#putting this under a readmore bc it's long and also about intrusive thoughts but every ocd hamlet enjoyer read this right hte fuck now.

[butchhamlet]

hi, fellow shakespeare fan and ocd hamlet enjoyer here, submitting my thoughts to you in two parts rather than doing it in asks, because it would probably take ten million of them.

ever since i saw your post i've been thinking more and more about ocd hamlet, specifically about the way that hamlet’s ocd manifests when it comes to incest. [if you are uncomfortable with or not in the mood to read about ocd or incest, the time to scroll away is now!] because i think (for reasons that are COMPLETELY unrelated to my own issues and therefore totally unbiased, of course) that the ocd hamlet theory does a Way better job of explaining why hamlet is so PISSED with gertrude about the way in which she marries claudius than the o*dipus complex hamlet theory does.

beginning at the beginning: with claudius and gertrude's marriage, and just how angry it makes hamlet. hamlet was raised in the royal court - he'd understand at least conceptually the political reasoning behind why an inexperienced new king would seek to swiftly marry a more established and experienced political figure (such as the queen) for stability at a time when a foreign power is making overt military threats. and apparently, almost everyone else we meet in the play just doesn't consider claudius and gertrude’s relationship to be incest, understands that it's a necessary political move regardless of or despite its questionable morality, or both, because we only ever really see hamlet and the vengeful ghost of his father taking significant issue with the ambiguous incestuousness of their marriage.

part of why i just can’t help but reject the oedipus complex interpretation is the fact that hamlet, to a higher and more intense degree than anyone around him, HATES incest. it's at or near the top of the list of Things That Hamlet Hates, which is saying something, because that list is lengthy and features both "Hamlet" and "Living In General". when people try to take this into account in the oedipus complex interpretation, they have to commit to some major assumptions and mental gymnastics right off the bat: not only is hamlet lying to gertrude and claudius and making up reasons about why he deeply disapproves of their marriage, he’s also doing this because he’s lying to himself about why he hates it, and he’s doing that because of, ummmm, a highly specific and defunct psychological theory made up by some guy who did a lot of drugs a hundred years ago. the “hamlet reacts so strongly in opposition to incest because it’s actually secretly something that he wants and he’s just refusing to admit to himself” explanation, in addition to being convoluted and unrealistic, would also mean that practically every one of hamlet’s decisions is shaped by a desire that he doesn’t ever even try to weigh, examine, or understand. and that effect is incredibly important, because it means that the interpretation undermines hamlet's entire character. hamlet’s typical, almost compulsive verbal self-examinations when it comes to his decision-making are a key manifestation of his tragic flaw - chronic self-doubt. in the ocd interpretation, since obsessions often run against our morality, it would just make total sense for hamlet's ocd to be like "oh? you believe that the #1 worst thing you could do in your life is have sex with your mother? how about i force you to think about that CONSTANTLY, every single time you ever interact with her." if we interpret hamlet as 1. having ocd, obviously, and 2. having that ocd manifest at least in part as intrusive thoughts about incest, it definitely gives some deeper meaning to hamlet’s fury and disbelief over gertrude's acceptance of her situation.

so, hamlet's faced with thoughts about incest against his will all the time, and about if they’re Actually against his will or whether he's just lying to himself and actually wants it, and about why if he wouldn't do it and doesn't want to do it that he's even thinking about it in the first place, and so on in circles forever. but despite all of that agonizing and deliberation, he is able to a: remain true to his principles and not ever come realistically close to doing any incest (which is typical for people with taboo obsessions, but it’s still worth noting from hamlet’s perspective, because even though having taboo intrusive thoughts puts you at less of a risk of actually enacting them than pretty much anybody else on the planet due to how much they make you agonize over that taboo’s motivations and details and consequences, they can still make every interaction that carries even the slightest risk of acting on that taboo FEEL like a near-miss life-or-death tightrope walk) and b: continue living and surviving even though his brain is an unending hell nightmare vortex of fear and self doubt. part of hamlet's anger with gertrude comes from genuine confusion over maybe not why, literally, she is doing this, but why she thinks so differently about it than he does. if gertrude has literally any qualms at all with her morally questionable marriage, why isn't she fighting that marriage with everything she has? why the hell is she letting herself do something that she knows is wrong? hamlet’s ocd, in addition to the fact that he’s her son, primes him to be more judgemental of gertrude than anyone else, because by his own extremely strict, compulsive standards for himself in regards to what’s morally permissible, gertrude isn't even making an effort at righteousness or control. "oh, so you HAVE to marry a guy you spent twenty-odd years calling family because of our political situation, or because he went and asked, or because it's just expected of you. well, i expect myself to do horrible things CONSTANTLY! and every day i do so much to try and stop myself from even THINKING about doing them that i make my life a living hell! but you? you're not even willing to wait two fucking months after your husband's death before giving up, giving in, and being on your merry way to bed with his brother."

