#hamlet meta

[hamletthedane]

Hamlet’s Age

Not to bring up an age-old debate that doesn’t even matter, but I have been thinking recently how interesting Hamlet’s age is both in-text and as meta-text.

To summarize a whole lot of discussion, we basically only have the following clues as to Hamlet’s age:

Hamlet and Horatio are both college students at Wittenberg. In Early Modern/Late Renaissance Europe, noble boys typically began their university education at 14 and usually completed at their Bachelor’s degree by 18 or 19. However, they may have been studying for their Master’s degrees, which was typically awarded by age 25 at the latest. For reference, contemporary Kit Marlowe was a pretty late bloomer who received a bachelor’s degree at 20 and a master’s degree at 23.

Hamlet is AGGRESSIVELY described as a “youth” by many different characters - I believe more than any other male shakespeare character (other than 16yo Romeo). While usage could vary, Shakespeare tended to use “youth” to mean a man in his late teens/very early 20s (actually, he mostly uses it to describe beardless ‘men’ who are actually crossdressing women - likely literally played by young men in their late teens)

King Hamlet is old enough to be grey-haired, but Queen Gertrude is young enough to have additional children (or so Hamlet strongly implies)

Hamlet talks about plucking out the hairs of his beard, so he is old enough to at least theoretically have a beard

In the folio version, the gravedigger says he became a gravedigger the day of Hamlet’s birth, and that he’s be “sixteene here, man and boy, thirty years.” However, it’s unclear if “sixteene” means “sixteen” or “sexton” (ie has he worked here for 16 years but is 30 years old, or has he been sexton there for thirty years?)

Hamlet knew Yorick as a young child, and the gravedigger says Yorick was buried 23 years ago. However, the first quarto version version of Hamlet says “dozen years” instead of “three and twenty.” This suggests the line changed over time. (Or that the bad quarto sucks - I really need to make that post about it, huh…)

Yorick is a skull, and according to the gravedigger’s expertise, he has thus been dead for at least 7-8 years - implying Hamlet is at least ~15yo if he remembers Yorick from his childhood

One important thing sometimes overlooked - Claudius takes the throne at King Hamlet’s death, not Prince Hamlet. That is mostly a commentary on English and French monarchist politics at the time, but it is strange within the internal text. A thirty year old Hamlet presumably would have become the new monarch, not the married-in uncle (unless Gertrude is the vehicle through which the crown passes a la Mary I/Phillip II - certainly food for thought)

Honestly, Hamlet is SO aggressively described as being very young that I’m fairly confident the in-text intention is to have him be around 18-23yo. Placing his age at 30yo simply does not make much sense in the context of his descriptors, his narrative role, and his status as a university student.

However, it doesn’t really matter what the “right” answer is, because the confusion itself is what makes the gravedigger scene so interesting and metatextual. We can basically assume one of the following, given the folio text:

Hamlet really is meant to be 30yo, and that was supposed to surprise or imply something to the contemporary audience that is now lost to us

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was written down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text justification of the seeming disconnect between age of actor and description of “youth”

Older actors were playing Hamlet by the time the folio was set down, and the gravedigger’s description was an in-text JOKE making fun of the fact that a 30-something year old is playing a high-school aged boy. This makes sense, as the gravedigger is a clown and Hamlet is a play that constantly pokes fun at its own tropes and breaks the fourth wall for its audience

The gravedigger cannot count or remember how old he is, and that’s the joke (this is the most common modern interpretation whenever the line isn’t otherwise played straight). If the clown was, for example, particularly old, those lines would be very funny

Any way you look at it, I believe something is echoing there. It seems like this is one of the many moments in Hamlet where you catch a glimpse of some contemporary in-joke about theater and theater culture* that we can only try to parse out from limited context 430 years later. And honestly, that’s so interesting and cool.

*(My other favorite example of this is when Hamlet asks Polonius about what it was like to play Julius Caesar in an exchange that pokes fun of Polonius’ actor a little. This is clearly an inside-joke directed at Globe regulars - the actor who played Polonius must have also played Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play, and been very well reviewed. Hamlet’s joke about Brutus also implies the actor who played Brutus is one of the main cast in Hamlet - possibly even the prince himself, depending on how the line is read).

#hamlet #hamlet meta #hamlet’s age #this obviously does NOT imply anything about being 30yo btw #any age is a good age to be driven to madness by guilt and grief #It’s just very usual for shakespeare to describe somebody well past their apprentice age as a ‘youth’ SO MUCH #and that makes those lines very interesting #shut up e #willy shakes #posting this while EXHAUSTED going to see a million errors and tone problems tomorrow sorry in advance yall #**very unusual #long post #posting Hamlet meta like it’s 2014 hell yeah

[cto10121]

Wish there was this much energy for defending R&J

#hamlet #romeo and juliet #didn’t even know there were articles against hamlet/ophelia #i tend towards hamlet/ophelia truly being in love #sort of. it’s complicated #there is a lot of (deliberate) ambiguity and mixed evidence #i could talk about it if you lot are interested #however r&j is so canon it’s clownery to dispute it #are there even any studies that try to argue against r&j????? #i almost never bother with rj essays #hamlet/ophelia #hamlet meta

[cleverclove]

Horatio is a German name so it’s p possible that Horatio was actually written to be German! After all, he DOES go to Wittenberg and doesn’t seem to be all that familiar with Danish customs. However, the two countries border one another, so when he mentions that “he saw [Hamlet’s father] once,” it doesn’t sound too far off! Hamlet Sr. probably came around when Horatio was a boy in Germany for a meeting with German officials or something.

#hamlet #hamlet meta #horatio #also it makes sense considering he’s pretty heavily protestant coded

[santacoppelia]

Putting the Meta in "Metatron"

(couldn't resist the pun, sorry)

Ok, this has been tickling my brain for a while. I've been thinking about how The Metatron designed his role and discourse specifically to manipulate Aziraphale into the end result we saw in the last minutes of S2. I become obsessed with it because… well, I'm a bit obsessive, but also because there were many really smart writing decisions that I loved (even when I despise The Metatron exactly for the same reasons. Hate the character, love the writer). If you haven't watched Good Omens Season 2, this is the moment to stop reading. Come back later!

