kyraneko:

thepurposeofplaying:

theprettygoodgatsby:

my favorite part of hamlet is at the beginning when they see the ghost of hamlet sr for the first time

and the guards are like “Horatio, you go talk to it! You went to college!”

and Horatio is like “Yeah! I did go to college! I will go talk to the ghost!”

like. where did horatio go to college. did he go to ghost college

YES, ACTUALLY YES HE FUCKING DID BC

(a) EVERY COLLEGE THEN WAS GHOST COLLEGE bc ghosts were widely believed to be Real™ n thus scholars learnt abt them. moreover, as everybody knows, ghosts only communicate in Latin; Latin is the scholastic language. Horatio is a scholar, thus both knows abt ghosts and knows Latin, so it is very reasonable to assume he will b able to ask this one what up (as obviously sth must b up 4 it 2b wandering around, why else wld it b here, gawd, this is like. the most basic of basic-level shit)

(B) WITTENBERG WHERE HORATIO STUDIES WAS LIKE. T H E MOST SPOOPY OF GHOST COLLEGES bc they were alllllll about theology n the supernatural n shit so SUPPOSING HORATIO WILL KNO HIS SHIT ABT GHOSTS IS IN FACT A THOROUGHLY SENSIBLE ASSUMPTION

this has been said before but i am fucking adding it again bc it HACKS ME TF OFF when ppl reblog the post w/o commentary as if OP jsut fucking checkmated Shakespeare when in fact all they managed to do was fail at the most basic historical contextualisation of this scene n make a fcuking fool of emselves lmao

this feels less like a “checkmate, Shakespeare” moment than a “fuck was this dude on, this shit’s surreal” moment

personally I kinda love the complete effect of “thing that made sense when originally written appears hilarious/fascinating/weird as balls to people who don’t have that context, and then context is made known to them and it’s like a whole new level of supercool” 

it’s like the circle of life for shakespeare plays. “lol have the college guy talk to the ghost because as a college guy he has the necessary experience” transmutes into “every college was ghost college in shakespeare’s time” and the whole effect is awesome.