The most relatable thing about Hamlet is the way he uses strange and surreal dark humor and obscure humorous cultural references to cover up his deep despair, to the utter confusion and concern of all of the older people around him. Hamlet would love memes.
Shakespeare, scrolling through evil Kermit memes in heaven: I was born in the Wrong fucking era
some highlights from my students’ romeo and juliet modern interpretation projects:
– someone made a username for friar laurence with 420 at the end – the same kid who put 69 in romeo’s username like i wouldn’t know what either of those things mean – the girl who added ‘clean’ at the end of all the songs on her juliet playlist like lmao girl i know spotify doesn’t have the clean version – the kid who said romeo and juliet killed each other – the weird dichotomy of kids who put love story on their playlist vs the kids who choose bad blood – the kid who wrote ‘get a room’ as tybalt’s comment on romeo’s couple pic – the kid who said ‘romeo is probably one of those douches who follows a ton of people so they follow him back and then he unfollows all of them’ – the one who legitimately used the word ‘alrighty’ do kids say this in their text messages???? i thought i was the one talking like an elderly person but okay – the one who made romeo’s username ‘montagoose’ – the only kid who acknowledged that posting about your secret relationship on instagram was a bad idea – the girl who wrote that romeo would unironically say ‘#blessed’. she’s right. – the one single solitary girl who wrote mercutio as gay as shakespeare did (she’s also the only one who used mercutio at all which is a tragedy but whatever) – the one who wrote romeo’s insta bio as ‘thus with a kiss i die… LOL RIP ME 😂💀’ – the one who made benvolio’s username benvoliYO
I’ve done that! Not for R&J, but with various lit pieces. They have to make social media posts from certain characters.
My favorite was a kid who made a Twitter account for Satan from “Young Goodman Brown.” His hash tags were hysterical.
I also had someone who made an Instagram feed of images inspired by “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” & one who did a nightvale-esque radio show about “Annabelle Lee.”
shakespeare’s character descriptions/stage directions/contexts are so vague it makes me so happy. wanna make Laertes hamlet’s ex boyfriend? doesn’t say HE’S NOT. wanna make juliet a trans girl? WHERE IN THE SCIRPT DOES IT SAY SHE ISN’T??? fucking put King Lear in SPACE set that shit on the enterprise THERE ARE NO RULES IN SHAKESPEARE
The best part is that pretty much all of the fights are “they fight” with no mention of whether it’s with swords or throwing knives or kung-fu or if they just do the slappy-hands thing at each other.
the only rule in shakespeare is that a bear must show up in the winter’s tale. could be a grizzly. polar. panda. hell, antigonus could’ve wandered into a gay club.
This is the EXACT reason why shakespeare endures more than any other writer, btw
admittedly I don’t normally like modern shakespeare adaptations but once I went to see my cousin in a midsummer night’s dream and it opened with a high schooler saying “I don’t wanna read this play” so he sits down and eats an entire chipotle burrito on stage and then immediately falls asleep and the play begins but instead of the forest the faeries all hang out in a rainforest cafe TM and at one point in the middle of a scene the guy from the beginning just slowly drifts across the back of the stage on a skateboard, staring at all the characters as the events of the play transpire in the form of some sort of chipotle-induced coma lucid dream
THAT is EXACTLY what Shakespeare would have wanted
I swear if this isn’t floating around on the internet I’m gonna cry
Oh buddy IT’S ABOUT TO BE. I am like, 98% sure this was my high school’s production and I’ve got photos and video clips like craaaazy…
Here are some fun additions… the Mechanicals were also based on the characters of The Breakfast Club (here I am below, eating an actual Captain Crunch and Pixie Stix sandwich on stage.)
…and the one on the longboard was actually our Puck – he rode it through the whole play in the background. Please note his “Forest Cafe” shirt… which we also had logos for on the cups.
…and we had both a flash mob at the end AND an interlude where myself and one of the other Fairies danced to “Sexy and I Know It” while we were cleaning up the tables at the cafe.
I will post more of this later. I have a DVD at my house and will endure cringing at myself to bring you some quality clips… there’s probably one of K eating the burrito before the start of the play, too.
