The Hamlet Project

It is such a relief to have this authoritative leader actually ask his wife what she thinks. I know it’s been a particularly sensitive time for me, gender politics wise. . . so I happen to be wearing a particularly jaded pair of lenses. It seems like everything I’m seeing leaves women with no brains – just bodies for consumption or mother for fantasy reassurance – so just to see a line that asks a woman what she thinks feels like a rarity. Shakespeare’s not so guilty of this diminishment of women, even if the majority of the plays wouldn’t pass the Bechdel test. He writes us women who DO think and in this particular moment, I love that the king asks her. Even though it is in her role as Hamlet’s mother and not, per se, about the ambassadors of Norway, so no award here. It’s just a nice relief for a moment to have a queen get to voice her opinion.