@nwmcotutajrobie

[ddrunk-mothh-deactivated2024042]

i know i talked about it, on my old blog, but can we talk about who tf Horatio is???

aside from (what I've pointed out last time) the fact that everybody seems to know him, and that no one questions why he is always with prince, even if it's clear that he's from lower class,

I've noticed that he is so well in Elsinore that Gertrude (freaking queen) tells him to take care of either mad Ophelia or Hamlet? (I can't remember it's literally 1am bfr)

It's just the fact, that everybody here is so used to him and treat him like his appearance here is normal, when in fact it's so out of place, weird and absolutely not making any sense!

Only conclusion from this we have clear, is that he spends quite big amount of time in the castle in Elsinore but ???? what does that even mean??? what does it tell us??

like he's sorta breaking the fourth wall for me.

and not only by where tf is he from, but he's also weird in bigger context

look - he's the ONLY one survives knowing everything, he's THE SURVIVOR, he's the only one except Hamlet, who is fully aware of what is happening, and even more, becouse Hamlet kinda doesn't have a clear vision becouse of ghost and everything is slowly crushing and destroying him, but Horatio still has a clear mind and looks at this from different perspective, he's just DIFFERENT, and through the play we can see it, but the question is, what we're supposed to do with that fact, what does it mean??

he's just so fascinating for me, becouse he seems so simple, and fitting here, but when you deeper think about it, he's so out of place and AAGGHHHHHHBSHSHSHSJ

goddamn why is this so long

i need to go to sleep

yea bye

[xx-knife-xx]

I love weirdly long ship names. "Tragic Danish Boyfriends" fuck yeah. Even funnier when you consider the fact that we have no idea if Horatio was Danish or not.

[cabaretofghosts]

i'm not even sure if any of my mutuals are into hamlet x horatio but has anyone read that one hamlet retelling set in 1950s chicago because i did a couple of days ago and i bawled my eyes out then read it again and cried some more

[hamlet-the-dane-official]

my uncle killed my father and married with my mother and now i must *remembers that suicide jokes do nothing for my mental health and wellbeing* put on a play

[hamlet-the-dane-official]

my uncle killed my father and married with my mother and now i must *remembers that suicide jokes do nothing for my mental health and wellbeing* put on a play

[hamlet-the-dane-official]

my uncle killed my father and married with my mother and now i must *remembers that suicide jokes do nothing for my mental health and wellbeing* put on a play

[hamlet-the-dane-official]

my uncle killed my father and married with my mother and now i must *remembers that suicide jokes do nothing for my mental health and wellbeing* put on a play

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[lipstickhamlet]

would hamlet say six seven: a study

arguments for:

six seven itself has no actual meaning and originates from a clip of a viral song on tiktok, so hamlet's way of pretending to be "mad" could be repeating something widespread but meaningless, like how he quotes song lyrics and idioms (2.2, 430-432; 3.2, 306-310; 3.2 371-372)

hamlet often uses nonsensical, surreal humor, usually ones that appeal to the youth and confuse the older generation, to cope with his despair (2.2, 190-199; 5.1, 204-207)

he puts on the antic disposition partly to confuse claudius and gertrude, which this absolutely would

i don't think hamlet would ever have gen alpha humor, which is the point. he's changed to the point of being unrecognizable in his madness (2.2, 4-1; 316-321)

polonius would try to find meaning in it and come to an entirely incorrect conclusion

arguments against:

hamlet may not have tiktok or even know of this meme in the first place, because he's said to be a stable and well-liked individual prior to the play (4.7, 18-20)

it's actually rosencrantz and guildenstern who would keep saying six seven until hamlet decides to kill them

[rosees3ray]

@nwmcotutajrobie i think you would like this post

[helen-cooper-fan-account]

If Horatio has 100 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 50 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 10 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 1 fan it’s me, and if Horatio has zero fans then I’m dead but I’m about to come back like king hamlet to talk about how much I love Horatio

[devout-apparitions]

Horatio should call hamlet “sweet prince” more often. Why is it only just once. Mr shakesqueer why. why.

[helen-cooper-fan-account]

If Horatio has 100 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 50 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 10 fans I’m one of them, if Horatio has 1 fan it’s me, and if Horatio has zero fans then I’m dead but I’m about to come back like king hamlet to talk about how much I love Horatio

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

Idk if this is unpopular or whatever but this is my opinion- so ya know how everyone classifies Hamlet as your standard sad emo dude? Well I completely disagree. Hamlet’s a normal person having a normal emotional response to his father’s death and his mother marrying his uncle. As for what type of person he is- he could be literally any type of person- the only way to know what he’s really like would be to see him pre-dead dad. That’s why everyone relates to him- he’s whoever you want him to be.

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree

I absolutely agree with this. Oscar Wilde said something along the lines of “there are as many Hamlets as there are readers”, and I totally think this is why. The line between grief and depression is hard to draw — though I will argue as far as “normal responses” I think his tends towards the latter given that it goes so far as to make him deeply suicidal — but the idea that he shouldn’t be sad is bizarre.

