Hyperion to a Satyr - The Launch

2000 posts on the SBG? What do you do for an encore? How about branch out into a second blog? This week, I launch Hyperion to a Satyr, a new project of mine that consists of examining in altogether too much detail my favorite play of all time, Hamlet Prince of Denmark by one William Shakespeare (you may have heard of him), and its varied dramatic representations, with an eye towards staging, performance and text.What does that mean exactly?

H2S will look at Hamlet, scene by scene (or scene fragment, some scenes are just too long for single posts). First, I'll look at the text itself, what staging and performance problems it poses, what ambiguities have been laid into it by, and so on. Then, the scene will be discussed through the filter of filmed versions of the play. How did each filmmaker or actor address the play's problems and ambiguities? What effect do their choices and cuts have on our understanding of the characters and their world? Now, if you search for Hamlet on IMDB, you'll find more than 70 iterations, and that's just for "exact title matches". I will not be using them all for this project. In my second post, I detail which Hamlets have actually made the cut (short answer: still plenty). And in addition to movies, you can also expect Hamlet in other media, like comics, music and games.

Whether you're a Shakespeare fan or a movie fan, I hope you'll enjoy visiting there. I'm particularly interested in how this classic work can be given so many interpretations, and how each interpretation can shed new and different light on the Bard's masterwork. I won't be posting on H2S as frequently as I do here, obviously - I'm insane, just not that insane - but I think "at least once a week" is about as fair a promise as I can make. Think Snell's James Bond blog vs. his regular Monstrobot of the Deep.

(This post largely a cross-post of the first H2S article.)