Your favorite Shakespeare scholar checking in here: Hamlet, in its full-length version, is 4 hours and 6 minutes long. There is one (ONE AND ONLY ONE) full-length movie version, the Kenneth Brannagh one. Even I, Shakespeare nut that I am, cannot handle that DVD in one sitting. Some of the speeches are soooooo bloody long. Scholars today actually think that the version of Hamlet we have today was never performed in total in Shakespeare's day either. They think that different parts were cut at different times, just like today. It's doubtful, of course, that anyone ever left out the To Be or Not To Be speech or the scene with the two gravediggers (which is hysterical and full of one liners -- Hamlet: "How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?" Gravedigger: "Eh, if he be not rotten to begin with, some eight year.") and Hamlet's famous line, "Alas! Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!"
I loved the part in this skit that described Ophelia. Funny stuff.
3 comments:
Your favorite Shakespeare scholar checking in here:
Hamlet, in its full-length version, is 4 hours and 6 minutes long. There is one (ONE AND ONLY ONE) full-length movie version, the Kenneth Brannagh one. Even I, Shakespeare nut that I am, cannot handle that DVD in one sitting. Some of the speeches are soooooo bloody long. Scholars today actually think that the version of Hamlet we have today was never performed in total in Shakespeare's day either. They think that different parts were cut at different times, just like today. It's doubtful, of course, that anyone ever left out the To Be or Not To Be speech or the scene with the two gravediggers (which is hysterical and full of one liners -- Hamlet: "How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot?" Gravedigger: "Eh, if he be not rotten to begin with, some eight year.") and Hamlet's famous line, "Alas! Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio!"
I loved the part in this skit that described Ophelia. Funny stuff.
Somehow I suspected you'd find that one funny.
Thanks. :)
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