yknow if romeo had just Cried on juliets corpse for a couple hours instead of drinking poison Right Then they would have been Fine
The moral of the story is: always take time to cry for a few hours before making important decisions.
So I’m more or less being facetious here, but this is actually a thing.
Hamlet is genre savvy. Hamlet knows how Tragedies work, and he’s not going to rush in and get stabby without making absolutely certain he’s got all the facts.
Except once he thinks he has all the facts – once he’s certain that it really is the ghost of his father and Claudius really did kill him, he rushes in and stabs the wrong guy, which starts a domino line of deaths and gets Laertes embroiled in his own revenge tragedy and ultimately results in the deaths of nearly every character other than Horatio.
That’s the irony and the tragedy of the story. Hamlet knows his tropes and actively tries to avoid them, and the tropes get him anyway. It’s inevitable, the tropes are hungry.
I want a sticker that says the tropes are hungry so I can put it on my laptop
i met a scholar once who said that tragedies aren’t about a silly “flaw” or anything, it’s about having a hero who’s just in the wrong goddamn story
if hamlet swapped places with othello he wouldn’t be duped by any of iago’s shit, he’d sit down & have a good think & actually examine the facts before taking action. meanwhile in denmark, othello would have killed claudius before act 2 could even start. but instead nope, they’re both in situations where their greatest strengths are totally useless and now we’ve got all these bodies to bury.
The tropes are hungry and the hero is in the wrong goddamn story.
I’m at the pop up globe watching twelfth night and I kid u not the fool basically just went ‘anyway here’s wonderwall’ and is actually fucking playing it with all the audience singing along???? And all i can think is how happy shakespeare would be that his play is being upstaged by a fucking meme
If music be the food of love, play on
No really though that’s exactly what Feste would do. That’s entirely in character.
Like actually though - what is this shit? This is like watching olympic ice skating but with words. It is the literary version of dancing on ice with knives strapped to your feet.
He is indeed! You lot are good at this! Yes, it’s from The Tempest, scene one, when the ship is wrecked;
GONZALO;
He’ll be hang’d yet, Though every drop of water swear against it And gape at widest to glut him.
A confused noise within: ‘Mercy on us!’– 'We split, we split!’–'Farewell, my wife and children!’– 'Farewell, brother!’–'We split, we split, we split!’
ANTONIO
Let’s all sink with the king.
SEBASTIAN
Let’s take leave of him.
Exeunt ANTONIO and SEBASTIAN
GONZALO
Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground, long heath, brown furze, any thing. The wills above be done! but I would fain die a dry death.