and one final word on that death. as you said in your original post, to make a situation that’s already emotionally charged for hamlet because his father barely died two months ago even worse, gertrude’s new ambiguously-faithful ambiguously-incestuous marriage also serves to constantly bring to mind the exact things that hamlet already tries very very hard not to think about. and understanding hamlet’s anger not as an oedipus complex thing coming from “oh darn, she's remarried to my uncle, and I’m mad because I’m not the one having sex with her and I want to have sex with her so bad” but rather as an ocd thing coming from “you two created my literal exact waking nightmare and forced me to look at it constantly and smile”, gives a vastly different (and in my opinion vastly more interesting) tone to hamlet’s interactions with gertrude and claudius.

at least to me, hamlet's actions and flaws more closely mirror the actions and flaws of sophocles's actual oedipus than they adhere to a sigmund freud oedipus complex. hamlet has been told by his own ocd brain so many times that he's going to end up doing murder and incest that he ends up overthinking his interactions with his mother and stepfather/uncle to a debilitating degree, and largely because of that overthinking, still ends up with a terrible outcome at the end of the day. if hamlet didn’t have ocd, he might have been able to use some of his intelligence and powers of logic in the stressful situations of act 3 to make good on his now thoroughly-justified promise to his father, or to avoid impulsively murdering polonius. but instead, he is blinded by the exact kind of intense, all-consuming thoughts that are the hallmarks of ocd, and is forced to choose between overthinking and just not thinking at all.

hi it's me from that same post from earlier, back again with part 2!! on a somewhat separate but definitely related note, i also think that a staging of hamlet where hamlet has physical compulsions would be so fucking sick. specifically one concept that i came up with and enjoyed was hamlet always carrying a dagger on him and putting a hand on it to make sure that it's still sheathed, or even unsheathing it and then putting it away again. i feel like it could work well on a story level in a lot of different ways.

the biggest pull for me is that it works well with some of hamlet's biggest obsessions, damnation and incest. (of course, compulsive actions aren’t always logically related to the actual content of obsessive thoughts, but this one is, for the sake of the narrative and the audience.) first, the literal: hamlet obsesses over whatever dream or nightmare might come after death. this makes him very, very afraid of his own suicidal thoughts, because killing himself would send him straight to hell. by checking to ensure that a weapon he could use to kill himself or someone else is safely secured, he can feel more protected against damnation. (this also has the added bonus of making “with a bare bodkin” hit harder, and the whole soliloquy, really - i just really enjoy the idea of an audience watching hamlet's most famous, grandest speech turn out to also be one in which he's very scared and upset, and has to go to excessive, genuinely dangerous lengths in order to both comfort himself and inspire himself to action.) second, and re my last post, the metaphorical: hamlet is afraid that he might commit an act of incest. and as any enemies-to-lovers shipper well knows, a bladed weapon works well as a symbolic stand-in for sex. by making sure that his dagger is put away, hamlet can, for just a moment, alleviate his fears that he's going to hurt his mother with that dagger or anything like it. (and as you noted, this has the added bonus of making “I will speak daggers to her, but use none” hit harder as well.) in addition to that, because of how often it’s used for underhanded and sneaky types of fighting, the dagger is also a coward's weapon, and hamlet often criticizes himself and his circular, doubt-ridden ocd thinking as cowardly.