We know from Ophelia’s speech in 3.1 and from some comments from Horatio and R&G, too, that this isn’t Hamlet’s personality, per se. He’s said MANY TIMES to have changed near-unrecognizably in the wake of his father’s death. We never see what he “used to be like.” That’s not even an unpopular opinion, or a popular one. It’s right there in the text!

Also, for all the very basic “Hamlet’s problem is indecision/hesitation” interps: being uncertain of wether you have it in you to murder anyone, but especially a family member, in cold blood? How EMMINENTLY NORMAL that is. He gets there, to be sure, with the whole “comfortable with murder in pursuit of revenge,” at the cost of his friends’ lives, and basically anyone’s good opinion of him, but the fact that the setup of the play is,

“Ghost tells me to commit cold-blooded murder as revenge, I internalize that I am only a strong and worthwhile person who deserves to live if I can do this without flinching,” and so many people look at that and go,

“Yup, seems reasonable”, has always been bizarre to me.

Within the context of genre, it totally makes sense that the protagonist of a revenge tragedy is supposed to Go For That Revenge, but Hamlet’s whole… thing is having human reactions rather than ones that fit the literary tropes he exists within. On one hand it makes sense to look at the character and just see him as not “living up” to genre, but on the other doing that by treating grief/depression as weak and filial piety to the point of murder as simple/easy to accomplish can really flatten readings. That’s where “emo”/“lame” Hamlet comes from.

See also, the “if Othello had been in Hamlet everything would’ve been fine” joke: on one hand, it has quite a bit of accuracy because, NARRATIVELY, to not be a tragedy, Hamlet requires someone who’s quick to jump to violent action when it seems necessary. On the other hand, Othello needed quite a lot of prodding and manipulation to get him to ‘murder’, and kind of the whole point of Othello was that that was a very bad idea. Honor culture and revenge culture aren’t universally (or even often) porytayed as positives in Shakespeare; quite often they’re the SOURCE of tragedy, not the solution. Just. Food for thought I guess.

[shredsandpatches]

YES. The thing that’s so frustrating about the sort of pop-cultural understanding of Hamlet – Olivier’s film opens with a voiceover intoning the lines from 1.4 that begin “So oft it chances with particular men,” followed by the very non-textual “This is the story of a man who couldn’t make up his mind” – is that the play is very much a deconstruction of a genre that was extremely popular at the time it was written but which has now been entirely eclipsed by Hamlet itself. I mean “deconstruction” here in the TV Tropes sense, not the literary theory sense: theoretical deconstructionism is about the relationship of text and meaning, whereas what TV Tropes calls deconstruction is about what happens when you take a convention of some sort, a trope or a genre, and examine how it would play out in reality, or at least reality as the work’s creator perceives it. And that’s what Hamlet does with revenge tragedy: the events aren’t really realistic (and the chronicle they’re based on is even more nuts, with a lot more sex in swamps, feeding people to pigs, and lighting people on fire) but the characters generally react realistically to the situations to the extent the structure of the narrative allows. Shakespeare was postmodern before there was a modern to be post. He didn’t have to break the fourth wall–his theater barely had ONE wall!

Like, that’s why Hamlet questions the ghost in the first place, because that’s what you (generic you) would do if you saw a ghost who told you to kill someone! Even someone you didn’t like! But as modern people we expect naturalism in our drama so we don’t really see what Shakespeare’s doing with generic conventions, and Hamlet tells us he’s indecisive so clearly he must be a reliable narrator even though the very first time he’s alone onstage he’s like “I really wish suicide wasn’t a sin,” which is a pretty reliable sign of being pretty fucked up! But he’s in a revenge tragedy situation so of course he and everyone else are gonna get chewed up and spit out: you can’t beat generic conventions. 

(This intersects in weird ways, too, with a lot of modern people’s attitude towards belief in the supernatural and assumptions about how belief in the supernatural worked back then, but idk if I wanna get into that.)

[stripedroseandsketchpads]

THANK YOU. I think that part of this comes from a lack of understanding generic conventions, and some of it comes from the fact that insofar as a lot of people study Hamlet in school, those conventions aren’t previously in their head so they learn that:

- This is what a revenge tragedy looks like; this is what a hero is “supposed” to do

and

- This is Hamlet; Hamlet does not do this

at the same time,

And also often take (or are taught to take) the phrase “tragic flaw ” as a very literal, “what’s wrong with him as a person/his personality”,

BUT, it’s on an internal level not a metatexual one. So it’s more character study, “Hamlet does poorly at this whole revenge tragedy game,” rather than, “Shakespeare wrote naturalistic characters into a world rigidly structured by generic conventions and this is in large part why everything within that little fictional world goes so horribly wrong”

So it ends up with a very strange undercurrent that characters are only good insofar as they are SUCCESSFUL in living up to the generic conventions of their world, so Hamlet is mocked for being weak/indecisive/“emo” because people choose to read grief/depression and hesitation as literal character flaws, and reasons that he is A Failure or A Mess for most of the play

I also have something of a hypothesis that part of why this often makes especially depressed people relate to Hamlet HARDER is because mental illness being treated as a flaw in your personality or a personal weakness is such a pervasive thing IRL, especially for people who are first encountering it as teenagers/young adults, (which I think also contributes to the “emo” thing)