SHE is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun ’tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
It’s perfectly acceptable to be a little bit in love with Hamlet as long as you’re aware he is a collossal asshole
How many times do I have to reblog posts like this and remind you people that HAMLET IS SUFFERING FROM GRIEF, LOSS, AND TRAUMA before you stop calling him names?
so story time, munchkins.
Thanks for the story. Yes. Agreed.
Story time: One of the reasons why Hamlet as a character resonates with me personally is because of the fact he struggles with mental illness. At 18 years old in my AP English class in my senior year of high school, I wanted to break down several times during discussion of the play because I related to Hamlet so freaking much. Although my opinion of Hamlet as a character evolved from black/white thinking to more reading the text closely (and many Tumblr discussions), Hamlet is not an asshole. His circumstances were terrible and therefore his personality drastically changed.
*Adding more commentary to this*
While I do think Hamlet isn’t as bad as some make him out to be, he’s not excused from his actions. While we can decipher Hamlet’s actions, that’s not to say that his problematic behavior should be excused.
(After realizing I forgot to mention this, I knew I had to clarify some points. Life lesson: Don’t forget to add more critical thinking to your posts.)
for my followers who will be reading hamlet this coming school year, or who haven’t read it or didn’t have the amazing ap lit teacher i did, there’s textual evidence for all of this!
After the famous “get thee to a nunnery” scene in which hamlet is at peak dickhead, once he’s exited, ophelia gives the speech @jolycoeur mentioned,
O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observ’d of all observers- quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
which pretty much boils down to ophelia lamenting how kind, courteous, intelligent, and well-spoken hamlet once was, and how miserable she is to have known him then and see who his grief has made him now. hamlet was once full of potential–“th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state”–and now he’s fallen so low. that “unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth”–the beauty and nobility he once had–has been “blasted with ecstasy”, ie, madness. (side note, largely unrelated but a personal headcanon/reading of mine–in act 5, gertrude remarks that hamlet is “fat and scant of breath” which is often explained as shakespeare accounting for the actor who originally portrayed hamlet, richard burbage, gaining weight, but i’ve always personally believed that hamlet gains weight due to his depression, which is very common. why else would even his appearance be changed in his ‘madness?’)
when speaking to rosencrantz and guildenstern, even after they’ve admitted that claudius and gertrude are what brought them here and not their own desire to see hamlet–it’s often argued that hamlet says this so that they will relay it to claudius and gertrude, but i would honestly argue that this is genuine, simply because it’s so in line with a lot of what hamlet says and clarifies a lot of his actions, and that he tells them because he wants someone to do something about it–hamlet gives this speech
I have of late, (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
which amounts to “the world is so wonderful and beautiful, people are amazing, incredible creatures, but i can’t see it past my misery” and falls in line with his earlier point that “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so” which, in my opinion, is another point in the “hamlet isn’t just a broody, selfish jerk” column. hamlet is fully aware of what’s going on, that he’s spiraling and his reactions and feelings aren’t necessarily equitable to their causes, but he can’t shake it. as someone who suffers from depression and anxiety, that’s incredibly relatable–I know that i shouldn’t be this upset over something, but no matter how much i remind myself that i’m overreacting or that something isn’t really this bad, i can’t “get over it” so to speak. and when he apologizes to laertes, he says
Give me your pardon, sir: I’ve done you wrong;
But pardon’t, as you are a gentleman.
This presence knows,
And you must needs have heard, how I am punish’d
With sore distraction. What I have done,
That might your nature, honour and exception
Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness.
Was’t Hamlet wrong’d Laertes? Never Hamlet:
If Hamlet from himself be ta'en away,
And when he’s not himself does wrong Laertes,
Then Hamlet does it not, Hamlet denies it.
