i want to talk about hamlet

Duke. 27. ✝️ Ph.D. candidate studying early modern English drama. I come up with intentionally horrible staging ideas. (she/her)

[dukeofstratford]

Dissertation...almost...done...

[real-housewives-of-wrestling]

in honor of seeing a local production of othello tonight here is who i would cast as the real housewives of shakespeare

- iago, obviously: he would have a pretty classic LVP/nene leakes sort of trajectory where he'd be this iconic puppetmaster for the first five or so seasons before everyone got sick of his shit and iced him out

- lady macbeth: INCREDIBLY entertaining television but only gets a few early 2000s seasons due to being a genuine liability. would never be cast in the modern era but she has some wild twitter stans still. has at least three mug shots

- falstaff: absolute backbone of the franchise, no one really rides hard for him but he throws all the best parties and everyone wants to make sure they're invited when he hosts the girl's trip. besties with puck (they secretly hate each other)

- beatrice: iconic, franchise fav, not above getting a little messy but never sticks her toe in *too* deep. has the best confessionals. stays close to iago and feeds him dirt on the other housewives behind the scenes but doesn't trust him. has a husband who is constantly trying to get camera time but everyone is sort of fine with it because he's entertaining at least unlike the other thirsty househusbands

- puck: the pot-stirrer, the bone collector, the one causing all the drama but somehow no one can ever be mad at him for too long. a sheree whitfield sort of presence

- juliet: the kind of annoying "can't we all just get along" housewife who has some kind of crisis every other week and just goes "please i can't handle all this fighting my life is already in shambles" but it's just some guy that she should have dumped three seasons ago

- cordelia: came on the show specifically to get away from the abusive husband that she married to get away from her shitty family. constantly pissing everyone off by "just speaking my truth" but honestly generally has fairly good takes just phrases them in a way that makes the rest of the cast gasp and clutch their pearls. best friends with juliet when they hang out one on one but juliet never sticks up for her in front of the group

[afieldinengland]

‘villain, i’ll kill thee!’ ‘fuck off, you cheap pair of bastards.’ 

[oneminutereviews]

Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist by Michelle O'Callaghan

Most people would find it difficult to name an English playwright who worked at the same time as Shakespeare. People who watched Shakespeare in Love (1998) might remember Christopher Marlowe, but few will be familiar with Thomas Middleton (1580–1627), a younger contemporary of Shakespeare. Like Shakespeare, he wrote comedies, tragedies, histories, tragicomedies and poems. He even collaborated with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens and seems to have adapted or revised Macbeth and Measure for Measure. Gary Taylor, who has edited both Shakespeare’s and Middleton’s works, even described him as “our other Shakespeare”.

Michelle O'Callaghan’s book Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist introduces students to Middleton’s work through a study of his major plays. These include the city comedies A Mad World, My Masters and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside, the collaborative play The Roaring Girl, the tragedies Women Beware Women and The Revenger’s Tragedy (which was adapted into a film that is worth watching) and his allegorical play A Game at Chess.

Students who are familiar with English Renaissance literature by reading only about Shakespeare will learn a lot about the social and literary background of Middleton’s time, due to a number of important differences between the two authors. Unlike Middleton, Shakespeare never wrote for boy actors such as the Children of Paul’s and never wrote citizen comedies. Whereas Shakespeare worked for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later renamed the King’s Men, Middleton always remained a free agent.

Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist is definitely worth reading if you want to explore English Renaissance drama beyond Shakespeare. Familiarity with Middleton’s plays is helpful but not required. The book does not provide a general introduction to the history, the literary traditions and the theatre practices of the time, so I would advise reading this book only after reading other books about the period.

Michelle O'Callaghan: Thomas Middleton, Renaissance Dramatist. Edinburgh University Press, 2009. ISBN 9780748627813.

Review submitted by Tsundoku.

[dukeofstratford]

I am using this book in my dissertation and it is excellent!

[shieldmaidenofsherwood]

The most niche of posts but boy I mean it.

[frogshunnedshadows]

Select character names from works by Thomas Middleton, Jacobean playwright and occasional co-author with William Shakespeare:

Sir Walter Whorehound

Ambitioso

Sir Bounteous Progress

Richard Follywit

Sir Beauteous Ganymede

Shortrod Harebrain

Sir Gregory Fop

Penitent Brothel

Knavesbe

Sir Perfidious Oldcraft

Pompey Doodle

Sir Ruinous Gentry

[gloomth-and-wanderings]

the revengers tragedy is so funny you guys... thomas middleton more like thomas winnleton

[battlecrazed-axe-mage]

The linked article

[lastweekseyeliner]

so ive worked in childcare for a bit now. during the pandemic, the place i worked started a day program for kids whose parents needed to return to work. turns out the school district uses memorization and cueing, and when combined with online learning that read all the instructions to them, overwhelmingly the kids aged 5-9 just... couldnt read.

