I love when Hamlet gets all horror movie. He’s best known for intellectual philosophizing – but this part of him often gets ignored. The version of Hamlet that is the most Vincent Price, the most gothic, the most macabre.
It’s kind of a great impulse – to be personally wound up – to have your uncle’s crime confirmed, to finally tell your “friends” where they can stick their pipe – and rather than say ANY of that, just set the scene for a dark story.
It feels to me like someone who’s just gone through something dramatic and instead of dealing with that thing, sits down at a desk and writes, “It is a dark and stormy night…”
And then, from there, of course, go on to drink blood, like any good vampire story.
The Hamlet Project 