Hamratio - Tumblr Posts
y’know I find it so interesting that often in adapted versions of Hamlet that shorten/change the play extensively, Horatio is usually among the first things to go.
The Lion King, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (to an extent), heck even the Simpsons, all manner of adaptations long and short all without any substitute/notable role for Horatio or a suitably similar character. And I get why. He doesn’t do much on his own that impacts the plot, meaning that hardly any of the actual story beats are missed without his interference.
But I think that just provides a really interesting insight into what his character stands for in the most meta sense of his writing, to be honest; Horatio is necessary, despite being unnecessary. He’s the one who writes the story down in the first place, it’s his to tell- the very first scene starts not with Hamlet’s father’s death or even with Hamlet himself, but with him, Horatio, and at the end once everyone is dead, he’s the only one left to tell the tale.
He’s also the only one who ever sees the full picture. He sees the ghost firsthand, he’s the one to tell Hamlet about it, and in return Hamlet tells him everything. His thoughts, plans, and murder-y boating escapades, Horatio is the only other person to ever know about it all. At the same time, Hamlet hardly ever seems to stick around to see the consequences of his own actions- and it’s Horatio who witnesses them instead. Horatio is the one to take care of Ophelia when she goes mad, the one who sees just how deeply Hamlet has wounded her in his quest for a ‘just revenge’. Horatio is the one to hear Hamlet recount the deaths of his childhood friends to him with something that sounds uncomfortably like pride.
Horatio is the one that’s told by Hamlet that he’s held in his ‘heart of hearts’, the one who’s at the other end of Hamlet’s flattery and admiration, all the while witnessing what becomes of Hamlet’s previous closest companions. His lover. The two men, of whom no other living people he adored more. Supposedly Hamlet held these people closest to his heart, but Horatio is the one to see how Hamlet treats his ‘closest friends’, all while being told by the prince he’s one of them. He wonders what will become of him, surely. He loves the prince, but he can’t help but consider the whole ‘cornered animal’ mentality to be a bit unreliable when he’s seen what he does to the innocent. What Hamlet himself never seems to see, always being off on some boat, or dying, but never sticking around to comprehend the consequences. That’s not his job.
Horatio is the audience. Let in to the most private thoughts, into the sympathetic tendencies of the prince, all while seeing the true and unsavoury parts that keep us from ever truly committing ourselves to the same cause. That keeps us from thinking of him as a good person, despite the fact that we love him regardless. Or maybe we don’t, but we’ve been in too deep for too long to do anything about it.
When Horatio is removed, not much changes. Hamlet loses a confidant, and maybe his mind a bit sooner, but the story still plays out. When he dies, there is no one to hold him as he goes. No one to tell his story as it truly was. Except there is, because we’ve just seen it. In that sort of way, Horatio can never really be removed, only brought offstage. But if the story is told, and if there’s a crowd to view it, Horatio will always be there, somewhere in the audience. Watching. (It’s all he can seem to do.)
toying around with a swap au version of Hamlet. haven't really worked out the details, but imagining it'd be a Hamlet-Ophelia centric swap of parts: Ophelia (and Laertes is probably in on it to) tearing her life apart in her quest to revenge her dead parent with Hamlet as the cast aside lover, heartbroken and trying to seek out the truth in her love.
When Hamlet's father is killed, he spirals much faster, for two main reasons.
one: this time he knows that it was murder from the moment he finds out, and
two: not only was his father murdered and his corpse desecrated, but the one responsible was none other than the one he thought he loved.
Needless to say, it's no surprise when Horatio finds him on the roof.
Hamlet pales and trembles in the cold, wild eyes fixed on seeming vacancy: the prince's hair seems to stand on its very ends. He's ill-dressed for the conditions, and he looks ghastly, to say the least.
Horatio's heart could weep at the sight of him. He'd seemingly gone mad ever since the death of his father, and Horatio was finding it harder and harder to place his friend by the day. His appearance disheveled, his mirth dissipated, his discussions once scholarly and philosophical in nature now distracted ramblings with a morbid tendency to fixate on death. Lord knows where he'd found an actual skull from, and why he'd decided to bring it into the castle, all covered in muck and mud like a buried thing.