i brought in a bunch of my books from childhood, and we started having one-on-one reading lessons with the littles. then i went out and bought about fifty more books secondhand. first step was covering the pictures so the kids couldnt guess what the words said and had to actually TRY reading them first. second step was making a list of new words for each kid so we could learn about those words, what they meant, and if the kids were old enough, some of the etymology behind them (because if you can recognize latin root words, it's easier to make connections for pronunciation later on eg. unicorn -> universe).

the kids HATED this. reading was previously the easiest class and now it was really, really hard. but reading class had also previously been the most boring class; their books were ten pictures with a single sentence on the opposite page. we got through it by taking turns reading books the kids picked out from my collection- they would read one sentence or paragraph, then i would read the whole page complete with funny voices, then it would be their turn again, etc. it turns out that if kids are motivated to hear the rest of a good story or a lot of information about a topic they love, they're more willing to struggle.

the kids improved so rapidly that i honestly almost cried a few times from how proud i was. one little girl (kindergarten aged) went from being unable to sound out the whole alphabet to reading goodnight moon by herself in two months :'>

all this, though, was NOT my job. my job was to keep the kids on task during their online schooling and prevent them from killing each other or starving. i am not a teacher. the school system was failing these kids to the degree that outside individual reading lessons were necessary, and school systems across the US are still doing this!

if you are a parent or teacher or childcare worker, PLEASE check to see what your kid is being taught. ask to see examples of lesson materials. raise concerns about the importance of phonics over any other reading strategy. join the pta, go to school board meetings, send emails- just make sure your kid is actually learning to read.

[dukeofstratford]

I think that when applying for jobs I should simply Not Have To Write About Myself

[cryptotheism]

whats your favourite scholarly insult

Big fan of "so and so claims X, but evidence says otherwise"

[cryptotheism]

BIG fan of "it is tempting to think-"

[thesobsister]

Dr. Faustus in a Magic Circle, frontispiece of P.F. Gent's 1618 translation (The historye of the damnable life and deserued death of Doctor Iohn Faustus) of Dr. Faustus, 1648 edition.

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall Hiſtory of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, 1663 edition

[dukeofstratford]

Capulets are red

Montages are blue

No you cannot change my mind

[dukeofstratford]

@cosmos-curiosity​ @fweet-prince​

I will DEFEND my position.

The late Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film is most likely what popularized the Montague-blue Capulet-red color scheme (and rightly so; it’s a GOOD MOVIE). But there’s more at play than the film’s quality and popularity that makes this color scheme so effective.

Let’s talk colors. Going by color theory, blue and red are not technically contrasting colors (orange contrasts blue while green contrasts red), though the contrast they do have is pleasing. Red is the color most commonly associated with heat and passion. Blue is a cool color, associated with calmness and melancholy. Red and blue are often used for real-life dichotomies: hot and cold, fire and ice, passion and calm, anger and sadness, etc. Even if they do not contrast on a color theory level, their symbolic contrast makes the red-blue dichotomy very effective for viewers.

When we look at the characters within each house, the dichotomy in terms of color symbolism is highly effective. Outside of the main couple and the household heads, the most prominent characters from the Montague and Capulet families are Benvolio and Tybalt, respectively. These two are some of the more prominent characters during the street brawl scenes, making them critical to the representation of their respective houses. Benvolio matches blue symbolism pretty accurately: he is even-tempered, tries to diffuse dangerous situations, and generally works at evening out negative emotional extremes (be they violence or Romeo’s general disposition). Tybalt, on the other hand, is the epitome of choleric, hot-tempered and quick to jump to violence (red’s association with blood is a happy addition to the color symbolism here). Because of these characters’ associations with typical red/blue symbolic dichotomies, using these colors as visual cues are a good visual storytelling method for the audience.

But we can’t base the families’ ENTIRE symbolic color schemes on one member each, can we? 

Let’s talk Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet always has red as her symbolic color in my mind. She’s fiery, passionate, and more than a little dramatic- all common associations for the color red. Moreover, her self-inflicted death is violent compared to Romeo’s: her method draws blood, while Romeo’s does not. While Juliet constantly displays intense, righteous passion and rebellion, Romeo is introduced to the audience as a melancholic figure. He’s a very introspective person; even if he isn’t calm as blue typically associates, his melancholic disposition leads him to great depth of emotion. Where Juliet is moved to anger, Romeo is moved to tears. They are not diametrically opposed in the way Tybalt and Benvolio are, but they do respond to stimuli differently.

Another note: Lord Capulet’s brash display of anger after Juliet refuses to wed Paris suits the red = anger association very well, in a similar vein to Tybalt. We don’t see quite as much of Lord Montague’s character, but we do know that Lady Montague dies of despair after Romeo is banished: blue = sadness.

Also Montague rhymes with blue so there you go

So, yeah. Capulets are red, Montagues are blue.

[dukeofstratford]

Updates!