We already know that in Book Omens, the role of Gabriel in the ending was occupied by The Metatron. Of course, the series introduced us to Gabriel and we won a lot by that, but I feel that the origins of The Metatron should be considered for any of this. He is not a "sweet old man": he was the one in charge of seeing over the operation of Armageddon; not just a stickler of rules, but the main promoter for it.

However, when he appears in the series finale, we first are primed to almost pass him by. He is in the line for buying coffee, using clothes that are:

obviously not tailored (almost ill fitted)

in dark tones

looking worn and wrinkled

This seems so important to me! All the angels we have seen are so proud of their aspect, wear clear (white or off white) clothes, pressed, impeccable (even Muriel), even when they visit the Earth (which we have already seen on S1 with all the visits to the bookshop). The Metatron chose a worn, comfortable attire, instead. This is a humanized look, something that fools all the angels but which would warm up someone very specific, can you guess?

After making quite a complicated coffee order (with sort of an affable and nervous energy), he makes a question that Crowley had already primed for us when asking Nina about the name of the coffee: having a "predictable" alternative and an unpredictable one.

This creates an interesting parallel with the next scene: Michael is discussing the possibility of erasing Aziraphale from The Book of Life (a punishment even worse than Holy Water on demons, because not having existed at all, EVER is definitely worse than having existed and ceased to exist at some point) when The Metatron arrives, interrupts the moment and signals having brought coffee. Yup, an amicable gesture, but also a "not death" offering that he shows clearly to everyone (even when Michael or Uriel do not understand or care for it. It wasn't meant for them). He even dismisses what Michael was saying as "utter balderdash" and a "complete piffle", which are the kind of outdated terms we have heard Aziraphale use commonly. So, The Metatron has put up this show for a specific audience of one.

The next moment on the script has Metatron asking Crowley for the clarification of his identity. Up to this moment, every angel has been ignoring the sprawled demon in the corner while discussing how to punish Aziraphale… But The Metatron defers to the most unlikely person in the room, and the only one who will push any buttons on Aziraphale: Crowley. After that, Aziraphale can recognize him, and Metatron dismisses the "bad angels" (using Aziraphale's S1 epithet) with another "catchy old phrase", "spit spot", while keeping Muriel at the back and implying that there is a possibility to "check after" if those "bad angels" have done anything wrong.

Up to this moment, he has played it perfectly. The only moment when he loses it is when he calls Muriel "the dim one", which she ignores… probably because that's the usual way they get talked to in Heaven. I'm not sure if Aziraphale or Crowley cared for that small interaction, but it is there for us (the audience) to notice it: the sympathy the character might elicit is built and sought, but he is not that nice.

After that, comes "the chinwag" and the offer of the coffee: the unnecessarily complicated order. It is not Aziraphale's cup of tea (literally), but it is so specific that it creates some semblance of being thought with care, and has a "hefty jigger" of syrup (again with the funny old words). And, as Aziraphale recognizes, it is "very nice!" (as The Metatron "jolly hoped so"), and The Metatron approves of him drinking it by admitting he has "ingested things in my time, you know?". This interaction is absolutely designed to build a bridge of understanding. The Metatron probably knew that the first response he would get was a "no", so he tailored his connection specifically to "mirror" Aziraphale: love of tasty human treats he has also consumed, funny old words like the ones he loves, a very human, worn, well-loved look. That was the bait for "the stroll": the moment when Aziraphale and Crowley get separated, because The Metatron knew that being close to Crowley, Aziraphale would have an hypervigilant soundboard to check the sense of what he was going to get offered. That's what the nasty look The Metatron gives to Crowley while leaving the bookshop builds (and it gets pinpointed by the music, if you were about to miss it).

The next thing we listen from The Metatron is "You don't have to answer immediately, take all the time you need" in such a friendly manner… we can see Aziraphale doubting a little, and then comes the suggestion: "go and tell your friend the good news!". This sounds like encouragement, but is "the reel". He already knows how Crowley would react, and is expecting it (we can infer it by his final reaction after going back for Aziraphale after the break up, but let's not get ahead of ourselves shall we?). He even can work up Muriel to take care of the bookshop while waiting for the catch.

What did he planted in Aziraphale's mind? Well, let's listen to the story he has to tell:

"I don't think he's as bad a fellow… I might have misjudged him!" — not strange in Aziraphale to have such a generous spirit while judging people. He's in a… partnership? relationship? somethingship? with a demon! So maybe first impressions aren't that reliable anyway. The Metatron made an excellent job with this, too.

"Michael was not the obvious candidate, it was me!" — This idea is interesting. Michael has been the stickler, the rule follower, even the snitch. They have been rewarded and recognized by that. Putting Aziraphale before Michael in the line of succession is a way of recognizing not only him, but his system of values, which has always been at odds with the main archangels (even when it was never an open fight).

"Leader, honest, don't tell people what they want to hear" — All these are generic compliments. The Metatron hasn't been that aware of Aziraphale, but are in line with what would have been said of any "rebel leader". They come into context with the next phrase.

"That's why Gabriel came to you, I imagine…" — I'm pretty sure The Metatron didn't imagine this, ha. He is probably imagining that the "institutional problem" is coalescing behind his back, and trying to keep friends close, but enemies closer… while dividing and conquering. If Gabriel rebelled, and then went searching for Aziraphale (and Crowley, they are and item and he knows it), that might mean a true risk for his status quo and future plans.

Heaven has great plans and important projects for you — this is to sweeten the pot: the hefty jigger of almond syrup. You will be able to make changes! You can make a difference from the inside! Working for an old man who feels strangely familiar! And who recognizes your point of view! That sounds like the best job offer of the world, really.

Those, however, are not the main messages (they are still building good will with Aziraphale); they are thought out to build the last, and more important one:

Heaven is well aware of your "de facto partnership" with Crowley…

It would be considered irregular if you wanted to work with him again…

You, and you alone, can bring him to Heaven and restore his full angelic status, so you could keep working together (in very important projects).

Here is the catch. He brought the coffee so he could "offer him coffee", but the implications are quite clear: if you want to continue having a partnership with Crowley, you two must come to Heaven. Anything else would be considered irregular, put them in a worst risk, and maybe, just maybe, make them "institutional enemies". Heaven is more efficient chasing enemies, and they have The Book of Life as a menace.

We already know how scared Aziraphale has always been about upsetting Heaven, but he has learned to "disconnect" from it through the usual "they don't notice". The Metatron came to tell him "I did notice, and it has come back to bite you". The implied counterpart to the offer is "you can always get death". Or even worse, nonexistence (we have already imagined the angst of having one of them condemned to that fate, haven't we?)

