hyperfocuses (his mother’s remarriage, his father’s death; both are topics he regularly returns to, even when they don’t have anything to do with the topic being discussed)
forgetfulness (doesn’t seem to remember how long his father has been dead for, keeps changing the length of time when he talks about it)
easily distracted (often stops mid-sentence and rapidly moves on to a new, completely unrelated topic)
frequent and compulsive talking, often hyperfixating on one specific point (see: all his soliloquies)
low tolerance for frustration
restless
often gives the appearance of not listening; has actually heard and internalised every word
interrupts and intrudes on others’ conversations
mood swings
insomnia (although this could be a side-effect of his grief over his father’s death)
i know i should be going to sleep but listen shakespeare establishes full well that the roman suicide was done by SWORD (in macbeth with the quote “why should I play the roman fool, and die / on mine own sword?” and julius caesar with the stage direction: “runs on his sword”) and shakespeare also establishes full well that the lovers’ suicide was done by POISON (it’s literally romeo and juliet) so what the FUCK does that say about hamlet and horatio
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
my favorite part of hamlet is at the beginning when they see the ghost of hamlet sr for the first time
and the guards are like “Horatio, you go talk to it! You went to college!”
and Horatio is like “Yeah! I did go to college! I will go talk to the ghost!”
like. where did horatio go to college. did he go to ghost college
YES, ACTUALLYYES HE FUCKING DIDBC
(a) EVERY COLLEGE THEN WAS GHOST COLLEGE bc ghosts were widely believed to be Real™ n thus scholars learnt abt them. moreover, as everybody knows, ghosts only communicate in Latin; Latin, which also happens to be the scholastic language. Horatio is a scholar; he both knows about ghosts and knows Latin; as such his university education patently DOES make him best suited to ask this one what’s up (as obviously sth must be up for it 2b wandering around, why else wld it b here, i mean gawd)
(B) WITTENBERG WHERE HORATIO STUDIES WAS LIKE. THE MOST SPOOPYOF GHOST COLLEGES bc they were alllllll about theology n the supernatural n shit so SUPPOSING HORATIO WILL KNO HIS SHIT ABT GHOSTS IS IN FACT A THOROUGHLY SENSIBLE ASSUMPTION
this has been said before but i am fucking adding it again bc it HACKS ME TF OFF when ppl reblog the post w/o commentary as if OP jsut fucking checkmated Shakespeare when in fact all they managed to do was fail at the most basic historical contextualisation lmao
me at 3pm: yea shakespeare was a progressive dude for his time period but like. he wasn’t THAT great u know?
me at 3am: shylock, despite being known today as an anti-semitic caricature, is used by shakespeare to suggest that if a jewish person is a monster, it is because the christian population surrounding him have treated him as such for his whole life, and it was likely written as a response to christopher marlowe’s jew of malta, which was written by christopher marlowe, and it capitalised on the notoriety of rodrigo lópez by using a jewish character with little to no redeeming qualities (barabas).
othello was the first sympathetic black character to ever be shown in an elizabethan play, and shakespeare made othello very conscious of his race. rather than making him cruel and devilish, like essentially every other prominent black character in theatre (even aaron in titus andronicus, shakespeare’s first tragedy, showing that shakespeare had actively looked into racial biases and worked against his).
when shakespeare’s plays include more women with more ambition and speaking parts, the plays tend to end up as comedies. in plays like julius caesar, titus andronicus, and romeo and juliet, the few women present have little to no power over the tragic situations at hand and, more often than not, end up dead. the few female characters in tragedies with power are usually presented as dark and mysterious figures rather than overbearing and pretentious ones like the dudes, such as lady macbeth and cleopatra. in plays like twelfth night and much ado about nothing, the main women are given higher social statuses among men and they have more lines and influence, so, whether or not shakespeare meant to do this, he definitely thought that women were rational, intelligent, and important to a thriving society.
shakespeare’s gay undertones definitely weren’t for comedic effect since there was no comedic effect that can be found in thise scenes just by making them gayer. shakespeare himself was almost undeniably bisexual and 100% undeniably attracted to men, which is obvious just by taking a quick glance at his sonnets. characters like the antonios (mov and 12n), mercutio, and horatio have had their characters enhanced by many productions by giving them explicitly romantic feelings towards the character(s) they’re implied to have them for, and no script changes need to be made to do so.
tl;dr i’m rambling off the top of my head but i can’t believe that shakespeare ended racism, respected, women, and said gay rights.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 