Here ya go kids… all 2h20m. if you make it through the whole thing once, that’s probably more times than any of the cast watched this DVD. You can probably see why. Tbh if you watch this, I am sorry in advance.
Important notes:
– Chipotle burrito makes a cameo about 30 min in,
– the end has a flash mob and a “commercial” for the Forest Cafe,
– unfortunately, the lunch scene where all the mechanicals whistle like the Breakfast Club got mostly cut for some reason?
–
@vampireapologist in case you have any interest in reliving this… at the very least you can prove to any doubters that there was, in fact, a Chipotle burrito onstage.
I cannot even fully conceptualize, much less put into words, how wild this chain of events has been.
I have dozens of posts going around that have broken 50,000 notes, and plenty that have broken 100,000.
On every single one of these posts, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of comments and tags calling me a liar and the story fake, but none so much as this post.
in this post, i will detail my rankings and reasons thereof of the sluttiness level of every character in hamlet, or their “ho ratio,” if you will,
wh
w
where’s the rest of the post op
HAMLET ho-ratio: 11/10. thirty years old and somehow still going through his emo phase. definitely tried to convince ophelia that blue balls was a serious medical condition. has συμφορά tattooed on his bicep. probably makes out with skulls.
OPHELIA ho-ratio: 5/10. probably would have boned hamlet if he wasn’t SUCH a turd about asking. learned kissing from her maidservants. annoyed to have died a virgin but preferred death to sexual intimacy with literally anybody in the danish court.
LAERTES ho-ratio: 7/10. spent his youth in paris, presumably being very french about sex. grew up fencing with hamlet, so it can be assumed they touched dicks at least once, on a dare. nice boy, tries hard, loves the game. very relieved to die before accidentally fathering a child with someone he’d have to keep secret from his father.
GERTRUDE ho-ratio: 6/10. gamely tried to bone only her first husband for the first two years of marriage before giving up on him ever getting good at it and took her business elsewhere. will try anything once, provided claudius lets her try it on him first. comfortable with nonmonogamy, but not polyamory, because she doesn’t want to have to care about more than one person’s emotional wellbeing.
CLAUDIUS ho-ratio: 10/10, which is also the number of chefs in the court who wish he would stop doing naked bikram yoga in the kitchens.
HORATIO ho-ratio: 0/10. unproblematic. pure as the driven snow. all sexual fantasies are filled with enthusiastic consent and respectful lovemaking. wants his first time to be special, with a person he loves. has kissed one person in his whole life and refused to brag about it to his friends. “if you’re asking me how many times I’ve been in love, the answer is two. but the rest I won’t talk about.”
YORRICK ho-ratio: 2/10. literally a skull. made out with hamlet. not proud of it.
THE GHOST ho-ratio: 3/10. won’t shut up about his ex-wife during sexual encounters. generally unsexy to be around. very cold.
POLONIUS ho-ratio: 7/10. just happy, and surprised, to be here.
ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ho-ratio: 13/10. exclusively engage in threesomes. always down to experiment. well-known on campus for hosting parties with competitive Sexy Poetry Readings, which is when guests are invited to recite poetry naked, and instead of applause are given kisses. just here to have a good time. unfairly murdered. gone 2 soon. always in our hearts.
THE PIRATES ho-ratio: 15/10. all pirates are sluts for treasure.
FORTINBRAS ho-ratio: 2/10. just a soft beefcake looking for a nice girl. confused by denmark. probably would have boned hamlet if he hadn’t been dead by the time he got there.
for all of you trying to tell me that ophelia didn’t die a virgin, first of all i specifically said that these ratings were 100% correct and not to refute them, and secondly, i cannot believe a single one of you honestly thinks she would have caved to hamlet, the least sexy and most unbearable person in all of denmark. also, you will note that her rating is 5/10, not 0/10. there is MORE TO SEXUAL ACTIVITY THAN APPARENTLY ANY OF YOU HAVE DREAMT OF IN YOUR PHILOSOPHY.
Horatio’s ho-ratio man, i mean the name alone has to be worth at least one point it is literally ho-ratio without a dash
look not to be Extremely Myself here but this is the equivalent of saying that just because hamlet’s name has “ham” in it he automatically eats more ham than anyone else in the world
Molly's Monsters 