HAMLET

Shakesqueer’s Hamlet centered a prince struggling with gender and societal expectations of masculinity - revenge murder most foul! - who leads to the downfall of his own country by trying to be someone he is not.

Hamlet is a sensitive philosophy PHD student, and a playwright. He doesn’t want to be a prince, he has run away from his royal upbringing and found solace in academia. Deep in mourning, he tries to escape his trauma through a sexual relationship with the only other young person in the court, Ophelia, accidently getting her pregnant and destroying her sanity when he rejects her romantically.

His true love in the play is Horatio - Hamlet’s friend from University who shows up uninvited for the coronation but is well received, and the only person in the play who makes Hamlet happy; Horatio is then by Hamlet’s side for the entirety of the play’s fifth act. It is Horatio who Hamlet first seeks out when he survives the pirates. They are alone in a domestic space, an intimate scene, when Osric interrupts and announces the duel - Horatio freaks out as his lover is about to die.. and when Hamlet does, in Horatio’s arms - Horatio’s gut response is to commit suicide (very Romeo & Juliet), but Hamlet takes and throws the poisoned cup from Horatio saying “if you held me in your heart...live on.” Hamlet dies, and Horatio, destroyed, says romantically “now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”