i also think that this compulsion could be played in a VERY cool way specifically in the context of act 3 scene 4. hamlet has just begun to berate his mother for having the gall to take issue with his behavior when she went and married claudius, telling her that there is no way that he’s leaving before he’s done with her. she says, “what wilt thou do?” this of course brings to mind all the extremely upsetting things that hamlet could do to his mother. but he doesn't have time to try and think his way out of the spiral right now. hamlet’s on a mission. so, he reaches for his knife. the queen sees him do this, and (completely understandably, but still completely) misinterprets it. “thou wilt not murder me?” and she begins crying out for help. and now, hamlet is really terrified, because his own mother very truly and seriously believes that he would hurt her, and parents know their children best, right? if she thinks that he’s capable of doing it, then who’s to say that he’s not? what if the real reason that he reached for his knife then and there was because he really was going to kill her, because he can’t keep his word, even to himself, because he’s a terrible person, and now she knows? she must know. she’s just seen him basically draw a knife on her, hell - anybody who walked in on him now could put two and two together easily enough. and to them, he’d look like a murderer, because he looks like a murderer because he really is a murderer, and if he is, and everybody thinks that he is, what’s to stop him from killing her, from killing claudius, from killing anybody -

(golly, i sure hope there’s nobody hiding stupidly and suspiciously in that very same room to spy on this extremely private and emotional interaction in which both parties are upset, scared, and not thinking rationally! things could go really poorly for them if they were to reveal their presence in exactly the wrong way at exactly the wrong moment! anyways.)

and lastly, I think it could do a good job of showing the audience the difference between a habit and a compulsion: checking to make sure that he has his dagger on him and that it's sheathed is a fairly normal, even safety-conscious action on its own, especially in a situation where practically everyone around hamlet is somewhere between deceptive and dangerous. but by relying on it excessively to temporarily relieve his nonstop intrusive thoughts, hamlet only makes that situation worse. even though checking his dagger helps hamlet feel more in control of his thinking when suicide and murder cross his mind, constantly having easy access to a bladed weapon would probably put violence, death, and self-injury closer to the forefront of hamlet's thoughts than they would otherwise be in the first place. and if others noted the frequency with which hamlet reached for his dagger, it would only serve to add to their impressions of hamlet as impulsive, dangerous, and insane. having the very thing that makes hamlet appear mad to the people around him actually be hamlet's fucked-up way of trying to keep himself stable feels like it would work very well with a lot of the other themes of the play.

so if you would like to rotate that in your mind then enjoy :) thank you for inspiring its creation!!

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OH I AM ROTATING IT IN MY FUCKING MIND!!! I AM ROTATING IT!!!!! THIS IS SO FUCKING GOOD HOLY SHIT.

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH the incest thing 100% makes more sense as a Deeply Upsetting OCD Thing for him than some kind of oedipus complex — i hate that theory regardless but you’re so fucking right, like, i have nothing to add because you’re so fucking right. i just want to highlight every single line of this post your brain is massive and you’ve put this so well. AND BRINGING UP ACTUAL OEDIPUS!!! SO TRUE!!! CHOOSING BETWEEN OVERTHINKING AND JUST NOT THINKING AT ALL!!! [cranking this post up on the speaker]

"well, i expect myself to do horrible things CONSTANTLY! and every day i do so much to try and stop myself from even THINKING about doing them that i make my life a living hell!"

AND THIS STAGING! AHHHH FUCK THIS WOULD BE SO GOOD. THE IDEA OF THE COMPULSION IN 3.4 TURNING INTO EXACTLY THE THING THAT FRIGHTENS HER WHICH IS A SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY OF THE OCD TERROR THAT YOU’RE A MONSTER AND PEOPLE SHOULD BE AFRAID OF YOU… “having the very thing that makes hamlet appear mad to the people around him actually be hamlet's fucked-up way of trying to keep himself stable feels like it would work very well with a lot of the other themes of the play.” i need to lie down. everybody read this right hte fuck now

#max.txt #putting this under a readmore bc it's long and also about intrusive thoughts but every ocd hamlet enjoyer read this right hte fuck now. #i have you by the collar im shaking you this is SOOOOO good #submission #TYSM FOR SENDING THIS IN BY THE WAY OH MY GOD. YOUR MIND!!! #ocd hamlet