I Walked Into Barnes & Noble To See That Prince Hamlet Was The Cashier And He Was Trying To Sell His

I walked into Barnes & Noble to see that Prince Hamlet was the cashier and he was trying to sell his autobiography in play form, Hamlet. He didn’t know who Shakespeare is.

i wanna start hamletposting on main. but how do I tag a 400 year old play. tbf ive been on tumblr for a couple years now and I don’t even know how to properly tag regular things. send help

an ice cold beer topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. lying on top of the ice cream foam is a salted peanut. this is the angel. around him are sprinkles (his tears). this is "the angel's lament", my new cocktail

I’d like to propose a performance of Hamlet in which the audience is addressed, looked at, and treated as if they were there but ONLY by characters who have gone mad.

in Act 2, when Hamlet’s pretending to go mad, while in the presence of Polonius and others, he sort of pretends to look at the audience, but always glancing over, looking sort of in the wrong direction, putting on a show for the only eyes he thinks are watching. When he’s alone and doing his soliloquies, it’s clear that he’s talking to himself, even though we’re listening in.

And it continues this way until Act 3 Scene 4, when Hamlet runs Polonius through with the sword. For a moment after the deed is done, there’s a shocked silence on the stage. As Hamlet goes to examine the body, he falters, slightly, as he becomes aware of just how many eyes are on him. And slowly; he looks at us, and through the rest of the scene his attention is torn between the audience and his mother, until the ghost appears (perhaps in the audience as well) and he’s… sort of put back on track. But from then on, all his soliloquies, asides, he begins to talk to us, in the audience.

And we notice the change, sure, but we don’t really get what it means, not until Ophelia goes mad, and while onstage she begins to give audience members flowers, to talk to them as the others call her crazy. And at that point most of us can make the connection.

From then until the play is over, Hamlet can’t fully ignore us. Every other character will, and does (besides maybe the gravediggers if you wanted to include anyone else), but we’re ever present in his sight. As he dies, we’re the ones he refers to when he says ‘you that look pale and tremble at this chance, that are but mutes or audience to this act’

hello pls share the rosencrantz/guildenstern fic recs, i am not a hamlet person but i am a tom stoppard person

well every single R&G fic by kylee is touching and charming and nostalgic for me - there was even more back in our livejournal days but these are the best of the best. Ghost Story is the one i always remember by its original title, dry bones can harm no one, so it took me ages to find it again and i was in raptures when i finally did!

most of the others that haunted me are now lost to time and fond memories, and really the play itself has formed so many of my artistic sensibilities - the nature of choice and returning to the start, the distance between what is said and what is meant, identity disruption, The Narrative As Character, being each other's context, it's all extremely good stuff!