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fandomhigh_ooc2007-07-08 07:20 pm
Fandom Spotlight: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark
Eh? That's not a good enough spotlight profile? Oh, fine.
Introduction & Background Info
The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a play written by William Shakespeare around 1602 or 1603 AD for his theatre company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was first performed in the Globe theatre in London. By all accounts, the play was a smashing success. At 4042 lines, it's the longest play in the Shakespeare canon, and takes about 4 hours to perform the entire text of the complete version. The Tragedy of Hamlet was eventually added to the unofficial canon of the greatest works of English literature. Despite being over-analysed to pieces, and one of the pieces of "real literature" that most high school kids are forced to read by their English teachers, it's still a really entertaining story.
Before I start into my TL:DR profile of Hamlet, I need to stick a disclaimer in here: Because there has been so much written about The Tragedy of Hamlet over the last 400 years, anything I could possibly say about this play has an argument out there saying that I'm completely wrong. Everything I say here is just my own view on things, so take them as you will.
The word "Hamlet" also refers to three completely different things in here (the play, the prince, the ghost), so I will try to keep them all separate. You will be sick of seeing that word by the time you finish reading this. I know I am of writing it.
Mini Synopses
At the most basic level, The Tragedy of Hamlet is a play about a boy that doesn't know what to do. He just recently lost his Dad to mysterious circumstances, and wasn't able to gain his inheritance as the next King of Denmark because his Uncle Claudius swooped in, and married the widowed Queen Gertrude to take the Danish throne. He's very bothered by the fact that no one around him seems to care at all about either of these two things. He's sort of stuck in grieving mode, until one night when a couple of guards and his friend Horatio tell him that the ghost of his father, the late King Hamlet has been appearing late at night.
Prince Hamlet chases down King Hamlet and learns a terrible truth: that King Hamlet was murdered Claudius. The ghost demands that his son avenge his "murder most foul" by killing Claudius. Prince Hamlet is broods a lot about this, because he doesn't want to kill his uncle if he's really innocent, and the ghost is just a hallucination. He decided to pretend to be mad to look for clues without people being suspicious of him. Most of the play centers around Prince Hamlet thinking about things, and wondering about life and death and his role in it, while the other characters try to figure out what the heck is wrong with him. A little bit past the halfway point, things start to go horribly wrong, and actions start to snowball, which result in all but one of the major characters ending up dead.
Format
Hamlet is a play, and so the original version of canon is a playscript in five acts. It's much more barebones than modern scripts, with only dialogue and the most important cues written down. The entire duel in the fifth act is indicated in the script only by the cue "they fight".
What most people don't know is that there are actually three different versions of the script of The Tragedy of Hamlet out there, and that the one included in most books is a synthesis of the second and first one. None of them were published by or even marked as official by Shakespeare himself. The first version, called the 'bad' quarto, came out in 1603, and is very likely a bootlegged script produced by having the actor playing one of the guards writing down all the lines he could remember from the play. It's half the length of the other two scripts, very shaky in parts where the guards are not on stage, and begins the famous soliloquy with "To be or not to be. Aye, there's the point".
A second bootleg version, called the second quarto, came out the next year. It's twice as long as the first version, but also has substantially better writing. It seems kind of like a revised version, in which more scenes were added, or someone managed to get a copy of a real script to use.
Third version is even longer than the second one by about 70 lines, and was originally published in a full book collection of Shakespearean plays called a folio, because of which it's called the first folio version. The third version is very close to the second version, which is why they're usually combined together.
Characters
The Royal Family
Prince Hamlet: The main character of the story, and the one the play is named after. He's one heck of a complicated character, and it's very hard to describe him in concrete terms. Prince Hamlet is the crown prince of Denmark who was supposed to become the new king after his father died, but was forced out of his inheritance by his evil uncle. He's really sad at the death of his daddy, and angry that no one else seems to care, and confused because he knows that he's supposed to avenge his father and take back what should have rightfully been his, but doesn't know how to do it or when to do it or if it's even right and moral to do it. Prince Hamlet mainly operates in two modes -- sitting around and thinking about stuff a lot, or acting without really thinking about it. He dies at the end of the play and takes almost everyone with him. A lot of the study guides will say that he's anywhere between 16 and 30 years old (and he's usually played by older actors with a lot of experience in most productions), but I've always seen him as a whiny teenager.
King Claudius: Hamlet's uncle and his new step-father. He's also the main villain of the piece. Claudius is the younger brother of Prince Hamlet's father, and murdered his brother with ear poison in order to marry Gertrude the hottie and gain the kingship of Denmark. Technically, he's a good leader with a good sense of command, but he's also incredibly slimy and perfectly willing to use or kill people if it benefits him. He doesn't trust his goth nephew as far as he can throw him. Claudius slowly gets worse over the course of the play; he starts off looking like a might be a good king, and ends up looking like a paranoid sociopath who puts poison on everything (including the drapes!) in order to make sure Prince Hamlet dies and stays dead.
