I Heart Hamlet

Hamlet is hot.

Hamlet. Shakespearean dead guy. "To be or not to be..." Jumping in graves. Talking to skulls. Crazy dude. Often over-acted. Hot.

It's not any of the things I've just mentioned (taken out of context) that do it. Those are just the images most often brought to mind when one mentions Hamlet to someone who had to suffer through a less-than-inspiring English teacher. That's just the iconography we have been brainwashed as a society into associating with the sexiest man in world literature.

Jill: Hamlet--
Unfortunate victim of bad teaching: Ugh.
Jill: No, but listen. Shakespeare--
Unfortunate victim of bad teaching: Yuch.

Those images, taken out of context, cannot approach the depth, complexity, and sheer sex appeal that is the Danish prince. In my mind.

If the following paragraph makes no sense to you, don't be alarmed. It is merely an academic wise-ass deterrent. Feel free to read on, undeterred.
Yes, not only do I recognize that this is a characterization in my mind but I also have two years of intensive study in Structuralism and its critics that ensure that if you feel the compulsion to argue with my Reading of Hamlet on a level that privileges the Author rather than my experience of the Text as a Reader, I will be quoting Roland Barthes faster than you can complain about my lack of footnotes. The Author is Dead. Let's move on.

Resume here.
Sunday was Shakespeare's (assumed) birthday. (We have only a baptismal record for April 26, and since babies were traditionally christened three days later, it is assumed that Baby Will came into the world April 23, 1564.) I could think of no better way to celebrate (I would say "this joyous occasion", but he died on April 23 as well) than to explicate upon this two word thesis: "Hamlet. Hot."

As is the case regarding most details of Shakespeariana, there has been much debate about Hamlet's age and whether the textual evidence is consistent regarding the matter. Hamlet is usually accepted to be thirty--which is only a few years younger than Ralph Fiennes was when I spent the evening just about drooling over the mezzanine of the Belasco Theatre at his portrayal of His Royal Hotness. This makes Hamlet a man entering his prime. Purrrrr...

But let's put aside the physical for a moment. Let's also disregard the fact that he's a prince. I'm not a gold-digger. Can anyone you know beat this guy's wit? From the first words he utters, the darkly sarcastic "A little more than kin and less than kind" (1.2.65), on through the playful irreverence of his antic act...

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.
(2.2.191-2)

...to the naughty innuendoes he makes at Ophelia while awaiting the Players' performance, how can anyone compete with him on the basis of versatility of wordplay? And for those of you who are not entirely familiar with that specific exchange of dialogue, I present

Jill's Annotated Guide to Act 3, Scene 2, Lines 102-110

Hamlet: My lady, shall I lie in your lap? (May allude to innocent cuddling; may also be translated as "So, can we f*&k?")
Ophelia: No, my lord. (Obviously he has to have said it suggestively, or else she wouldn't say no.)
Hamlet: I mean with my head upon your lap? (Here he teases her by playing innocent. How naughty is that?)
Ophelia: Ay, my lord. (So she agrees.)
Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? ("You thought I meant something dirty, didn't you?" What a tease!)
Ophelia: I think nothing, my lord. (By the way, "nothing" or "0" was slang for vagina.)
Hamlet: That's a fair thought to lie between a maids' legs. ("Yep, that's a lovely thing to be between a girl's legs.")
Ophelia: What is, my lord? (Isn't she so decorous you could just scream?)
Hamlet: Nothing. (Essentially, "Pu$$y.")
Ophelia: You are merry, my lord. (Evidently, he conveyed the innuendo, because she basically says, "Wow, you're in a good mood tonight, huh?")

So: he is at his peak physically, and he has a prodigious wit, with a sex drive to match. And to pull off this interchange without getting slapped--how charming does this guy have to be? And not only with women--he has to have a certain disarming aura with men as well, or he wouldn't be able to so gracefully call Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's bluff when they try to pretend that they're not there to fish information out of him on behalf of Claudius (2.2). Not to mention that he would never have realized their intention in the first place if he didn't possess a finely-tuned ability to read people--a skill also illustrated when he realizes that he is being messed with when he is called to visit his mother's chambers (3.2.358-9).

Please tell me that you are beginning to swoon.

What about his intellect and psychological complexity? He's more intelligent than just about everyone else in the play, with only Horatio as his possible equal. He's obviously well-read in the classics, as demonstrated by his various allusions, and his easy references to Aeneas and Dido in discussion with the Players (2.2). He dryly suffers pompous fools such as Polonius and Osric, but not without getting in a few jabs at their expense.