Now the rain and wind whip around his face and clothing, thin, white, and practically transparent in its wetness. Hamlet had startled at Horatio's arrival, but now he points. He points at the empty air in front of him.
He sees a ghost, he says. He sees his father, he says.
Horatio tries to convince him that it's only in his mind's eye, but his friend is too far gone. There's a wild desperation in his eyes, matched only by a sadness that seems to stretch into some neverending abyss.
Horatio has a bad feeling about this.
Hamlet begins to move, saying the ghost beckons him to follow, it won't talk to him in the presence of others. Horatio tells him that's it's a bad idea, and that he may find himself led somewhere dangerous, and he should really come back with him inside.
The prince doesn't listen, and begins to run, across the castle roof, towards some figment of the imagination, away from Horatio.
He's nearing an edge when Horatio catches him, tackling him to the ground. The two scuffle as Horatio pleads, begs him not to go. The wind is loud and the rain stings, and the fight continues until Horatio suddenly finds his throat on the other end of a blade; the prince has drawn his sword upon him.
He'll make a ghost of anyone that lets him, he threatens.
And Horatio's never seen this look in his friend's eyes, a pure, unfiltered hatred directed towards him, he's never been on the other end of his anger. He's frozen in complete shock, and Hamlet seizes the opportunity, turning and sprinting.
The prince chases the ghost, and follows it off the edge.
By the time Horatio sits up, all that lies before him is the night, the rain, and the empty castle roof. Only a thin railing separates him from a lethal drop, and if he wanted to, he could be over it in mere seconds. He can't move, he can barely think, and somehow he can't even bring himself to feel anything at all. It's not real to him, not yet. All he can think about is how he'll be the one to relay the news.
What does he do now?
What does he tell them?
The Prince of Denmark has fallen from great height, following his father's ghost into an early grave.
my Roman Empire is how in Hamlet, we are presented with four characters who were each at one point the person/people Hamlet held most dear, and one of them watches as Hamlet's actions lead the other three to suffer, lose their minds, and/or die.
Horatio is Hamlet's closest friend over the course of the play, the one he comes to again and again, refers to as being in his 'heart of hearts', and who keeps him stable and alive for at least the most part. We follow these two the most explicitly throughout the text.
Ophelia is Hamlet's lover, and their relationship can be read many ways, ranging from never-really-loved-the-other to they-did-it-numerous-times-and-in-fact-she-was-pregnant-(possibly)-(also)-(aborted) but for the sake of this post I'm going to go the middle ground and say they had a wholesome and happy relationship before Hamlet's dad died and he got all sad. Doubt the stars are fire, but never doubt I love.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's childhood friends, and Gertrude remembers them as being so loved by him that 'two men there are not living to whom he more adheres'. It's clear that these three were very close during some stage of his life, likely his childhood and potentially teens. The point is, they meant the most to him at some point in his life.
But again, by the time the acts of Hamlet come to pass, Hamlet has chosen Horatio to be his sole compatriot. Whether or not this is prior to his actual arrival in Elsinore is largely irrelevant- Hamlet makes sure he spends a lot of the first half of the play flustered in the face of a prince who won't stop finding nice things to say about him. Hamlet butters him up with honeyed words, and tells him the truth about everything, or what he thinks, anyway.
Horatio is touched but one specific line does stick out to him a bit- when Hamlet assured him it was not an attempt at flattery, and went on to clarify that he feels free to love Horatio as Horatio doesn't want anything from him, and doesn't have anything to hide. If what the ghost said about Claudius were true, it makes sense for Hamlet to be paranoid and hold others at a distance, but Horatio can't help but think about the underlying implication that if Hamlet had any reason to be suspicious of Horatio, he'd be just as cold to him as everyone else. Which, again, makes sense, but something about it rubs him a strange way.
Horatio tries to relate his experiences with the others he knows were close to Hamlet. He doesn't know much about Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but Hamlet has mentioned suspicion of them, but despite that, seems to have been cordial enough. As for Ophelia... She seems to have seen the worst of his feigned madness, so he doesn't really know about her. He also heard something about an argument, but he doesn't know to what extent.
