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In a recent conversation with someone, I tried to convince them that Shakespeare was not the dull thing they were forced to endure in school. On rereading my argument, I thought it amusing enough to share:
All the materials that make up English Literature are simply the entertainment and escapism of the day. While not all may suit our modern tastes ( I loathe Dickens ), understanding it's fundamental nature is amusement rather than academia makes it all approachable.
Hamlet is a good example. At the time, the big thing was revenge plays; what we call action movies. Basically a likable guy has family killed by bad guys and proceeds to make bad guys pay. Willy does what he always did, takes what's popular and produces his version. What he also often did was put a twist on the by then tired formula, in Hamlet's case, he's emo to the hilt.
Hamlet comes home to find daddy murdered and mommy in an incestuous affair with the killer. Rather than just killing the bugger, he waits. He sulks, he laments he inability to kill himself, oh that God had "not fixed
His canon against self-slaughter." He "pretends" to be insane. He wears black all the time.
He takes some comfort from being smarter that everyone else and insults everyone around him in language most of them don't catch. By the middle of the play, you think he might of worked himself up enough to take revenge, but stays his hand on the weak excuse that the victim is praying. Instead, he commissions a play! He even picks up a skull in a graveyard and gushes over it.
Hamlet is, among other things, the archetypal emo art fag. The entire play is basically his self flagellation. Keeping this in mind, Hamlet becomes our nouveau Donnie Darko anti hero. The play can be deeply amusing.
All the materials that make up English Literature are simply the entertainment and escapism of the day. While not all may suit our modern tastes ( I loathe Dickens ), understanding it's fundamental nature is amusement rather than academia makes it all approachable.
Hamlet is a good example. At the time, the big thing was revenge plays; what we call action movies. Basically a likable guy has family killed by bad guys and proceeds to make bad guys pay. Willy does what he always did, takes what's popular and produces his version. What he also often did was put a twist on the by then tired formula, in Hamlet's case, he's emo to the hilt.
Hamlet comes home to find daddy murdered and mommy in an incestuous affair with the killer. Rather than just killing the bugger, he waits. He sulks, he laments he inability to kill himself, oh that God had "not fixed
His canon against self-slaughter." He "pretends" to be insane. He wears black all the time.
He takes some comfort from being smarter that everyone else and insults everyone around him in language most of them don't catch. By the middle of the play, you think he might of worked himself up enough to take revenge, but stays his hand on the weak excuse that the victim is praying. Instead, he commissions a play! He even picks up a skull in a graveyard and gushes over it.
Hamlet is, among other things, the archetypal emo art fag. The entire play is basically his self flagellation. Keeping this in mind, Hamlet becomes our nouveau Donnie Darko anti hero. The play can be deeply amusing.
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(There's certainly enough blood and guts in the play to make it a good guy movie, though they'd have to add some explosions somehow.)
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Ophelia, like any stock character, can be played a number of ways. Though I can't recall any real moving portrayals of her. She really is a kind of action movie character, the required love interest with not much more going on. The only real point of her existence is to garner sympathy and prove the hero is straight.
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