Mchoratio - And Flights Of Angels Sing Thee To Thy Rest

let’s all take a moment to remember the minor characters from hamlet

all the guards at elsinore but especially marcellus. i love marcellus for some reason. too bad he kind of disappears after act 1 (probably had to keep doing his job so he couldn’t just run around with the prince and his scholar bf all the time. plus he probably felt like a third wheel)

reynaldo, otherwise known as ‘that one guy who polonius sends to france to go spy on his son for him’ but unlike laertes, we never see him return to elsinore? maybe laertes found out reynaldo was spying on him and killed him. maybe reynaldo did return but it was never mentioned. maybe he just decided ‘fuck denmark france is where it’s at’ and stayed in france. we just don’t know

cornelius and voldemort voltemand. they travel to norway and back delivering messages. i would have listed them separately but they’re kind of like rosencrantz and guildenstern, you can’t have one without the other (although lots of productions do tend to just turn them into one person, i’ve noticed)

and speaking of norway, fortinbras! fortinbras is probably the one person in this play who really gets a happy ending. he ends up being king of denmark and he didn’t even have to fight for it or anything. way to go fortinbras i’m happy for you

they aren’t named in the text, but the gravediggers. especially the really witty one like damn son you just beat hamlet ‘words words words’ prince of denmark in a battle of wits four for you unnamed gravedigger

osric. osric the somewhat foolish courtier who totally has a fanboy crush on laertes. in hamlet at elsinore, as soon as laertes fell osric was there which i think is definitely how that scene should be staged

i don’t know. the minor characters are cool. but the really cool thing is that none of them die! (except possibly reynaldo. and osric if you’re watching the kenbran version)

literally i just can’t comprehend any interpretation of hamlet that doesn’t put grief at the center like. hamlet’s father died and he is actively grieving throughout the play that is the driver of all of his behavior. “is hamlet actually crazy or is he putting on a performance” is a boring question to me because grief is a type of insanity. grief makes you feel like you are performing even when you are all alone. it makes you feel like you’re seeing things it makes you feel completely alone it makes you cling to the people around you it makes you push them away it makes you angry and sad and hamlet wants to kill claudius for replacing his father and taking his mother from him as much as he wants to kill him for revenge.

Gertrude: Where have you all been?!

Hamlet: Oh, just out dealing with things way beyond our maturity level.

i don’t know how to ask for help i disappear and come back when i’m good

the only real good ship dynamic: tragic hero x person with genre awareness

“‘How much do you know about Shakespeare,’ I once asked a friend who has committed much of her life to studying the Bard. She replied, ‘Not as much as he knows about me.’ Remember this the next time someone tells you literature is useless.”

— Don’t Turn Away From the Art of Life, by Arnold Weinstein (New York Times, Feb. 2016)

wretch(affectionate), abhorred monster(affectionate, sexual)

yes i’m a reasonably intelligent person. yes i’m a dumbass and a fool. multiple things can be true

Joan of Arc