When The Metatron arrives, just after seeing Crowley leave the bookshop, distraught, he casually asks "How did he take it?", but he already knows. That was his plan all along: making them break up with an offer Aziraphale could not refuse, but Crowley could not accept. That's why he even takes the license to slightly badmouth Crowley: "Always did want to go his own way, always asking damn fool questions, too". He also arrive with the solution to the only objection Aziraphale would have: Muriel, the happy innocent angel that he received with so much warmth and kindness, is given the opportunity to stay on Earth, taking care of the bookshop. The only thing he would have liked to take with him is not a thing, and has become impossible.

If God is playing poker in a dark room and always smiling, The Metatron is playing chess, and he is quite good at it (that's why he loves everything to be predictable). He is menacing our pieces, and broke our hearts in the process… But I'm pretty sure he is underestimating his opponents. His awful remark of Muriel being "dim"; saying that Crowley "asks damn fool questions", and even believing that Aziraphale is just a softie that can be played like a pipe… That's why telling him the project is "The Second Coming" was an absolute gift for us as an audience, and it prefigures the downfall that is coming — the one Aziraphale, now with nothing to lose, started cooking in his head during that elevator ride (those couple of minutes that Michael Sheen gifted to all of us: the shock, the pain, the fury, and that grin in the end, with the eyes in a completely different emotion). Remember that Aziraphale is intelligent, but also fierce. Guildernstern commited a similar mistake in Hamlet, and it didn't go well:

"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 played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me."

I'm so excited to learn how this is going to unfold!! Because our heroes have always been very enthusiastic at creating plans together, failed miserably at executing them, and even then succeeding… But now they are apart, more frustrated and the stakes are even higher. Excellent scenario for a third act!

*exits, pursued by a bear*

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens spoilers #aziraphale #ineffable spouses #ineffable divorce #narrative analysis #character analysis #the metatron #and a casual Hamlet quote #just because I love Hamlet

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

My Two Cents On The “ Is David Tennant Queer” Drama

As some of you know, I spent a solid third of the past year working on a movie-length video essay about David Tennant. This video essay features an eight minute section titled “Gender, Vulnerability, and Why David Tennant Is A Queer Icon”, which does not speculate on David’s own sexuality, but discusses the queer coding and subversion of gender norms in plenty of his roles and his importance as an ally to the LGBT community. At the same time, I was also coming to terms with my own identity as nonbinary and bisexual, and it ended up playing a crucial role in me finally working up the courage to come out to my parents. Characters like Crowley and the Doctor, both in terms of how they present themselves and how and who they love, have been absolutely instrumental in me developing my queer identity, and my comments section was full of people who had had similar experiences, who’d realized they were trans, nonbinary, gay, etc thanks to David and his characters. And as a result, I won’t deny that if David himself were to be queer, it would mean a lot to me.

Do I think David is queer? It’s certainly possible. I see a lot of how I express my queerness in how david chooses to express himself, most prominently through his frequent queer coding of characters who don’t necessarily have to be played as such. This can especially be seen through his Shakespeare characters, such as Richard, Hamlet, and some would argue Benedick as well. When I was 15 I played Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, who I chose to play as a closeted young gay man harboring an unrequited crush on Romeo. I think I saw this role subconsciously as an outlet for my own repressed queerness, both of gender and sexuality, as I had experienced an unrequited crush on my female best friend the previous year which I was still in denial about. I’ve described my gender identity as “a girl with a chaotic tortured gay man inside of her that needs to be let out every once in a while”, which has never been more true than with Mercutio- a character who I might add, I took a great deal of inspiration from David when playing! In terms of using roles as an outlet for one’s queerness, I could absolutelt see this being true with David, especially when it comes to Crowley, who seems to have had an impact on David’s style, behavior, etc in a rather similar way to how he’s impacted me. I don’t want to act like David wearing pink docs means he must be gay, I think people should be allowed to wear whatever they want regardless of sexuality, but taken in conjunction with so many other things about him, it does make one wonder, and the fact that a seemingly straight man has been so many people’s queer awakening is a bit puzzling to say the least. I won’t pretend that these “signs” (if you interpret them that way), haven’t been increasing somewhat in the past year, and if I got to share my own coming out journey with the man who inspired it, I would be absolutely thrilled. I also can’t specifically think of an instance where David has SAID he is straight, as opposed to Taylor swift, who has.

With all of that said, where I personally draw the line is when mere speculation crosses into interfering with the subject’s personal relationships and the sense that one is OWED something. I believe that what matters to David more than anything is being a husband and a father. I believe he adores Georgia and his children and would not do anything in the world that he believes would jeopardize his family. As happy as I would be for David if he were to come out (probably as bi) I realize that that would put so much unwanted attention on his marriage and family and I think that’s the last thing he wants. I don’t think it’s IMPOSSIBLE that he and Michael Sheen are having a passionate love affair behind everyone’s backs, but I absolutely don’t consider it my place to insist that they are, because as much as I may feel like I do, I don’t know these people! And besides, if David were cheating on Georgia, he really would not be the person I thought he was.

So many queer people see themselves in David and his characters, and that is beautiful. And I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with having theories that David might be queer himself. However, it must be acknowledged that these theories are THEORIES, and they should not be used to invalidate people’s real life relationships- after all, it’s totally possible to be bi/pan and also be in a loving and healthy heterosexual relationship like David and Georgia at least seem to be in! If David were in fact “one of us”, I would welcome him with the openest of open arms, but unless and until he himself decides to proclaim himself that way, I will not expect anything of him other than to be the incredible artist and person we know and love.

