okay when I direct hamlet I know exactly what I want in the opening scenes
the audience will be in traverse. when they come in hamlet will be sitting in his designated seat, on his phone. audience comes in, house lights down, stage lights up, hamlet is still on his phone. audience to either side confused, maybe annoyed like ‘who does this guy think he is smh smh’. opening battlements scene happens, hamlet pays no attention, doesn’t draw attention to himself, just sits in the audience, probably reading cracked.
end of scene one, start of scene two. claudius gertrude et al enter, take their place up on the raised stage at one end of the traverse. hamlet looks up, takes note, puts away phone. claudius starts his big long speech. hamlet pulls out bag of doritos and very loudly opens them. claudius pretends not to notice as hamlet loudly eats doritos while he tries to do his big diplomatic speech. gertrude is very embarrassed. hamlet is being a little shit. probably annoys audience to either side – offers them a chip, nudges them so he can roll his eyes at something claudius says to them, etc. claudius finishes with laertes, turns to address hamlet. ‘and now our cousin hamlet, and our son (and lil shit I s2g if I didn’t love your mother)’. hamlet addresses his first line (‘a little more than kin and less than kind’) to his neighbour in the audience. not until gertrude suggests that it only ‘seems’ with him does he drop his doritos, stand up, and address his mother. once he’s done with his ‘I know not seems’ speech, he’s embarrassed and angry at having shown such emotion, and sits angrily back down in the audience. he doesn’t get up until partway through ‘too too solid flesh’, which he starts off addressing to his neighbours
takemeinyourdream, tamikaflynned, sting-like-jelly, umm whoever else is into shakespeare and hamlet in particular
Shakespeare is best when done off-kilter, pop-culture and just plain in your face. I would watch the hell out of this, and try to get the seat next to Hamlet for the next performance.
housegreyjoy !!!!!
my favourite part of shakespeare plays is the person at the end that is like “see how these people fucked everything up. don’t do this. look at this fuckery. look at it. fuck this. fuck everything.”
Shakespeare Tragedies Renamed for the Modern tumblr Teen
Titus Andronicus: “Well That Escalated Quickly”
Romeo and Juliet: “Shut Up, You’re Like 12”
Julius Caesar: “I Came Out Here to Run the Roman Empire and I Am Honestly Feeling So Attacked Right Now”
Hamlet: “[AGGRESSIVELY PRETENDS TO GO INSANE AND IN THE PROCESS GOES ACTUALLY INSANE MAYBE]”
Othello: “Othello: Is my wife cheating on me?? Iago: Bitch, she might be.”
King Lear: “Shows Up To Realization of Commonality with Humanity and Renouncement of Titles as Identity-Definers 15 Years Late With Starbucks”
Macbeth: “Did It For the Vine”
Antony and Cleopatra: “Much Rome. Very Egypt. Such Different. Wow.”
The other day I had a really good idea for a story:
A high school Shakespeare club angrily splits into two groups when they can’t agree on the correct interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. One group thinks it’s a cautionary tale about the stupidity of youth and shallow lust; the other group think it’s a beautiful tragedy about poisonous hatred conquered by love. Reconciliation seems impossible-
–then a person from one group falls in love with a person from the other
#it would be better if somehow EVERY OTHER SHAKESPEARE WAS HAPPENING AT ONCE#like you got a benedict and beatice b-story#and then somebody see’s their dad’s ghost#and there’s cross-dressing#and three upperclassmen tell macbeth he will be drama club president
oh my god I need this
nobody dies but SEVEN PEOPLE ARE EXPELLED
We went over Macbeth in class today. There’s a part that says “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown/ And put a barren scepter in my grip,”
Macbeth can’t have kids, you guys.
His scepter is barren. HIS SCEPTER IS BROKEN. Shakespeare just made a dick joke you guys. The entire class was in tears of laughter.
Yeah it’s a dick joke but it’s also kind of sad — YMMV, especially if you think the Macbeths have previously had children, but the reality is that they have no children during the play. Macbeth has no one to pass his crown to, and because Banquo was prophesied as the father to kings though he would never be king himself, this is why Macbeth is threatened by Banquo and his son Fleance. It’s one of the things that feeds his paranoia.
(Of course historically speaking by tanistry standards Macbeth arguable had the better claim to the throne anyway, and it doesn’t seem like Banquo and his family were in line at all, but if you take the throne by force I think you’re likely to be paranoid that someone will take it from you by force.)
I would argue that this isn’t a “dick joke” at all, not in the sense that it’s not about dicks because it obviously is about dicks, but in the sense that it’s not really funny. It’s a penis reference, yes, but it’s not there to make you laugh so much as to underscore Macbeth’s status as a dynastic dead end. After all, his anxieties about posterity are going to lead him to commission the murders of his friend and his friend’s young son (Fleance’s age isn’t specified but he’s young enough to be called “boy”) directly after the end of this speech.
