shakespeare

bluelikesmoke:

BOUNDED IN A NUTSHELL

A Kafkaesque Hamlet:

You’ve never been sure where Hamlet calls home, or what exactly he is the Prince of. It’s a shame your first visit to the place he calls home has to be on the heels of his father’s passing. Eventually, you’re not sure if the claw marks Elsinore leaves are permanent. 

• The castle didn’t exist a moment ago. You step into the grounds of Elsinore and suddenly it hurts to breathe and gadflies buzz in your brain. You turn back to Hamlet—sharp toothy smile and long limbs that don’t fit in school desks—and you suddenly understand.
• Elsinore birthed Hamlet. Elsinore clings to him like stubborn moss or pebbles to the treads in one’s shoes.
• You get lost. You find your way. You get lost again the next day. You trace your steps until your blisters bleed and still, still, tomorrow, you will be lost.
• Sometimes, the King emerges from seemingly nowhere at all and engages you in a pleasant conversation about the necessity of capital punishment, or his favourite book, or the best way to systemically weed a garden. Every time his mild smile and easy words breaks some frozen sea in your heart and you debate long into exhaustion. The next morning, you agree to watch him for guilt, to help Hamlet plan his death. By the scant daylight, the King is spider-fingers and eyes too bright and hissing anger.
• There are no servants in Elsinore. The meals are still like clockwork.
• They say Ophelia’s drowned, but you can still hear her wailing in the long and empty halls. Hamlet and Laertes argue in her empty grave as you carefully inch away from her staring ghost.
• Everyone dies. It happens after dinner.
• When you emerge, the castle fades away behind you into mist. When you look back, there is only an empty hillside and all that’s left for your is the brightness that is Prague. Has there ever been an overcast sky in Prague? You get lost but when you learn the way this time, it sticks.
• You ask about Elsinore (of course); nobody answers (of course)