#David tennant #michael sheen #georgia tennant #queer #lgbt #bisexual #nonbinary #Rpf #Personal #meta #I try really hard not to discuss David’s sexuality online #But people are so divided on this topic and I wanted to voice my thoughts seeing as I stand somewhat in the middle #good omens #doctor who #Crowley #The tenth doctor #hamlet #the fourteenth doctor #much ado about nothing #benedick #richard ii

[eldritch-elrics]

thinking about rosencrantz & guildenstern are dead again. i think one thing about it is that it's such an excellent example of the sort of thing you can do in a fanfiction/transformative work that you can't really do in an original work? there is no R&G without the greater context of hamlet: hamlet both as a play and a wider cultural phenomenon. we know how these characters' stories will end, not just because we've read the title of the play, but because their ending has been etched into the literary consciousness. the tragedy extends beyond the bounds of either play and seems simultaneously more massive and more absurd because of it

#my post #hamlet #fanfiction #rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead #media studies #trying to think of fanfics that are transformative and meta in the same way #i feel like detective pony is pretty close. that's a fucking fantastic work of literature #which cannot exist independently of the two works that it came from

[querentiaa]

something about the speech hamlet asks the player to act out. what is it about priam and hecuba and pyrrhus, does he cast priam as his father and his mother as hecuba? he wants to see her as unwilling? claudius in pyrrhus' place brutally killing an undefended man. but what of the children? almost all of hecuba and priam's children are dead, does he see himself as one of the dead or is it the fact that cassandra is alive and her perceived madness is what defines her?? we know he believes himself to not be one for action then we must cast him as cassandra, her tireless words begging the world to see the truth and yet being called mad. here hamlet is deliberately stepping into madness, i suppose cassandra did too. i know this isn't really coherent but i am writing at 2:30 am sooo

#hamlet #william shakespeare #shakespeare #hamlet prince of denmark #cassandra of troy #hecuba #priam #tagamemnon #meta #i wanted to talk about this with my prof but i am just a little bit scared so you guys can have it

[essektheylyss]

I know I've said it a lot, but it is genuinely so important to me that Essek could've been a textbook tragedy—only acting in his own nature, too stuck in his personal failings to change, a victim of the narrative sunk cost fallacy. It's important that due to the actions he's taken before the narrative and the society he lives in, he is doomed to failure and headed for a tragic, painful death or downfall.

Except that he does what is unfathomable to a tragic character—he changes! He looks at the path he's laid for himself and the fate looming over him, and he adapts. He changes his nature in key ways; he allows others outside of his own story to influence him.

In fact, this is only a course of action he can take because he is not the center of the story—that the central characters choose to offer him the perspective necessary to see it. (Hamlet cannot be swayed no matter anyone's pleading, because his perspective trumps all others.) And this actually lets Caleb avoid this cycle as well, as opposed to falling back into it in the eleventh hour—he offers the choice to Essek long before he properly takes it for himself, and when Essek parrots it back to him later, he can accept it because it originally came from him.

And it's also important that it is hard for Essek, in the end—his life is a constant process of illusion and fear and hiding—of becoming someone else. Not because he has to do some kind of penance, but because it is genuinely very difficult to change, to start over, and it is never a process that simply happens. You have to think about it everyday to maintain it, and it's gonna suck a lot of the time—but it's worth it, and you'll be better for it.

And it's also just so delightful that the character following this path is one who mechanically specializes in manipulating fate.

#i know there is a lot more to hamlet as a tragic character but this is a tumblr post not a thesis paper dont @ me #critical role #cr meta #essek thelyss #me: icb i wrote a 300k+ fic when i just summarized the whole point in 300 words of meta #but listen. the fic is fun. #BUT LIKE [BANGS PANS TOGETHER] THIS IS THE POINT THIS IS IT

[celluloidbroomcloset]

Congrats to OFMD for using the “play within a play” trope that does indeed “catch the conscience of the king” but instead of outing him as an unrepentant murderer reveals his extensive childhood trauma and Freudian attachment to abusive white men while also expanding on his desire to protect both his own softness and the people who show him kindness.

And rather than the prince deliberately using the play to force the king to confess, he accidentally uses it to deepen the bond between himself and the king and reject the shadowy monster who wants to destroy them both.

Applause all around.

#OFMD #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #izzy hands #OFMD meta #someone might yell at me for overinterpreting #but I’m not #they draw clear connections between Stede and hamlet #and Ed and Claudius

[onehundredandeleventropicalfish]

getting emotional about the last issue of sandman again (cw for major comic spoilers, discussion of suicidal thoughts)

because like. so we learn pretty early on what dream's deal with shakespeare was, allowing him better access to his creative potential in return for two plays, and we know this because we get midsummer night's dream, which was commissioned by dream for the actual titania as a parting gift before the faeries left earth forever

but we don't learn the second play until right at the end, after dream is dead, after the funeral, after sunday mourning and exiles, both of which make really beautiful endings to the story in their own right

the second play is the tempest. and there's a lot of the play that neil gaiman quotes in this issue, but i'll focus on the specific two that shakespeare reads aloud

the first is our obvious one - prospero's address at his daughter's wedding.

Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

it's a beautiful passage, and exactly what to put at the end of this story - prospero is reminding everyone that stories are just stories, they aren't real and can't hurt anyone, but also they are the one thing that lives forever. humans are shaped and formed by our dreams, by our stories, we come from them, and in the end, we return to them.

now, prospero is the character we focus on in this issue. because there's a three-way parallel here between dream and prospero and shakespeare himself.

dream and shakespeare have both lost their sons, were both irreparably changed by that. both regret decisions they've made in their lives, and wish to leave the path they've found for themselves, but don't feel they can - their responsibilities are too great, they have no choice but to be what they were born to be. both wonder what might have happened in a world where things were different, but they know that could never have been

and prospero is the balm to that. prospero has made mistakes in his life, he's in several ways the antagonist of this story, but at the end, he gets to put it all aside. his daughter lives, and is happy. he gives up his magic - the source of his power, but also his suffering - and abandons his role, leaves the island he'd been ruling for decades. and this is his happy ending.

when shakespeare asks dream why this play, why he wanted that ending, instead of some great tragedy or drama, something more fit for a king, dream responds "because i will never leave my island."

and we see throughout the issue that that was personal to shakespeare too, it was a wish fullfilment for both of them.

but then we get to the epilogue, the second quote i'm focusing on. because shakespeare doesn't know how to end the play, until he has that conversation with dream.

this is the tempest's epilogue, in full:

Now my charms are all o'erthrown/And what strength I have’s mine own/Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true/I must be here confined by you/Or sent to Naples. Let me not/Since I have my dukedom got/And pardoned the deceiver, dwell/In this bare island by your spell/But release me from my bands/With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails/Must fill, or else my project fails/Which was to please. Now I want/Spirits to enforce, art to enchant/And my ending is despair/Unless I be relieved by prayer/Which pierces so that it assaults/Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be/Let your indulgence set me free.

