. 

How does Horatio die in Hamlet?

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Horatio at Hamlet's death
Horatio at Hamlet’s death. Image via Wikipedia commons

He doesn’t. He’s what you sometimes hear referred to as the “exception that proves the rule.” Ā Like how at the end of Hamlet, everybody dies. Except Horatio.

The official body count in the final scene (Act 5 Scene 2) of Hamlet is four: Ā Gertrude, Laertes, Claudius, Hamlet. Enter Fortinbras, who says “What happened here?” and Horatio is left to tell the tale.

Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 film version may have also killed off Osric (the referee, for lack of a more description term), it’s difficult to tell. In Branagh’s version, Fortinbras is actively invading the castle while the final duel takes place between Hamlet and Laertes. Osric is seen being taken by surprise and stabbed. However, he then returns to the scene to deliver his line about Fortinbras’ “warlike volley.”

In some interpretations, such as Ingmar Bergman’s 1986 production, Horatio is killed at the end of the play. When Fortinbras orders, “Bid the soldiers shoot,” some directors have taken that as licenseĀ to execute Horatio, presumably as the last remaining witness to all that had taken place. It’s important to note that there is nothing in the text to indicate this (just like Osric’s death above). However, there’s two ways to die in a play. Either the script says you die, or else you eventually just run out of lines. Once you’re no longer part of the action (such as Osric), you might fall victim to artistic license and find yourself dead at the end of Act 5 whether Shakespeare wanted it that way or not.