After the play, and an odd interaction with R&G, Hamlet heads upstairs to speak to his mother and Horatio thinks about it some more.
He words the question properly to himself: would Hamlet still love me if I were in their position? And he doubts for a moment, but then he remembers what Hamlet told him, the look in his eyes as he proclaimed his sincerity, and even the rare laughter he'd indulged in after the play, in only his presence, and Hamlet has convinced him.
Up until he hears the news of Polonius's murder. And until he hears the recount of Claudius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's intervention with the seemingly mad prince, and he begins to doubt him.
And when he's left to take care of Ophelia, driven mad by the death of her father and the wrath of her lover, and in her delirium she tells him things, tells him everything, and there's a strange sense of familiarity in her words. She shows him her letters, throwing them at him and laughing, tears running from her eyes, and Horatio recognises the poetic style, the sweet wording that always seems to know how to strike your heart closest, and he realises that she had once been where he had, received Hamlet's love in the same way. And it's strange, in a way he's not sure what to do with.
His fear is alleviated slightly when Hamlet sends him a letter, and he seems back to his usual sense of self, the one Horatio knows. Horatio is glad for the normalcy, and it does a part to clear his worry that he had been deceived in any nature, after his time with Ophelia.
Even further when he finally returns to Denmark, and while the two talk, they stumble upon Ophelia's funeral, and Hamlet takes no time to jump into her grave and proclaim his grief loudly. Horatio feels a bit sick at feeling any sort of relief at this, but the proof that Hamlet may have truly loved her and hadn't intended for this to happen does something to quell the fear again.
That is, until Hamlet recounts his journey.
And with a strange sort of expression that looks sort of like... pride, recounts how he sent Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to their deaths.
Horatio is a little shocked by this, as he can't recall the two having done anything particularly wrong, and this was clearly not accidental. Hamlet brushes him off by saying the two knew what they were getting into, showing strangely little remorse.
Horatio thinks, about how they were his childhood friends, and then again about Ophelia, and then again about his earlier question.
would Hamlet still love me if I were in their position?
And he realises, in a way that makes him nauseous, that the answer is no. And not only that, but for all Hamlet's laughter and flattering words, it wouldn't have saved him.
But still, he doesn't leave his side. Hamlet loves him now, and he's the lucky one. Nothing can be done anymore, and he feels they draw close to the end.
And he does still love him. And Hamlet loves him back.
Horatio reaches for the poisoned cup as Hamlet dies. It feels right that it should end this way, and he doesn't really want to go on.
But Hamlet wrestles the cup out of his hand with an intensity that catches him off guard, begging him to stay alive, to tell his story
and so he does, cradling the prince as he slips into a deeper dream.
Sometime after, Horatio will again think about it all. The four of them. Three dead by his hand, one alive by it.
He wonders.
Did Hamlet ever think about it too? About how his actions hurt the ones closest to him, and in his final moments, chose to break the pattern and save the only life he could?
Or did Hamlet only save him because he still loved him? Not out of guilt, or reflection on his previous actions necessarily, but because Horatio still hadn't done him wrong?
hello me and my friend need a third opinion to settle a debate between us and I saw quite a lot of hamratio tags in your blog
in your opinion, what would be the exact reason horatio fell/might’ve fallen for hamlet? traits, etc.
hello!!
his big, beautiful eyes...
no, but in all seriousness, this is a wonderful question! i love speculating on what hamlet was like before the death of his father and thankfully the text gives us a few clues as to this saying he was loved by all.
so, when i think of horatio falling for hamlet i like to think that the first thing he saw in him was his kindness and gentleness even. i imagine he treated him as an equal and horatio loved listening to him for his intelligence and wit but also loved that hamlet was willing to listen to him in turn. i like imagining them staying up late debating for hours and coming away from it near to tears from laughter at the end of it at 4am. i think horatio would really appreciate hamlet's willingness to learn as well as his earnestness.
horatio, in my opinion, sees in hamlet everything a great man should be. kind, thoughtful, passionate, honest, intelligent. emotionally intelligent, even. but i like to imagine that hamlet has always been in touch with his emotions, even before the death of his father.
i think, before elsinore, horatio would be hard pressed to find a trait in hamlet he didn't like and that he put him on a pedestal and said, if i can be at his side, i'll be content. of course the rug is pulled out from under him later but he still loves hamlet and is willing to do anything for him. including calling him out if need be.
i hope this helps!