like most shakespeare epilogues, it's a direct address to the audience, talking about the play. prospero is asking forgiveness from the audience for all he did wrong, but then reminding them that he's only human, don't we all want to be forgiven? and after all, all of this was just a story. he only wanted to create something for you. so applaud the ending, tell him it was worth it, and only with your permission can he finish the story, and finally leave.

and that's the thing, about dream's particular brand of suicidal thoughts. being dream of the endless has been weighing on him for centuries, if not millenia, he longs for an escape, but he knows he can't. when they see it's breaking him his siblings try and convince him to leave, like destruction did, but it's not in him to abandon the dreaming like that.

and that amount of responsibility, of staying alive because you owe it to other people - it's a relief, then, when a battle comes along that's too great for you to face, but there's also a lot of guilt in it. because he gave up. and he knows he did. letting the kindly ones win was the most selfish decision he's ever made

and you might say, well, he's dead, he doesn't have to face it, but that's not wholly true. because all three of the last issues deal with some version of dream after death.

there's the dream of him hob has in sunday mourning, which isn't the true dream, he's dead, except of course it is dream, because he was only ever made of dreams anyway, so does it really matter whether it's real or not?

in exiles the protagonist talks to both morpheus and daniel in the desert, and for dream this was two very different time periods, but to the man crossing the desert, they happened simultaneously, so if time can be warped like that in dreams, who's to say that the ripples of morpheus won't continue long into the future?

and then we have the tempest. dream has appeared after death as a dream, as a mirage, and finally, in perhaps his truest form, as a story.

when dream said he will never leave his island, shakespeare reminds him that all men can change. and this is the fatal flaw of dream - he doesn't see himself as a man, as a person, as anything but the entity which must fulfill his function. he tells shakespeare that men have stories, men change - he does not

and when we end this entire 75 issue run with the epilogue from the tempest, dream is prospero. even after death he's still reckoning with the guilt of making that decision. even now, he won't allow himself that freedom.

and that's the reminder, that all of this was just a story - dream's story. the reader is a character in sandman, all of this was created for us. did he manage to create something beautiful enough, despite the pain? can he be forgiven for the decisions he made along the way? if eventually he gave up, does that make all the time he fought so hard for meaningless?

and he can't be free of the story until we answer that all important question - was it worth it?

to which the answer can only be of course it was.

#you did good kiddo. take your rest. it's okay #interestingly enough the tempest isn't the only play that refers to the afterlife as a dream #hamlet does too (which you know is the piece inspired by shakespeare's dead son) #but that's just me and my shakespeare nerd #i've won literal monetary awards for my writing on shakespeare but here i am rereading sandman and crying #so you all get to cry too #neil gaiman you madman give me your writing talents #the sandman #sandman comic spoilers #dream of the endless #....it feels weird to tag shakespeare in this #wake #mine #meta #suicide tw

[irisbleufic]

This will probably feel like it’s coming out of the blue, as The Simpsons isn’t something I’m known for posting on main, but like…I’ve had a long-term fascination with this show. I saw the first few seasons when I was a kid. I had to watch it at a friend’s place and my grandparents’ place, because, like many parents raising kids/teens in the 1980s-1990s, mine were convinced Bart was a bad influence. Lisa’s ambition and cleverness have always meant a lot to me, but this strange rumination has more to do with my eternal puzzlement over the bad rap Bart has gotten from parents.

I can say more than ever, especially with regard to the past decade or more of seasons, that Bart is actually a really sweet kid. Mischievous and bored, but genuinely sweet. Meanwhile, Lisa’s got a devious streak a mile wide and is probably the fictional kid my parents should have been most worried about teaching me dubious behavior and scheming (because she knows how not to get caught).

I’m sure this conversation has been had many times over on the internet, but this moment of navel gazing in the wake of watching the first handful of episodes from the latest run (Season 35, how the fuck has this show been around for all but the first 7 years of my life?) just feels…necessary somehow. Every once in a while, when a piece of media has been with me for a long time, I’ll have this weird realization that the character who means the most to me isn’t the one in whom I saw the obvious parts of myself at first.

Sure, I’ve always been a dutiful, ambitious student—even now that I’m an adult who teaches college undergrads, I don’t think I’ve ever shed that. But I was also that weird, imaginative, often-bullied kid who didn’t know they were neurodivergent, who got yelled at for not paying attention during class and sneaking off to the woods adjacent to my elementary school during recess. Sometimes, I took the fall for the occasional prank my few close friends and I would play because I wasn’t good at getting out of the way in time. I had a real disdain for authority, although I knew how to hide it from the few teachers and admins I genuinely liked/respected.

I don’t really have an earth-shattering point to make here except that, huh, it’s neat to realize Bart is the one I related to the most all along. It never even occurred to me that we’re both oldest children; Lisa is eldest-coded sometimes even though she’s the middle kid, but…damn, if Bart’s experience as the oldest isn’t similar to mine. You get cracked down on, get in trouble for, things that your parents can’t be arsed to go after by the time your younger siblings come along. You love those little shits with all your heart even though they aren’t above rubbing their immunity in your face. You shatter beneath the pressure of things that finally, finally hurt too much to keep up the tough-guy façade.

Anyway, Bart: my parents were wrong about you. Everyone’s parents were. I feel that even more strongly as an adult than I did when I was a kid. And the kids like you, like us—more sensitive than meets the eye, mind always racing a mile a minute, mischievously curious, all too often misunderstood—are the reason I became a teacher. Thank you for that.

I’ve been saying to friends for a long time, when The Simpsons comes up in conversation, that the cast of this show are our Players: “Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.”

#the simpsons #bart simpson #lisa simpson #hamlet #meta

[cto10121]

Stop Confusing Shakespearean Tragedy With Greek Tragedy: Or, Tragedy of Circumstance vs. Character

So this mini analysis/rant was brought to you by that Harley Granville-Barker quote (via John Green) about R&J being a tragedy of “youth as youth sees it.” Not only is this reductive but also the quote just…exemplifies the struggle of academics to categorize Shakespeare’s mid-90s tragedies. Not just R&J but Hamlet and even Macbeth as well (with Othello roped in sometimes as a 🤷‍♂️). After all, in these plays there is usually not one Big Tragic Flaw (Macbeth sometimes gets a pass for Ambition) that undoes the tragic protagonist and leads them to their utter ruin. These characters’s flaws are instead just part-and-parcel with their humanity.

