you mean how he was careful not to let any part of his body touch me and kept leaning away and nearly choked when I leaned across him slightly to ask Joly something and accidentally leaned my hand on his thigh? I don’t think that means he likes me, maybe he just hates my cologne or something
Should have seen the ride home. If we were in a musical he would have broken out into I Can Hear The Bells
“Courf his hand is so strong but it’s also soft can hands be strong and soft certainly I’m not going to be prejudice about hands because one can be strong and soft but Grantaire’s hands were also rough with work and maybe it’s because he grips bottles so hard but clearly he’s very good with his hands and—-“
the fact that the first quarto version of hamlet was pirated is perhaps too much for me. because it implies some elizabeathan asshole sat at the back of an original performance of hamlet and, for four hours, took down everything he could hear. just rapid-fire writing in old ass english. but then also taking it upon themself to add a random subplot in which horatio and gertrude are also in a conspiracy to kill the king? and that ultimately this poor poor bastard’s efforts were FRUITLESS because it made the play look so bad that shakespeare’s contemporaries were like “we have to realease the real quarto or people are going to make fun of you.” i will never be able to stop thinking this
of course he knows he’s the hero of a revenge tragedy; it’s pretty obvious. he knows enough about the theater to identify the genre that best describes his life (and because he’s an overly simplistic teenager, he does describe his life as a story.) he spends the whole play referencing actors and acting, he consciously makes claudius into a villain and himself into the hero– he knows what he’s doing.
he’s playing the part, of course. when he fakes madness, that’s playing the part. when he makes up elaborate plans and schemes, that’s playing the part.
but revenge tragedies are called tragedies for a reason. it’s because at the end, even the hero dies.
hamlet casts himself as a hero doomed to die. hamlet identifies as someone who is going to die. hamlet knows he is going to die from the moment the play begins.
but a revenge tragedy only ends when the revenge has been had; a revenge tragedy only ends when not only the hero but the villain is dead.
it’s the great question of the play: why does it take hamlet so goddamn long to kill his uncle? what is the cause his indecision and inaction? why can’t he just get on with it and stab the man, for god’s sake?
hamlet doesn’t want to die.
hamlet isn’t ready to die. he can see the curve of his destiny approaching, and he doesn’t want it to. he wants to hold off that climax just a little longer, because he doesn’t want to die yet.
at the beginning of the last scene of the play, he’s invited to a duel organized by a man who’s tried to kill him already. hamlet figured out r & g were working for claudius in about five minutes; he knows this is sketchy, for god’s sake. and horatio tells him, horatio begs him, don’t go if there’s something that frightens you. be cautious. be afraid. don’t go, stay with me.
hamlet walks into his death with open eyes, because he is ready to fulfill his destiny, because he is ready to kill his uncle as his father told him, because he is ready to do the last thing the hero of a revenge tragedy will ever do. he knows how this story ends and he chooses this ending. he knows he will die and he chooses to die.
the rest is silence – it’s almost surprised. there’s nothing else. there’s no more to tell.
what do you say to children, once the storybook has been read and put away?
good night, sweet prince. flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.
characters in a period drama: *hold hands/touch each other in a loving way for the first time*
me:
every tiny display of affection in a period drama is so intense like someone could just touch another character’s cheek and i’ll nearly have a heart attack
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 