hamlet au where everything is the same but no one ever puts anything down gently, not even the background characters, if someone is putting something down at all they must throw it to the ground like it did them serious wrong, im talking flat out slam dunking anything in their hands, but otherwise the play doesnt change
Horatio: Goodnight, sweet prince [LIFTS HAMLET ACTOR INTO THE AIR AND SLAMS THEM INTO THE GROUND]
THE PLAY ENDS WITH THE FOUR CAPTAINS DUNKING HAMLET’S CORPSE INTO A COFFIN AT LIKE 90 MILES AN HOUR
SLAMLET.
“Alas, poor Yorick…” (Shatters the skull)
It is way too late at night for me to be awake because i am LOSING MY SHIT over this post
I don’t care for Shakespeare but I’m actually crying at “Slamlet”
a. hamlet and horatio are having a badly-hidden affair from the start. they’re trying to keep it secret and act like they’re Just Guys Being Dudes
they’re terrible at it. every time they make eye contact they forget the ends of their sentences and get distracted
(this canonically happens in the text – ‘give me that man / that is not passion’s slave, and i will wear him / in my heart’s core, ay, in my heart of heart, / as i do thee. — something too much of this.’ you can’t tell me they didn’t get distracted by making out and have to reluctantly drag themselves back on track during this sentence)
play opens with a montage of them making out in corners of the castle corridors and having to jump apart any time people walk by
this also explains why horatio’s apparently been in denmark since the funeral but he and hamlet are talking like they haven’t seen each other in forever when the play opens
b. ophelia is also really gay and she and hamlet are pretending to date in order to get their various relatives off their backs.
hamlet and ophelia lying on the floor taking turns to drink soda out of the same bottle, writing the world’s fakest love letters to each other and laughing so hard they’re crying
‘nonono wait ive got it, “doubt truth to be a liar but never doubt i love”’ (wheezing) ‘WHAT’ ‘idk?? straight people like that stuff?? do they?’ ‘you’re asking me??? your guess is as good as mine dude’
‘IM PUTTING THE WORD ‘BOSOMS’ IN IT’ ‘NOOOOO’ ‘IM DOING IT’ ‘my father’s going to have to read this you’re the WORST’
c. ophelia knows that hamlet is pretending to be mad – she doesn’t know why, but he asks her to help him out. this means that all of their confrontations are as melodramatic and extra as possible, interspersed with moments of frantic conspiratory eye contact.
ophelia, pulling out all the stops, ‘FATHER i have been SO AFFRIGHTED hamlet came with his DOUBLET UNBRACED and HELD ME AT ARMS LENGTH and STARED AT ME….. all this after i stopped encouraging his love…. what can it MEAN!!’ ‘mad for thy love?’ ‘….idk i can’t say for sure but yes definitely that’s what it is and you should probably go tell claudius that now’
the ‘get thee to a nunnery’ scene becomes way more enjoyable if ophelia’s in on the plan and is helping to convince claudius that hamlet’s mad
basically ophelia deserves more time being happy in this play
and if she gets this, then things get REAL SAD REAL QUICK later, because then hamlet kills polonius, and she starts to wonder if she really knew him – was she right to trust him? had he been using her? had he really been mad; should she have noticed; could she have stopped him? she HELPED him, what if she made things worse by playing along? and now everything’s gone to shit and her father is dead and she’s desperate and alone
That once belonged to Laurence Olivier, who gave it to Peter O’Toole, who gave it to Derek Jacobi, who gave it to Kenneth Branagh, who gave it to Tom Hiddleston. [twitter]
Loki is the Philosopher King 