So a lot of the time academics just do a little awkward side-step and say “Weeeell, the tragic protagonists in these things are young, even the Macbeths, soooooo Tragedy of Youth(tm) maybe??” but that of course is just academic weak sauce, no true spice at all. The fact that these protagonists are young is necessary to the worldbuilding plausibility, not the tragedy. As we have seen before, an older R&J and Hamlet and even Macbeth have been done before and were in fact the norm until very recently. It’s just much more plausible to their characters and their situation (that of relative powerlessness) if they are indeed young than if they were older.

However, their tragedies are not due to youth or even character frailty so much as circumstance. Unlike King Lear, Othello, and Coriolanus, Macbeth, Hamlet, and R&J’s tragedies are ultimately very situational.

What Is Tragedy?

Tragedy in the Greco-Roman tradition stems from harmatia, a character flaw that leads to the tragic protagonist’s undoing. This is usually the definition academics have when gauging Shakespearean Tragedy, even though Shakespeare had a vastly different take on tragedy.

In Greek tragedy, the Tragic Protagonist’s fate was written in the stars, unmovable and unshakable no matter what the tragic protagonist does (see: Oedipus Rex). The TP cannot escape fate, no matter what he tries.

By contrast, Shakespearean tragedy is never fully inevitable. It can always, at some level, be preventable. However, given the situation or circumstances in which the tragic events occur, as well as the tragic protagonists, the tragedy becomes inevitable from a certain point onwards—the inciting event.

This is true for both forms of Shakespearean tragedy, character and circumstance. That said, Shakespeare’s character tragedy is usually the most unyielding of them all, since it hedges more closely to the Greek model. With King Lear’s machismo and temper, Coriolanus’s military fascism, and Othello’s honor armor, the situation in which their tragedies unfold does not matter much, ultimately. You gain an understanding that this tragedy would have happened much earlier or much later and more or less along these same lines. These characters are too set in their ways to change and would have reacted in very similar ways in similar situations.

Not so for R&J, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Their tragedies are much more dependent on their circumstances and their world (particularly re: patriarchy and hierarchy) than anything else. Without that context, I think it’s clear these people would never have done what they did.

Both R&J, Hamlet, and Macbeth are flawed characters, but their flaws are not inherently tragic ones. Rather, their flaws stem from ordinary human emotions and desires that pretty much everyone has. R&J are young and in love and want to be together; Hamlet is a sensitive intellectual mourning his beloved father, with zero tolerance for BS, including Murderous Uncle BS; Macbeth hopes to move up in the world and secure a better position for him and his wife.

When Character Does Matter: Tragic Protagonists Must GAF

This is not to say character doesn’t matter completely in these Tragedies of Circumstance. On the contrary, they very much do.

Because no matter how much of a clusterfuck the tragic situation or circumstance, there is no tragedy if the tragic protagonist simply…well, DNGAF.

For instance, if Hamlet just decided to 🤷‍♂️, shut his mouth, and keep his head down and accept Claudius as true ruler because, well, what can he do…then most likely there would have been no tragedy for him. He is the prince of Denmark, after all. Claudius and Gertrude are shown to be content at the merest show of compliance. Even if Denmark’s moral and legal corruption would have doomed them, even if Fortinbras were successful in this timeline, it would not have been Hamlet’s tragedy alone.

If R&J had truly been the lusty fiends Internet clowns constantly claim they are, concerned only with getting themselves good and properly laid, then they would not have gone as far as they did with their ~concupiscence. Both their passivity and obedience would have been inertia enough and they would have chosen not to rock the boat. Hell, it must likely wouldn’t have even gotten to that point. Fuckboy!Romeo would have tried to persuade Juliet to give it up without marriage and fuckgirl!Juliet would have let him. At worst they would have eloped and fucked off out of Verona—and hence, no tragedy. And if they were indeed more invested in the feud, then any love relationship would truly have been out of the question.

And if Macbeth had not met the witches, had not truly not had cared for climbing rank, or just DNGAF about his wife acting as the man of the house, then killing Duncan and usurping him would not have proven to be an allure. He would simply continue serving Duncan or the next ruler.

But of course, that isn’t possible. Why? Because then the personalities of these Tragic Protagonists would be completely different—much less sympathetic, to be sure. Who would care about a Danish prince who ignores a truly serious miscarriage of justice? Who would care about the fate of two selfish Italian lovers? Who would respect a Scottish sycophant who bends the knee at whoever is in charge? Not to mention that there just simply wouldn’t be a plot to begin with and the story would be completely changed for the worst.

It just isn’t in Hamlet’s character not to care about his father’s murder. It just isn’t in R&J’s characters to suddenly start caring about the feud and stay away from their love. And it just isn’t in Macbeth’s character not to succumb to the pressures of masculinity, as his culture demands he be.

Tragic protagonists do not have to be sympathetic or likable, although their plight usually is. But Tragedies of Circumstance almost universally call for sympathetic protagonists who would react as most people would in their situation. Nobody would react with indifference at learning their beloved father has been murdered. Nobody would consider giving up a promising relationship for a violent and senseless feud. And if tempted enough, anyone would risk doing something unethical and immoral to get ahead.

Summing Up

Shakespeare obviously had a very different idea of tragedy than the Greeks—precisely because he was responding to the Greek model in the first place while he was adapting the source materials for his plays. And indeed, the very act of adaptation would prompt taking a different approach, however slight.

So if his early tragedies don’t seem as inevitable as they are until after a certain turning point (Tybalt’s death, Polonius’s death, Duncan’s death)…that’s the point. Tragedy is never fully inevitable in Shakespeare because almost nothing about our world and society is. We literally just made it up. Men must be tough and never cry and if someone insults them they must fight them even risking their lives? Made up BS. Women must be quiet and obedient and never have sex outside of marriage or else they’ll be tainted? Made up BS. And all of that BS obscures what human beings really are and what they truly want. And ultimately, that’s what all these tragedies boil down to.

#romeo and juliet #macbeth #hamlet #shakespeare #william shakespeare #shakespearean tragedy #sometimes i sleep but other times i choose violence #er my form of violence #shakespeare meta #rj meta #r&j meta #hamlet meta

[cleverclove]

Twin siblings Laertes and Ophelia is something that can be so personal actually. Shakespeare himself had twins: Hamnet and Judith.