He is living in a time and place experiencing a transition from a religious to a scientific worldview. Soooo he entertains thoughts of suicide for a moment or two--so what? He is struggling with a religious upbringing, but clearly leaning toward humanism--no doubt in large part to his university education and having lived in Wittenburg. (You know how wild and liberal those university towns are.) In fact, early on (1.2.174) he promises he'll teach Horatio to drink hard before he returns to school--all this, and the man can hold his liquor, too!

By the way, he can fence. Well.

Need more?

Not only can he recognize shrewd machinations, but he is able to put them into effect himself. (I can't help it--I like my men Machiavellian. And good at it.) The Mousetrap--"The play's the thing/Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king" (2.2.583-4)...? Sheer. Freakin'. Genius.

Suriviving the pirate attack? Resourceful.

Rewriting the letter to have Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed instead of him? A tad cruel, possibly sociopathic--but definitive. You don't mess with my boy Hamlet.

Jumping in the grave to counter Laertes' drama, declaring "This is I, / Hamlet the Dane" (5.1.241-2)...? One word: badass.

When I go to literary Elysium, I am totally sleeping with Hamlet. Don't even think about trying to fight me for him.

And don't bother getting in line behind me, either.


Happy belated birthday, Billy. What are you now, 442? That's a lot of candles.

"Oh, Westley!":The Princess Bride and Comfort Food

Yesterday was a hot, sticky day. It's been like that all week. August in New York is one of those experiences that you erase out of your consciousness after every instance, and the next time it happens, you're blind-sided. I've been living on Gatorade, fruit, and random salty things all week. The air conditioning in my car gave up again. And yesterday, at rush hour, I had to drive through Manhattan, up to Kim's, for a quick run-through of the show in preparation for our final performance.

The West Side Highway was like a parking lot. It took me 47 minutes to drive...8 miles? I had forgotten to recharge my iPod, so I couldn't use the transmitter. But, because it was rush hour, all the radio stations were trying to be supportive. And because Bryan had taken the time to pre-set all the good rock stations on my radio the last time I'd been staring out at the Hudson wishing I could jump in, there was very little searching for me to do. For some reason, every rock station in NYC became obsessed with Joan Jett and Van Halen between 4:30 and 6pm yesterday. This, of course, was not a problem. In fact, it made me very, very happy, even though I was sitting in a pool of sweat and un-triumphantly watching the Carnival Triumph sail by. I opened all the windows, sang along, and tried not to bang my head against the steering wheel.

By the time I got to Kim's I was starving, but so was everyone else. For some reason, they allowed me to pick the take-out place that we would order dinner from. I think it had something to do with the passionate way I was reading menu selections aloud. With mashed potatoes...oh my God... Barbecue sauce was sounding so damn appealing, and I'd been fantasizing about those sweet potato fries since I'd first laid eyes on that menu two months ago. So yes, we went with the barbecue chicken sandwiches (all white meat, kaiser rolls, unbelievable sauteed onions) and those orange orgasms.

After we ordered, we sat around in the living room, staring at each other. There was just no way work was going to get done until we were fed. That was abundantly clear. So we did the only thing a bunch of reasonable people wanting to goof off could do--rifled through Kim's DVD collection. We decided on the cinematic equal to the comfort food we were eagerly awaiting--The Princess Bride.

Now, I love this movie. Everyone I know that has seen the movie, loves the movie. (Amazingly, Ingrid had never seen the movie. We all tried to not ruin it for her. We tried.) But you've got to admit, Buttercup is a priss. What Westley sees in her, I have no idea, especially when she's standing by letting him get his ass handed to him by a Rodent of Unusual Size. Jump in, birdbrain! Westley, don't you want a woman who's got your back? Come on! Incidentally, I am not the only woman to feel this way. The other three females who were there and had seen it said exactly the same thing. The lone male...well, Bryan is smart enough to keep quiet when he's outnumbered, even if he agrees.

When the food finally arrived, the fries were slightly soggy, and of course they weren't accompanied by the fancy-pants sweet chili sauce & crème fraiche that Eight Mile Creek does to perfection...but what they didn't offer in crispness, we all made up for with our voracious need for fat & carbs. And the perfectly sauteed onions earned the place brownie points in our takeout rolodex. Then we had frozen Snickers bars for dessert.

Joy, my friend and a super editor, just called. I've got to run out to meet her (so she can give me a guilt trip about how I called one of my essays "The Final Draft" even though I knew it was no where near finally done.) I told her what I was writing about, and by freaky coincidence, she also watched The Princess Bride last night. Really freaky coincidence. I didn't ask her how she felt about Buttercup and the Rodent. I'll just keep that up my sleeve until I need to change the subject from the revising guilt trip.

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.