Here goes:
“He treats everything like he’s acting—like everything’s a play.”
Do smart people read connections and motivations that aren’t always there? Is it a side-effect of intelligence?
“I see these very contemporary concerns about mental illness and melancholy.”
This is a play about existing in a "vacuum chamber," and having only one ideology: “All of us—we only listen to what the Ghost tells us.”
“He gets really assertive and he sort of…stops considering alternate perspectives.”
“He has a penchant for exaggeration towards absolutes… Ophelia is either the most beautiful girl in the world, or she deserves to be a nun.”
“He’s completely unforgiving of everyone.”
“He has a problem with obsession. He gets too passionate about things.” (I wonder if there’s some element of bipolar disorder to Hamlet.)
“If they’d just let him go to Wittenberg, a lot of this could have been prevented.”
“Hamlet’s flaw is that he can’t accept death for what it is. He thinks he can find ways to make it not real, find ways around it.”
“Hamlet really thinks he’s a coward for fearing death.”
“I think Hamlet is method-acting, and he’s playing the role really well.” With Gertrude in her chamber, he is sincere, but “I wonder when he jumps in Ophelia’s grave if he’s still acting.”
“At the end he jumps into the grave with Ophelia and is like ‘the love of 40,000 brothers isn’t as much as mine,’ and I’m like—really? Because look at how you’ve been treating her.”
“All those little insults against Claudius—he’s too arrogant to cover those up.”
“So much hubris. The Protestant idea is that the future is pre-determined, and he tries to change people’s ultimate fate, his own included.”
“He thinks he’s reached some enlightenment, like he’s taken the red pill and can see into people’s souls.”
“Part of his flaw IS hubris. He seems so confident in his right to send people to hell.”
“If Hamlet is just acting mad…what is his plan for AFTER Claudius is dead? Is he going to be like, ‘J/K I’m not really crazy’?”
“We’ve seen, from the beginning of the play, that Hamlet takes things hard.”
On Horatio:
“The characters in this play exist on a continuum from enabler disappearing bestie to murderous uncle.”
“What do you have against Horatio?” “He’s not as bad as the others, he just doesn’t do anything to help Hamlet. He sits there and nods his head about everything. There are certain things I require of my friends. If I’m doing something really stupid, I expect my friend to drag me out of there, put me in the car, and take me home.”
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern:
“Yeah, I always think that people who are only kind of on my side deserve to die, too.”
“I totally think that they deserve to die. But not in a bad way!”
“I’m not sure that ‘just following orders’ is ever a full justification. That’s true for R and G, and that’s true of Hamlet and Ophelia as well.”
(You guys are harsh towards R and G!)
Gertrude and Ophelia:
“I think Hamlet’s not mad—he really does see the ghost, and I’m not sure why Gertrude CAN’T see the ghost. I think it has to do with this theme of remembrance, and Gertrude has moved on.”
“Maybe women need to be independent—cause and effect—look at what happens when they’re not.”
“Why do we think that Hamlet’s view of women is the same as Shakespeare’s view? Hamlet hates everything.”
“Lots of Shakespeare’s plays have female protagonists so amazing and strong and fallible and complex that they’re more progressive than 90% of our shows, today. Hamlet doesn’t even pass the Bechdel test.”
“Does Ophelia commit suicide, or does she just fail to get out of the water because nobody’s there to tell her what to do?”
“I see a lot of similarities between Hamlet and Ophelia. Except what Hamlet worries about the whole play, Ophelia actually does. It’s hard for me to read her as passive.”
“For most of the play, I found Ophelia infuriatingly passive. And then she commits suicide. I read that as a form of civil disobedience—taking herself out of this world that dominated her in a way that was very against the norms of her time.”
“We are told throughout the play that Hamlet and Ophelia are in love, but we NEVER see a genuine interaction between them.”
“I don’t think Hamlet and Ophelia are at ALL in control of their levels of dependency.”
“I wouldn’t want to live if I’d lost my purpose. …Maybe [Ophelia] should find someone to plot against and kill, so her life has meaning again.” (I hope the sarcasm is clear?)
There is a freedom in madness—Hamlet can say what he wants with few consequences. Does it work this way for Ophelia, as well?
Hamlet on Ophelia: “I can see that she’s beautiful, and that means that deep down, she’s not chaste.”
“It’s ALL water. All the stuff with Polonius and Hamlet—and getting caught in the crossfire with Claudius—all this water drowned her. It weighed her down.”
“People who feel like they’ve been wronged by the world somehow seem to jump to the conclusion that it’s women’s fault.”
“I have a problem with the reading that equates obedience with passivity and poor decision making.”
“Ophelia doesn’t realize her power, her influence over Hamlet.”
Gertrude and Ophelia die differently from how the men die—not murder, but as “collateral damage” (Ophelia drowned, the poison not meant for Gertrude).
The women are the victims of “internalized misogyny, so that they beat THEMSELVES down.”
“Gertrude being a woman means that she is controlled by men [in the world of the play], so I think he [Hamlet] is more mad at her for being a woman than for anything she does.”
(Gertrude and Ophelia): “The two times they made choices for themselves were, like…dying.”
If you've made it to this point, bonus best meme:
Mrs. Swan