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What do you think the way Hamlet should be done is?

“Hamlet” should be performed with the character of Hamlet cast as the villain. To me, literally no other interpretation makes sense; the things he does, the way he behaves, are absolutely the deeds and behavior of a bad guy. Murdering an old man and then trying (and failing) to hide the body, driving an innocent girl insane for the hell of it, scheming a plot to catch his uncle making a guilty face during a play, acting wounded and hurt and yet never making any public declaration of his intentions - everything he does is either petty or outright evil. And yet every single production I’ve seen (and I’ve seen a lot - my dad’s a huge Shakespeare fan and “Hamlet” is his favorite play) makes Hamlet into a tragic, flawed, but protagonist figure.

And the same problem goes for Claudius, albeit in reverse. How are any of his actions explicable as a villain? After literally years, he suddenly decides to poison his brother - while the heir to the throne is in England, a country so loyal to Denmark that they unquestioningly execute two innocent people simply on the ruler’s say-so and who would most certainly, if Hamlet had contested his uncle’s legitimacy from the first, have helped the young prince raise an army. How does that make sense, coming from a man who’s allegedly so cunning and evil? He and Gertrude then get married a month later because apparently… what, Claudius has a big dick? No - the logical explanation here is that Old Hamlet was a terrible ruler, husband, and person in general, and something happened that made Claudius realize the only hope was to remove his brother and take the regency for himself until Hamlet came of age to be King. Only the people proclaimed him king, putting him in an awkward position when Hamlet returned and made no move to claim the title for himself.

And besides, the play would be so much more interesting if Hamlet were the villain - think about it! It makes all of his actions understandable, at least within a narrative frame. All those whining, unending, unendurable fucking monologues where he cries about his awful dad being dead and him not being king - they become another part of Hamlet’s act, a scheme to get anyone who may be overhearing to think that he’s a harmless lunatic when in fact he’s cooking up a scheme to get rid of his uncle. His abuse of Ophelia becomes now not a sign of how sadface the poor little prince is, but another indication of Hamlet’s own twisted ideas of loyalty and fidelity, an example of the sadistic way he treats his friends.

And other characters’ actions make more sense like this, too. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern’s decision to accept Claudius’s instructions now becomes something that is not bafflingly venal - what kind of childhood friends suddenly decide to take an innocent man to be executed just for some money? - but the act of two people who see what Hamlet has become and are prepared to go to great lengths to stop him. And Horatio becomes not the one true friend that poor little Hamlet has, but a starstruck toady blinded by the regard he’s given by the prince of the realm to see what Hamlet’s really like. Gertrude and Claudius become the guardian of a monster - how interesting would it be if Gertrude knew about the poison, and has a last-minute change of heart? The ghost of Old Hamlet could be staged as nothing more than a trick Hamlet plays on the guards and Horatio, a way to convince them to be on his side. And that last speech of Horatio’s to Fortinbras (and oh my god how awesome would Fortinbras’s plotline be if he knew about Hamlet’s villainy) would be such bitter irony, perfecly encapsulating the way that history can be written, not necessarily by the victors, but by the survivors who have the best story to tell.

odysseiarex

okay, I know other people have done excellent takedowns of this (my three favorites), but i’m goint to add my two cents because i can

when you read a play by shakespeare, especially for the first time, there’s one rule that you should always follow and it is: trust the play. trust shakespeare. trust that characters are telling the truth; trust that what you see on the stage is real. you have to give yourself over to the play absolutely. you have to let the play take you where it needs to and show you what it wants to, before you can start making judgment calls about what it’s saying and how it should be done.

