oooooooh nooooooooo

[tempestsarekind]

I have to teach Hamlet this week, you guys!

Hamlet gives me mental whiplash, basically: last night I was practically skipping home because I knew that I got to listen to lectures on the play, and how can life be bad when one is allowed to think about Hamlet? And then I remembered that I have to *teach* Hamlet, not just splash around in its

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[sadcypress]

Clearly, the way to do this is just play clips of 'Slings and Arrows.' I luck out when I have to teach a play here- my lecture is always 90% Elizabethan theatre and 10% OH RIGHT, YOU READ A PLAY, WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT IAGO??

[tempestsarekind]

...I would totally do that if I thought they'd let me. "Here, let Geoffrey explain it to you, mmkay?"

I think my whole teaching style is basically, "Look at this awesome bit! Isn't it awesome? I don't know what makes it so awesome, but maybe we could think about that together!" And then the students are like, "...Just give us the answers, crazy lady."

[troyswann]

Have ya found the YouTube video of Blackadder "trimming" Hugh Laurie-Shakespeare's To be or not to be speech?

Aw man, I thought I'd bookmarked the link. You can google it though. Verreh funneh.

[tempestsarekind]

Yes! I love that bit! And the one where Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie make a big deal about "Time" (in one of the sonnets, I think) being "very much uppercase."

...That's the thing about Hamlet, isn't it? I always want to do all of this Hamlet-related stuff, because it's easier than figuring out what to do with the actual play. Which is not to say that I haven't had some useful discussions with those things as a starting point, of course. It's a tricky balance.