Could Laertes represent the grief Judith may have felt when she lost her brother? Does he represent the gaping hole Shakespeare saw in his young daughter?

#hamlet #laertes #ophelia #hamlet meta

[shannankle]

Shadow the Series and Hamlet

Okay so after finishing the first half of Shadow there’s so much to unpack. So instead of doing the research I should be doing for my dissertation, let’s dig into some connections between literature and BL once again!

This won’t be a fully formed meta, and I’ll probably have to make a whole other post once the whole series is out. But I wanted to start thinking about how the show is dialoguing with and speaking to similar themes as Hamlet within a queer framework.

I thought I’d work my way through some different interpretations of Hamlet and connect back to Shadow. To be clear, I’m working with scholarship on Hamlet rather than any personal interpretation of Hamlet itself (which I unfortunately haven’t read or watched in many a years).

A quick summary

Hamlet and Shadow via Freud's Oedipal Complex

Hamlet and Shadow via Lee Edelman's work on queerness, the death drive, and queer time

Hamlet and Shadow via self-recognition and resistant readings

A few other directions

Hamlet and the Oedipal Complex

Back in 1897, Freud wrote about Hamlet in a letter to a friend noting that “falling in love with the mother and jealousy of the father…[was] a universal event of early childhood.” So Hamlet was one of the texts that Freud was thinking about when he came up with the Oedipal complex as a concept.

You may be asking, as I often do, who gives a fuck what Freud thought? Well over time, Freudian interpretations of the play highly influenced how it was performed and the ways that themes about subjectivity and sexuality were portrayed.

The 1948 and 1990 film adaptations in particular put stress on a sexually charged dynamic between Hamlet and his mother Gertrude. The later film has Hamlet lying on top of and wrestling with his mother before they kiss. More recent adaptations tend to move away from this, but, overall, it’s been extremely influential in terms of how the play has been interpreted and adapted.

So how does this come up in Shadow? 

Dan’s role as Hamlet is closely framed around his relationship with his father who he beats up in the dream world right before his death. We’re introduced to Dan’s dad during his audition for Hamlet. Perhaps in the most obvious parallel, Dan recites Hamlet’s lines as he goes to find his father’s ghost. And of course, this is when Dan’s dad appears as a ghost as well.

Yet, Dan’s narrative with his father seems to buck the expected relationship between father and son. Throughout the play, Hamlet struggles between a desire to fulfill his filial duty and avenge his father and the increasing violence and tragedy this brings. But Dan? In the face of abuse, he chooses to defiantly reject his father and filial piety, accepting and even wishing for his death. In many ways, Dan’s dad is more analogous to Claudius, the usurper and man trying to kill Hamlet. Through his abuse he loses the right to be Dan’s father. 

A shallow oedipal reading of Hamlet, frames Claudius as the father Hamlet is trying to kill, but ignores that this dynamic is born from Claudius’ cruelty. By acknowledging abuse, power, and violence Shadow perhaps takes an interesting step away from a pure Freudian reading. Because ultimately Dan doesn’t want to be his father! In fact, as he speaks with him and beats him up, we can see the way Dan is shaken, not by the act of harming or killing his father, but by the idea of becoming him. His father makes clear that “becoming him” is aligned with ideas about what it means to be a man, to be “the father” within a straight patriarchal society. And in a beautiful moment of clarity and defiance as they discuss what love looks like, Dan clarifies that his mom left his father not him. 

Okay so he "kills" his dad, what about his mom?

To be honest, when I was wrapping up my watch of the episodes, my head went towards the oedipal theory as a crack theory. What if the ghost is his mom, that’d be pretty effed up lol...But now that I’ve seen that the connection isn’t just one I made, it doesn’t seem as far fetched. The scenes between Hamlet and Gertrude in the 1990s film certainly could be an influence on the shadow getting sexual if they went that route. But to be honest I don’t really think they’ll go this way. Or at least I hope not. They’re already doing more nuanced things with the oedipal dynamic. Plus I think there’s more going on if we turn to queerer interpretations anyway.

The Death Drive, Queering Freud, and Queer Time

In Freud’s work, he talked about two opposing forces. The first was the death drive (later termed Thanatos by later psychoanalysts). This was a drive toward destruction that stood opposite to eros or life-producing drives such as sex, survival, and reproduction. 

Now, in 2004, queer theorist Lee Edelman would come in and queer the heck out of these concepts. I’ll be over simplifying Edelman’s points a lot here, but hopefully the core will remain. 

Edelman would point out that the life-drive was often weaponized rhetorically, politically, and socially as a way to reproduce cultural norms. Edelman often writes about "the Child"--that is the mythical idea of a child that we should be building society and the future for. Think of how often the “think of the children” rhetoric gets used in anti-queer politics, for example. In fact, Edelman points to oedipal readings of Hamlet as one way that dominant straight society has attempted to manage a narrative where reproduction and futurity are foreclosed. Oedipal readings of Hamlet, then, could be seen as an attempt to suppress the death drive, to put it out of sight where it can’t cause disruption or anxiety.

Of course, Edelman also notes that the death drive is inherently tied to and projected onto queerness and queer people–onto “those abjected as non-reproductive, anti-social, opposed to viability, and so as threats to the Child who assures and embodies collective survival”. And so, Edelman argues that queer people should embrace the death drive and queer time–that is non-futurity and non-linear, non-productive time. 

So how might these ideas be showing up in Shadow so far?

I might think of even more later, but here’s a short list:

1. All three of our main characters are abjected. Nai is gay, Trin is gay and mentally ill, and Dan is potentially both. I think we could argue that the connection all three of them have to death also quite literally marks them as abjected. And perhaps we could consider how the supernatural elements thematically and symbolically connect to their alterity and the way this is in conflict with social norms. In fact, I’d argue that, unlike Nai and Trin who are explicitly stated to be queer and/or mentally ill, Dan’s alterity is playing out through this more allegorical channel so far. 

2. Literal death as a central focus. 

3. Haunting as a limbo between past and present. This liminality feels very queer here.

4. The idea of vengeful ghosts makes the death drive perpetually present in a way that haunts futurity. Interestingly Edelman describes the death drive as a “negativity that haunts the social order” and which is “projected onto those who occupy the position of the queer.” Haunting has very queer thematic possibilities. 