“Thine evermore” (future-tense)
to “Lord, we know who we are, but not who we may be!” (The future is unknown)
to “he that thou knowest thine” (present-tense)
Because you don’t know what the future will look like, but you’re in love now.
hrgn. *crawls out of the cave* “what a noble mind is here o’erthrown” vs like. “now cracks a noble heart” no bc both ophelia and horatio both recognize hamlet’s madness BUT hamlet still loves horatio with his heart no matter how mad he is and the only way that that would ever stop is if he dies. and then he does. *returns to the cave*
Imagine this:
I plan and write a remarkable speech and submit it to TEDTalk. They accept. I even make a slideshow to go along with this inspirational presentation. The audience is excited as fuck. What will I say? This took years of preparation. There are cameras everywhere. It’s streaming live! I clear my throat to speak. The audience is on the edge of their seats. I pause for dramatic effect. At last I speak, and I say:
“Hamlet was head-over-heels in love with Horatio.”
I bow. I make my exit.
I will not be invited back, but it was worth it.
Horatio: So... can I ask about the skull in your room?
Hamlet: Sure, which one?
please don’t say you love me
Hamlet, probably
Horatio: *exists*
Hamlet, holding him: I’ve only had Horatio for a day and a half, but if anything happens to him, I will kill everyone in this room and then myself.
“’I will wear him in my heart’s core’: Tragedy, Community, and Queer Identity in HAMLET Online” A post mortem on my first ever academic conference presentation At the beginning of this month I had the absolute privilege to present some of my current research at the Utah Wooden O Symposium at Southern Utah University. My biggest belief is that research, the arts, and education should be as widely accessible as possible. This is why today, I am sharing the highlights of my survey results, research you all helped contribute to! These are not all the answers or data, but some of the most fun bits I’ve used so far. This survey will be used for future projects (by me only) as well! In addition, I will be filming and presenting a series of TikToks and a longer video essay on Youtube with an alternative reading and presentation of my research. If that’s not enough Hamlet research for you, I will also (hopefully!!!) be publishing this research in 1-2 journals. Until then, I wanted to give you the tumblr community the data on your Hamlet thoughts. If you like this research, content, or want to participate in future research please either reach out to me or… watch this space! I’ll be developing my thesis work in similar ways and I’ve got a Ph.D. after this to research for… hopefully! Thank you all again, I hope to provide more accessible education for everyone. For now, please enjoy just how gay we all are. Disclaimer: Graphs auto displayed the top 5-10 answers, the full numbers and percentages I do have but graphs do not reflect all genders and sexualities provided. Future and previous presentations of this data will reflect all genders and sexualities provided. ALT TEXT is Below
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I had a dream last night where there was a show that took place after the events of Hamlet and it was about Horatio meeting ghost Hamlet and them going on sad and gay adventures. Anyway I drew this bc I'm sad it wasn't real
Horatio: My lord, please just look me straight in the eyes and tell me the truth.
Hamlet: Impossible. No man can look at you and be straight.
Christopher Plummer (Hamlet) Michael Caine (Horatio) 1964
when we talkin bout ‘Tragic Danish Boyfriends’ I know it’s pretty much reference to Hamlet & Horatio HOWEVER, it could also totally be Rosencrantz & Guildenstern
Hamlet can be very irritating
Guildenstern: God, Hamlet is driving me insane.
Rosencrantz: He can be quite annoying when he wants to be. Don’t you think Horatio?
Horatio: *studying, distracted* No, no, I love prince Hamlet.
Guildenstern: Well now!
Rosencrantz: I don’t believe we’ve ever heard that before.
Horatio: I mean… I’m sorry, what did you ask me again?
Rosencrantz: If you find Hamlet irritating.
Horatio: No, of course I don’t! I- I enjoy being… around him. Academically, you know, he is always… stimulating.
Rosencrantz:
Guildenstern:
Horatio: Not in the erotic sense of the word!
i refuse to believe that hamlet was a grown man that level of melodrama is only found in depressed teenagers