#claudius

[herpsandbirds]

Narrow-bridged Musk Turtle (Claudius angustatus), family Kinosternidae, found in Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize

photograph by Michael Heaton

[qweenofurheart]

no white boy not like that

I watched Hamlet again, I wanted to draw these quickly because I was inspired by The Phantom Tollbooth illustrations.

[shakespeare-guy-anon]

thinking about hamlet's relationship with love

he grows up and his parents are married — but clearly his mother didn't love his father enough because she moves on from that love so quickly.

whatever love the brothers had for one another is down the drain in seconds. there's not much to it, and it's over before we can really get any insight to their dynamic.

when hamlet sees the ghost of his father, it tries to guilt trip him with love as a tool. if thou didst ever thy dear father love, — and hamlet interrupts this with a cry — revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

love has now in a way become associated with the killing, along with the wedding being so quick to succeed the funeral.

hamlet does not love his uncle. his uncle does not love him. but they must because they are family, because he is hamlet's mother's husband and because his mother loves claudius

ophelia and polonius and laertes all love each other as a family. they are clearly close and care deeply for one another, and it hits hard when any one of them is suddenly absent; permanently, this time around

hamlet loves laertes in the way that one must love one's partner's sibling, and laertes loves hamlet in the way one must love one's sibling's partner. once she is not holding them together, the love crumbles, and that switch is flipped to kill.

hamlet loves ophelia the only way he knows how to. he abuses her and he shoves her aside in favour of his own personal journey, and in the end, it results in her death.

ophelia loves hamlet the only way she knows how to. she cares for him and truly, deeply loves him, and she's hurt when he's unreasonable, reasonably.

hamlet loves horatio. he trusts horatio and he knows him, and horatio knows hamlet. horatio feels like the only one in this whole ordeal who's actually on hamlet's side and actively makes an attempt to understand him. he is hamlet's safe place.

hamlet dies in his arms.

[face-without-a-heart]

There’s a bit in Hamlet that stuck with me where Claudius is in church and he’s trying to pray to get forgiveness for killing his brother and he realizes that he can’t because even if he feels guilty about it, at the end of the day he’s never going to choose to stop reaping the benefits of that murder. Nothing Claudius says matters because he’s totally unwilling to atone if it means giving up the position he’s gained. I really like stories about guilt and how people deal with it, and I always think it’s interesting when a character feels horrible about something they’ve done, but refuses to actually change their actions or make up for it in any meaningful way.

[whencyclopedia]

The Julio-Claudian dynasty (27 BCE–68 CE) oversaw the establishment and consolidation of the Roman Empire following the political crises and civil wars that ended the Republic. Founded by Augustus (reign 27 BCE–14 CE), the dynasty created a new system of government in which republican institutions formally survived while political, military, and financial authority became concentrated in the hands of the princeps (“first citizen”). Augustus' long reign brought stability after decades of conflict, reorganized the army, strengthened provincial administration, and inaugurated the Pax Romana, a period of relative peace that transformed Rome into the dominant power of the Mediterranean world.

[theodorafrompluto]

A Roman Emperor, Claudius (1871)

by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

[uncleclaudius]

Jean-Paul Sinibaldi, Claudius proclaimed emperor, 1886. Probably my favourite painting of the scene. I mean his face is the perfect mixture of total terror and total surprise.

[pompeiusliker]

smiles