5. Think of the ghost story told in the market in episode seven. The homophobia on display clearly ties queerness to death in a way that speaks to straight norms and anxieties. 

6. Dan is told by the monk that what is happening has to do with overlapping time frames: past, present, and future

7. Dan often loses his sense of what is real or a dream, but he also has moments where he loses his sense of time and temporality. Notice how when the art statue fell and he saw his classmates dead we jump back to before he even spoke with Nai. It’s not just losing time but jumping back and forth. 

8. Sexy times with a shadow monster are certainly non-(re)productive 

9. We learn that Trin has been trying to change things, disrupt the social norms, but he is shut down and told the school needs to hold onto tradition. While we often think of tradition as referring to the past, it is very much about continuing and reproducing this into the future. School director: "But think of the future Children who won’t get to experience the epic highs and lows of high school hazing”

10. There seems to be a tension at play between Brother Anurak who is trying to get Dan to just stop believing in the shadow (not sure if that's his actual motive but still) and Dan who is slowly starting to embrace the shadow (literally and figuratively). Perhaps this could be read as embracing the death drive and queerness. 

Hamlet, Self-Recognition, and Resistant Reading

Another theme that has often been explored by folks interested in Hamlet is that of self-recognition. The play focuses so very much on Hamlet struggling with his sense of self. And this speaks well to contemporary western ideas of the individual. One scholar, Marjorie Garbor, has noted that “the experience of Hamlet is almost always that of recognition.” While another, John Gouws remarks that Hamlet and Shakespeare’s sonnets both “seem capable of functioning like Rorschach inkblots, by making us reveal (increasingly) more about ourselves the more we try saying something about them.”

It’s interesting to me then that Hamlet and Rorschach tests are both used in Shadow, but they don’t seem to say all that much about Dan. The blot is simply a tool to test if Dan is still seeing the shadow. It isn’t used to psychoanalyze him further. And when Cha-aim asks Dan to compare himself to Hamlet he hilariously just says both their dads are dead. Of course we know that Hamlet’s dad and Dan’s aren’t exactly analogous either. Dan rejects this sort of self-identification. Or perhaps, the play rejects him? At the very least we know that he can’t perform the type of filial love that Hamlet has for his own father.

But perhaps this rejection has queer implications as well. There’s a really lovely article from the perspective of a queer South African director, Thys Heydenrych. He talks about reading and staging Hamlet through a queer and decolonial lens. In his piece he quotes Hanna Kubowitz who discusses queer readers' relationship with texts. She notes that “[b]eing heterosexual has several benefits…One can enter into most cultural narratives…on the basis of simple and satisfying identification.” This of course made me think of the moment when Cha-aim asks Dan to identify with Hamlet.

Whether we read this as an active refusal on Dan’s part or as the play being inhospitable to Dan’s identification, Cha-aim is asking Dan to express and perform identity here. Perhaps this could be read as her asking Dan to narratively self-identify with straight culture and values. It makes sense in the context of her having feelings for him and ties well into the scene where she tries to pick his costume. While Dan isn’t yet identifying as queer, he seems to be dis-identifying from straightness just as he dis-identifies from his father’s version of manhood. 

Still, motifs of self-recognition or the struggle to understand oneself seem to abound. The use of mirrors in episodes 6 and 7 speak to this theme well with the blurring of self and other, while also tying into both horror motifs and the Greek mythology being referenced (Orpheus and Eurydice, narcissus perhaps). Is the shadow a part of him?   

What I’ll be curious to see is how the show chooses to engage with this theme. Will Hamlet continue to serve as a narrative that is inhospitable to identification or will it be queered. There’s a tradition of scholarship that thinks about resistant reading. This is when a reader engages with a text that wasn’t designed with them in mind, but finds potential despite this. Certainly Shakespeare’s work and Hamlet in particular have been interpreted as queer at times, and Hamlet is definitely open to these readings.

When it comes to Shadow, however, I’m interested in what one scholar, Lois Tyson, has asked about resistant reading: “How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay, or queer presence?” This idea of a hidden queer presence speaks well to the idea of haunting. I’m really interested to see how the use of Hamlet as a narrative might speak to the idea of queerness as hidden presence and whether this continues to play out in the second half.  

A few other connections that I want to wait to think on more:

-Madness seems to be a shared theme but I want to see how Shadow handles this as a whole before commenting, but you can check out my post on queer and crip time in The Eighth Sense if you're interested in that element at all

-Power and oppression. Heydenrych’s article mentions a 2010 production that focuses on Denmark’s repressive political system and themes of surveillance, control, and abuse of power. These seem like themes working their way into Shadow but I’d want to be more familiar with the topic in Hamlet

-Suicide. There are versions of Hamlet that heighten this theme further with Gertrude and Ophelia in particular being framed as making attempts. 

-Play within a play and the blurring of fiction and reality

-Decolonial and religious elements

Sources:

Heydenrych, Thys. “‘To tell our Storie’: Reflections on a Queer Adaptation of Hamlet in Twenty-first Century South Africa” Shakespeare in Southern Africa vol 30, 2017. pp. 43-55

Edelman, Lee. “Against Survival: Queerness in a Time That’s Out of Joint” Shakespeare Quarterly, 62.2, 2011. pp. 148-169.

Edelman, Lee. No Future: Queer Theory and The Death Drive. Duke University Press, 2004.

Note: Most other sources were mentioned in the Heydenrych piece

#shadow the series #my meta #hamlet #shadow the series meta #meta #my posts #thai bl #queer series #bl series

[rumours-from-inez]

I like the meta jokes in Shakespeare

I like to imagine they got Julius' actor to play polonius and Croud went wild because it's the guy!!!

#shakespeare #hamlet #julius caesar #polonius #meta

[hamletthesanedane]

For the last time, horatio: I did not murder my father, conspire to have my uncle marry my mother, hire an actor to play a ghost for legitimacy so I could blame the murder on my uncle to justify pulling “some really fucking sick meta-theatre shit” by writing a play and launching my soon-to-be legendary stage and literary career.

#why on earth would you even ask bro #the mousetrap premieres this Friday at Elsinore #go to hamlet the sane dane dot tumblr dot dk #shakespeare shitposting #hamlet #the fresh prince of denmark #to be or not to be tuesday #the mousetrap #emotional support horatio #I bragged about the meta theater stuff ONE TIME