She talks to wolves...

Until recently, I had never read Hamlet. I have still never seen a production of the play: not on stage, not on film. And yet, I am pretty familiar with this particular Shakespearean work. Somehow, throughout twenty-eight years of life, I have accrued knowledge of this play. I knew many lines before reading it (and was surprised by how many more I knew that I hadn't known came from Hamlet). I knew the story and the characters and had no trouble following Stephen Greenblatt's book-length analysis Hamlet in Purgatory before reading the text of the play itself.

I have no idea how this happened. Well, I know how I picked up the lines - Shakespeare's material gets recycled in everything from other works of literature to television shows to magnets and aprons and t-shirts. But where and when did I hear the story of Hamlet in the first place? When did I first learn who Rosencrantz and Guildernstern are? Was it really from seeing part of Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead performed at a high school forensics competition? How did I first pick up the tragedy of Ophelia, come to associate her with wilting flowers and pale limbs, drowned?

My mother tells me she told me the story as a child, although I don't really remember this. However, I fully believe my mother was that awesome (and bizarre); after all, suitable bedtime fare was William Blake's The Tyger right alongside Puff the Magic Dragon.

I am incredibly excited about getting to discuss this play under Dr. H, whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for Shakespeare are quite something to experience.

I am almost as excited about the Hamlet-themed event I am planning to celebrate (hopefully) surviving the rest of this semester. See, I am the kind of geek who likes to do things like read books, discuss them with her husband (and other interested parties), and then watch film adaptations or appropriations of those works with a fully themed menu. (The most spectacular occasion of this has been history-themed: Andy and I had an "Axis Friday" a few years ago where we discussed World War II, watched Letters from Iwo Jima and Downfall, and ate German and Japanese food. Not at the same time. We also had an Italian wine at some point during the day. Last December, we had a themed event for Moby Dick, but I fell down on the New England menu.)

So, this December, I'm planning to watch a film production of Hamlet (and also Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead) and am periodically working on a suitable Danish menu. If any of you know Danish food, suggestions are certainly welcome. Yes, I'd like for breakfast, lunch, and dinner all to be thematically appropriate.

...yes, these are the kinds of things that keep me sane when two term papers are threatening to eat me. Why do you ask?

To wit, a poll! You're not necessarily deciding this for me, dear LJ Flist, but I do value your opinions.

SEE LIVEJOURNAL FOR POLL.

And let's close this with some funny: one foul-mouthed illustration and a pretty accurate summation of Hamlet behind the cut!

( Cut-tag, thy name is Clicky! )

Fun times. By the way, I'm on GoodReads! If you are too, you should swing by and say hello.


P.S. Regarding the choice of film adaptation in the poll... this is a question of which Hamlet should I watch first because I fully intend to watch several as time goes by.

Yesterday, via tithenai, I discovered that it was Talk Like Shakespeare Day in addition to being International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. Rapscallion that I am, I didn't even visit the website before engaging in the following conversation with a friend (who, for obvious reasons, I shall here refer to as 'cos'):

Our Heroine: You know, Talk Like Shakespeare day is just not as much general fun as Talk Like A Pirate Day.
Our Heroine: I mean, you really need a drunk English department to enjoy the former properly.
My Cos: I think I'd need to do a lot more prep work for that.
My Cos: Pirate Day, you can get through with an "arr" or "matey" here and there.
Our Heroine: Oh, totally. I'd only want to talk in Shakespeare's actual lines, so I'd have to download them all into my brain or just flail around, butchering his plays terribly.
My Cos: Shakespeare...I dunno. I use "praytell" and "prithee" in regular conversation, so I'm not sure anyone would notice. Maybe I should invest in a codpiece for next year, hope the costume helps.
Our Heroine: The Codpiece of 17th Century English.
My Cos: Best D&D Item Ever?
My Cos: Exceeding the "Gloves of Hymen" that came up in a long a bizarre (and drunk!) conversation at the cake party last year.
My Cos: I really should hit the xkcd boards again.
Our Heroine: 0_0

(I should note, with a bit of cheek-coloring embarrassment, that I had this conversation with more than one person yesterday because it amused me so. I might be conflating them a bit in this transcript. Apologies and love to my dear cos-es-es. Es.)

Anyway, after reading the actual guidelines of Talk Like Shakespeare Day, I am much more amused and almost willing to give their fashion of "talking like Shakespeare" a go next year:

How to talk like Shakespeare...

1. Instead of you, say thou. Instead of y’all, say thee.
2. Rhymed couplets are all the rage.
3. Men are Sirrah, ladies are Mistress, and your friends are all called Cousin.
4. Instead of cursing, try calling your tormenters jackanapes or canker-blossoms or poisonous bunch-back’d toads.
5. Don’t waste time saying "it," just use the letter "t" (’tis, t’will, I’ll do’t).
6. Verse for lovers, prose for ruffians, songs for clowns.
7. When in doubt, add the letters "eth" to the end of verbs (he runneth, he trippeth, he falleth).
8. To add weight to your opinions, try starting them with methinks, mayhaps, in sooth or wherefore.
9. When wooing ladies: try comparing her to a summer’s day. If that fails, say "Get thee to a nunnery!"
10. When wooing lads: try dressing up like a man. If that fails, throw him in the Tower, banish his friends and claim the throne.

I must admit that I randomly "talk like Shakespeare" anyway. I am much enamored of Much Ado About Nothing, for one, and have memorized large swathes of the play, including much of Beatrice and Benedick's witty bickering. Because he found it funny, my oldest brother likewise memorized certain parts so that we could go back and forth at the dinner table on many a mother-maddening occasion.

Now, we randomly and occasionally throw these mean-spirited yet well-worded barbs back and forth through text to our ridiculous glee.

...

And this has been your moment of "Shakespeare in the Modern Day"! I bid thee good morrow!

Well, I had a conversation with my dad the other day about Shakespeare and our respective opinions of the Bard. Dad pronounced that he couldn't ever really get into the plays and I reminded him that the plays were meant to be watched, not read (which is primarily what he tried to do a few decades ago). I finished up talking to him with a comment that we needed a new volume of collected works, as the two volume set my dad bought back in the seventies is falling apart.

I came home today and found a gift on the kitchen table: a nice big capable-of-bashing-your-brains-in volume of Shakespeare's works. I whooped and my dad laughed at me, saying that Shakespeare's words hadn't changed since the '70s and teasing me about wanting a fresher copy.

I didn't care. I have a new pretty book with all of Shakespeare's works in.

So, in honor of my gift, I have decided to declare December Shakespeare-month-at-home. The task I shall set myself is to read several of his plays and watch movies made from them. I would include Theatre Nights at ASF, but I would want my lovely friends to come with me and not all of them get $10 student tickets. But it is a possibility.

My labors will include Hamlet, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear.

For Hamlet, I'll be viewing Kenneth Branagh's version, Lawrence Olivier's, and maybe even the one starring Mel Gibson.

For Othello, Branagh's is king.

For Much Ado About Nothing, again Branagh's.

For A Midsummer Night's Dream, I'll watch that movie that I think had Kevin Kline in.

And, for King Lear, I'm sure there's an American version I can watch, but I'm also including Kurosawa's Ran.

Please comment if you have any further ideas or want in on the watching fest. It'll happen over several different dates, of course, and I think it will all be grand fun.