Hello, all! It's DukeOfStratford/witty-fool, and I have been very inactive on this sideblog for a while! For anyone who is interested, I wanted to share some updates (especially since they do involve Shakespeare stuff).

First things first: I am in the final stretch of my PhD! I am hard at work on my dissertation, which should be finished April 2026. It is a lot of work, and I have to juggle searching for jobs on top of it. But it's been a very rewarding process so far.

My work is on comic villains in productions and adaptations of early modern plays. I wanted to highlight other early modern playwrights, so I have chapters on Volpone (Ben Jonson), The Revenger's Tragedy (Thomas Middleton), and finally Henry IV (both parts)--AKA The Falstaff Chapter. This research has been awesome, and I hope to discuss the topic in online literature-focused communities as well as my academic work.

I'm also working on conference presentations and at least one journal submission (fingers crossed!). Academic life is really busy. If anyone here has questions about what it's like going to grad school for English, working on a dissertation, etc., I'm happy to answer!

Finally, I have never stopped thinking about Horrible Staging Ideas and will share more soon. <3

[maykitz]

you forget what an insane, insane, insane step forward the ability to ctrl f keyword search digital texts or whole libraries for specific information is until you have to find something in analogue writing

[spade-riddles]

It’s TEMPEST!

The life of a showgirl!! It’s a tempest! It’s TEMPEST!

She wrote it to be the masque show in Shakespeare’s tempest!!!

The language used in that portion of the play was ridiculed by Shakespearean scholars as sounding “not like Shakespeare” and that’s the biggest critique swifties have had, that it doesn’t sound like Taylor, like she’s there but not really?? Something is missing??

Tempest is so on theme. Storms, shipwrecks, islands, a faux marriage.

The goddesses at the marriage - Juno (marriage), Iris (rainbows), and Ceres (mothers).

One of the prime characters in Tempest is Ariel, a spirit of the air, and what woman is thrown off a ship in the Fate of Ophelia MV? A redhead! She falls into an ocean of sirens!

She will end up on a beach, as we know from the little mermaid.

I pledge allegiance to the land, the sea, the sky. Each iteration of Ariel. Three. Always three with Taylor, because there are three of her.

Masque’s are for hiding, for meeting, for being oneself and for protecting oneself.

The Tempest is very preoccupied with illusions and pageantry. It’s exceptionally meta, even for dramatic irony standards.

Taylor has consistently mentioned esoterism in her interviews and the Tempest is allllll about magic, because well it’s a show, life is a show.

She even has her theatre bow moment like Shakespeare does in the play! She comments to the audience in the last song about hoping we’ve enjoyed the show, just as Prospero does. Prospero is thought to be Shakespeare’s self insert.

There are 12 songs. Tempest begins after Prospero’s exile, 12 years prior.

🕵️‍♀️

To add on to my last note:

Iris had sisters, the harpies (personification of storms) and Arke.

Arke means Swift.

All sisters are winged. All sisters are messengers.

The song the albatross seems to perfectly follow the betrayal that Arke faced, when Zeus cut off her wings and threw her into Tartarus.

[dukeofstratford]

Hello, as a professional Shakespearean this is not good Shakespeare analysis.

[mothmire]

Jester!🩵

[reiiv]

The fate of Ophelia 🧡

Oh my god, why is everyone taking an emotional metaphor so badly?

If you are reading this and you know who Taylor Swift is, you will know that this woman has released a new album, her first single is titled "The fate of Ophelia".

And for some reason everyone has decided that everything in this song is wrong because it has nothing to do with Hamlet, It should have been a surprise?

The fate of Ophelia does not literally speak about the tragic heroine of Hamlet, Taylor draws a parallel between the character's emotional situation and her own.

"You pulled me out of the grave and saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia"

This is a direct response to "The Prophecy" of TTPD

Taylor is not Ophelia, Taylor saved herself from her own tragedy when she lost control over her own music, Taylor has the autonomy that Ophelia lacked.

The song is not literally about Taylor being a princess saved by a prince, but rather about a battered and abused heart that at the last moment is saved from drowning in despair and sadness.

Let's remember that these songs were written in the Eras, Taylor didn't yet own the original masters, her 6-year relationship was over, and every night she had to give it all in the Eras show, her heart could not have been more plunged in misery.

So yes, for me the emotional parallel is correct.

Now, people are angry because Ofelia would never have been saved by one of the men in her life, which is true, but what would have happened if someone else, someone new, had prevented that Ophelia committed suicide? What would have happened if Ophelia had survived?

That's the perspective of this song, what would have happened if someone else had pulled Ofelia out of the river and helped her gain the autonomy she needed? It doesn't have to be a man, we decided it's a man for Travis, but what if Ofelia had been saved by a friend? Would this song continue to be so criticized?

[dukeofstratford]

I love this song, and as an Annoying Shakespearean Academic, there's plenty of merit to this song being both a fair and a bad take on Ophelia. The points made here in favor of the deployment of the metaphor are really good!