“hamlet is the villain” is an interpretation that does not trust the play. it does not trust hamlet when he says how sad, how heartbroken, how confused and lost and hurting he is. it does not trust hamlet’s honest shock at hearing his father’s story of his murder (why would hamlet be surprised if he were staging the ghost’s appearance??). it does not trust claudius’ guilt at having killed his brother — something he says he did for his own ambition. it does not trust hamlet’s motives for staging the play within a play (which he does to prevent himself from possibly killing an innocent man). it does not trust hamlet when he says he loves horatio; it does not trust that horatio is capable of thinking for himself. it does not trust that hamlet loved ophelia, or that he feels any guilt at her death; it does not trust that ophelia’s insanity might have as much to do with her father’s death as with hamlet’s treatment of her in one scene.

“hamlet is the villain” is an interpretation of hamlet that hates the play. i don’t have to prove this, the op has said it themselves: “those whining, unending, unendurable fucking monologues”. you can’t endure hamlet’s monologues? fine. the solution is simple. don’t listen to them. don’t watch a performance of hamlet. don’t try to talk about how hamlet “should” be performed because clearly, you don’t trust the play, you don’t respect the play, you don’t even like the play.

leupagus

Oh my god, reading some of these amazing butthurt responses to the fact that I don’t like Hamlet is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. Seriously, they’re so offended! It’s great. But this one is my favorite just for the sheer obliviousness of saying “GOD IF YOU DON’T LIKE SOMETHING THEN JUST IGNORE IT” while this person has obviously seen something they don’t like (ie my post, which if you’ll notice was an opinion that someone solicited) and is apparently incapable of… ignoring it. Way to be, dude, way to be.

ofgeography

so i really really love hamlet, so much i wrote a thesis about it. hamlet is my sweet slow jam.

but here’s the thing: hamlet, the character, the individual, is an asshole. everyone in the world has always, basically, agreed that he is an asshole, including the characters in hamlet. even if they’re softening it by saying he’s a tortured, indecisive young man (which is only half-true since sometimes the narrative decides to make him, like, 30), what it boils down to is that hamlet does some really questionable shit that ranks super low on the “good person” scale.

in fact, early translators of the play were really at a loss as to how to make non-english audiences identify with/root for hamlet as a person, because he does so many terrible things. sometimes this means that they intentionally made claudius more evil, so that hamlet could like … look better? sometimes they made hamlet less of a douche by just cutting out the particularly bad things he does—letting ophelia survive, ignoring rosencrantz and guildenstern entirely—so that all his other madnesses looked a little more manageable.

the thing is: hamlet is a villain, in a play that is entirely staffed by villains. there are no real “good guys,” except maybe ophelia and horatio. hamlet is, in a way, about purging a monarchy that has molded and rotted and making way for fresh blood—hence why fortinbras is made to be a hero, even though literally all he does is show up and sweep away the bodies.

but he—along with EVERYONE ELSE—is also made not to be a villain, precisely because we are given insight into their minds. we are led to sympathize with them because we are first made to empathize with them. that’s what the monologues are for, so that we see hamlet’s and gertrude’s and claudius’ guilt as well as their sins. they make them human. everyone in hamlet is the hero of their own story and the villain of someone else’s.

“trust the play”? what? shakespeare lied to his audiences in his plays all the time. you’re meant to engage, you’re meant to ask questions. being skeptical of plot points and character decisions is the whole crux of romeo and juliet.

shakespeare didn’t want you to trust him. blindly trusting theater and its playwrights is the most boring, passive waste of a theatrical experience i’ve ever heard of. if he wanted you to just trust that someone was evil or not evil, shakespeare wouldn’t give you insight into their head. case in point: iago. shakespeare says, “no, look, he’s just evil, okay? he’s just evil, and we’re not going to talk about it,” so you don’t and that’s kind of just that and iago is widely regarded as one of the most evil, terrifying villains both in the canon and possibly ever.

we get to hear all of hamlet’s thoughts, because asking yourself who is the hero of hamlet is the point of hamlet.

what i’m saying is: if you are refusing to see hamlet as he is—flawed, tender, sympathetic, a little evil, a lot selfish, and super, super crazy—then you are not, actually, trusting the play. you’re falling for it.