#lady hamlet

[witdiseased]

Let her paint an inch thick...  Princess Hamlet, dressed for her role as diplomat

[muchadoaboutmusicals]

Various promotional pictures of Hamlet’s main trio.

Sarah Mayhew as Hamlet

Lena Kirby as Ophelia 

Matt Stanley as Horatio

[muchadoaboutmusicals]

What a Piece of Work is Man

Maxine Peake as Hamlet

[muchadoaboutmusicals]

To Be, or Not to Be

Maxine Peak as Hamlet

[muchadoaboutmusicals]

[morerawerbreath]

Lenne Klingaman as Hamlet at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, 2017

[morerawerbreath]

“What might it mean....to see Hamlet as a woman? To watch her embark on vigilante justice, share an alma mater with Martin Luther, and be both the victim and the aggressor? … To see her walk through a world where she is kept under close surveillance, battle with the extremes of depression, anxiety, and grief, and spend most of her journey on a path marked by self-criticism, overthinking, and fear of failure?”

[muchadoaboutmusicals]

idk how familiar you are w/ shakespeare but i hope it's ok if i throw in a few plays? hamlet, macbeth, taming of the shrew

Always here from some Shakespeare!

Hamlet: LADY HAMLET – I already have this tag. The answer here is to just bend Hamlet. Princess is losing her cool trying to defend her father and herself, but no one is taking her seriously. When Asta Nielson played Hamlet, she played it as a girl who’d been raised as a man, hiding her true gender from everyone because a woman “can’t rule”, but this isn’t strictly neccesary. Maybe she and Ophelia are in love as women, maybe Hamlet is being pressured to marry a woman, but is keeping the secret of the gender she was assigned at birth. On the other hand, maybe Hamlet and Ophelia are besties and Hamlet has the hots for Horatio. Whatever is fine. Any Lady Hamlet is a good Hamlet. I just want to see a girl playing the whole court, pretending to be crazy and then maybe going crazy, getting in swordfights over her mistakes, raging against the world, contemplating murder or suicide, and seeking vengeance most of all.

Macbeth: I like it. A woman with unbridled ambition, rising to be the best warrior in the land and then wanting more still. A scheming husband pushing her further. This competition and idea that “there can only be one” pushing Macbeth to kill her best friend and many other strong women as well rather than making allies of them. Macbeth with a crown on her head, a sword in her hand, and darkness in her heart.

Taming of the Shrew: This might actually make this silly, sexist show worth watching. A woman has to train her husband not to be an ass and get him to stop being so domineering. That’s both accurate and potentially amusing…provided things don’t stray into feeling like abuse as some regular productions do.