Queen Gertrude: The mommy of Prince Hamlet, and wife of both King Hamlet and King Claudius at different times. Gertrude is a nice woman who loves her son and each of her husbands, and really just wants to keep things orderly and running smoothly. At least how I see it, Gertrude is mainly unaware of all the darkness that goes on behind the scenes -- how Claudius murdered her first husband, how her son has a ghost talking to him and a reason for acting crazy, how people around her are doing bad things -- and isn't involved in any of them. Alas for her, soon after she figures things out, she winds up dead.
King Hamlet: The daddy of Prince Hamlet and the late husband of Queen Gertrude. King Hamlet is dead before the play starts, but that doesn't stop him from coming back as a ghost to lecture his good-for-nothing son. He wants revenge for being murdered against his brother, while his wife remains unharmed, and he's stuck in Purgatory until that happens. King Hamlet completely freaks Prince Hamlet out every time he shows up.
The Royal Chamberlain's Family
Polonius: The royal chamberlain of the Danish royal court, and a huge pompous windbag. His hobbies include spying on people from behind things and giving long winded speeches to anyone who will listen. His death marks the point in the play where everything starts to go bad.
Ophelia: Prince Hamlet's ex-girlfriend. They were close before the death of King Hamlet, and she's puzzled as to what's wrong with her former boyfriend. Prince Hamlet is very mean to her, and Ophelia ends up going crazy for real, and drowning in a river offstage.
Laertes: Polonius's other kid, and Ophelia's very protective older brother. He and Prince Hamlet grew up together. He's more than a little ticked off when he gets back from Paris to discover the rest of his family dead, and uses his hot temper to plot his own revenge.
Other Characters
Horatio: Hamlet's BFF who went to school with him in Wittenberg, Germany. They tight. Horatio is the sidekick and plot device to fill the audience in about what's going on in the story, and most of his lines can be broken down to either "Yes" or "No". He is the only main character to survive the play because someone has to explain what caused the bloodbath.
Rosencrantz and Guilderstern: Two of Prince Hamlet's other school friends, who are easily manipulated shmucks. Claudius brings them in to spy on Prince Hamlet, who toys with them but tells them nothing. They end up getting killed in England instead of him.
Fortinbras: Huge deus ex machina. Er, that is... He's the crown prince of Norway, whose father was killed in combat by King Hamlet years ago, and has decided to invade the Denmark to get his revenge. People talk about him a lot, but he doesn't actually show up in person until the very end of the play, when he cleans up the mess and makes a long speech. Most productions cut him out of the story to make it shorter.
And so many more. It's a four hour play; there's a ton of secondary and minor characters.
The Historical Hamlet
Warning: I'm a lit geek. I'm also a history geek. When these two forces combine,
In summary, The Tragedy of Hamlet is based on a number of quasi-historical stories dating back a thousand years or so. In them the Viking Prince Amleth manages to play crazy, score with a bunch of English chicks, and sucessfully pull off his plan without getting killed. Shakespeare's play is the only version with a tragic ending.
Links to Follow Up
There's like a fleet of dump trucks worth of links out there, of things that relate to Hamlet. These are a select few of what I've got.
Videos:
-Hamlet, as performed by the Simpsons. They do the whole play in just under six minutes. (Also, I stole the sweater bit from this for IG use.)
-There's a bunch of different film adaptations of the play, but my two favourite ones are the Kenneth Branagh version, which uses the entire uncut script and a ton of famous actors; and Disney's The Lion King, which turns the whole story into an animated musical set in Africa with a happy ending. The Lion King is back in the Disney Vault (boo), but should still be available at any decent video store. The Branagh version is might only be available in specialty video stores, but is well worth the look.
Text:
The entire combined script of The Tragedy of Hamlet: Get a coffee, because it's one long read.
The Tale of Amleth, Prince of Denmark: This is Saxo's version of the story. It's a fun read, full of lots of death and insanity. If you have a little time to spare, I recommend reading it.
An English translation of Belleforest's version: It's very long, and full of both weird Early Modern English spelling and boring author ramblings, so I don't recommend this version as much.
There, that should do it for a spotlight write up. Any more questions?
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Also, I loved what you did with the guy here at Fandom. *bows to the Dane*
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Also, the playing Hamlet was hot, and choose to sit on my lap during the crazy plotting scene.Well, thank you very much! :)
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See: Fry's fic where Anakin goes back to Denmark to help Hamlet out. I was totally imagining a sword and lightsaber fight going on with Anakin and Hamlet kicking ass against the entire contingent of guards in Elsinore in the Branagh version's main hall. With that lighting. Oh em gee.