Who does it, then? His madness: if’t be so,
Hamlet is of the faction that is wrong’d;
His madness is poor Hamlet’s enemy.
he tells laertes that it wasn’t hamlet–the true hamlet–who insulted laertes, but it was his ‘madness’ and, implicitly, given what we know of how hamlet was affected by his father’s death, the trauma of ophelia’s death that elicited the outburst (read: fistfight that takes place in ophelia’s grave, literally over her body). hamlet pretty much straight up tells us: i’m not like this, this isn’t me, this is something i’m suffering from and i don’t know how to deal with it.
my ap lit teacher never really took a stance on the end all, be all question of “is hamlet faking his madness?” but the way he posed it to us was this: if hamlet is pretending, he’s a huge fucking jerk, and if he’s not, the play is infinitely more tragic than we give it credit for. personally, i think it’s the latter. i think hamlet has ‘gone mad’ before the play even starts; he’s already spiraling, and the play is just chronicling his slow descent into, if not suicide, then suicidal ideation; or, an indifference to whether he dies or doesn’t. horatio warns hamlet not to take claudius’ bet, begs hamlet to let him stall the approaching court, and hamlet knows that something is wrong; he says, “thou wouldst not think how ill all’s here about my heart–but it is no matter […] It is foolery, but it is such a kind of gaingiving as would perhaps trouble a woman.” But he walks into what he seems to know is a trap anyway, because what does it matter if he dies now, or soon? it makes no difference. which you might recognize as “not the way most healthy people think about their deaths.” (“Since no man of aught he leaves knows, what is ’t to leave betimes?”)
hamlet does act like a huge jerk throughout the play–he treats ophelia and his mother like shit, he tells laertes that he loved his dead sister more than he ever could, he sends rosencrantz and guildenstern, his childhood friends, to their deaths and says that if he had it his way, they would be given no “shriving time” which is an opportunity to make confession, potentially damning them. but it’s not just because he’s some broody manchild with no regard for others, we’re explicitly, through several lines of dialogue, and implicitly, through the otherwise improbable presence of horatio, who is constantly calling hamlet on his shit and thus wouldn’t have originally befriended him if he was like this all the time, that at one point he was kind and thoughtful and a good friend, but the trauma of his father’s death, claudius’ usurpation, and his mother’s marriage to his uncle and the man who took his throne, pushes him over the edge, and he has no way of getting help. when he tries, which is what i really think his conversation with rosencrantz and guildenstern is, he’s simply given empty, nervous platitudes like “Why then, your ambition makes [Denmark seem like a prison.] ‘Tis too narrow for your mind.” i think a lot of us can sympathize with reaching out for help, only to end up shot down with empty words that amount to nothing but dismissing how we feel.
so, if and when your english teacher or the culture at large tries to tell you that hamlet is just some broody, whiny dick, know that it’s a little more complicated than that, and that hamlet does deserve more sympathy than we seem willing to give him.
bts got a grammy nomination and that’s incredible…but we can’t ignore the fact that its a huge blow to whites in the industry to have these east asians come out of nowhere and break their records, heck change the entire goddamn meaning of records and music and fanbades, but bts stays winning anyway.
one step at a time. one step at a time
me: say those three words and I’m yours
college library online database: full text available
“I love the person I’ve become, because I fought to become her.”
— Kaci Diane (via quotemadness)
Being bilingual is tough for many reasons, but one of them is how there are words that just cannot be translated from one language to the other and retain their full meaning (as a grown up I’ve learned those are called lexical gaps) like for example Portuguese’s saudade or English’s frolicking. So constructing sentences in your head that are a chimera of words from different languages that do not make sense to anyone else who is not proficient in both languages that you happen to speak is not uncommon.
you know what i’m here for? hideo tanaka rolling his fancy and probabky expensive dress shirts up to the elbows
hideo tanaka falling in love with emika and breaking down his barriers
HIDEO TANAKA HAVING A CORGI
hideo tanaka having a post british accent
hideo tanaka cooking for his parents
you know what i’m not here for? hideo tanaka wanting to enslave mankind
Stop telling yourself that the grass is greener on the other side, because it’s not. It is greener where you water it. So take control of your life and start watering your own pastures and grow your own greener grasses.
new aesthetics
i. lunar cycles and witchy things. [tarot cards and vision boards]
ii. little notes to self in unexpected places.
iii. places of love instead of places of ruin.
iv. lists. lots of lists. [music always playing in the background.]
v. getting rid of everything that is un-needed.
vi. collecting scraps of used things to make new things. [art. lots of art.]
vii. journals and polaroid pictures.
viii. open windows and sheer curtains.
ix. drying flowers and leaves, hanging from window sills.
x. dark lipstick and glowing skin.
