not to continue to bring up hamlet in the context of dorian gray but the parallels are soooo good i mean come on
dorian - hamlet: self-centered, unhealthily fixated on life, death, youth and how all things we hold dear die the quickest, bad at being nice to women
basil - horatio: gay, in love with the titular character, watching the person he lives for devolve into madness and pain without being able to help
sybil vane and her family - ophelia, laertes, polonius: literally their scenes together in the beginning before jim goes to australia are perfect parallels for laertes’ talking to ophelia before he goes to france. like, INSANELY similar. and then when sybil dies…
i also think it’s interesting that, of all the plays sybil performs in, she never plays ophelia. i could be wrong, but im like 80% sure that dorian never mentions her in hamlet.
lord henry is an interesting case because you could read him as rosencrantz/guildenstern, given his friendship with both basil and dorian, and i don’t disagree with that reading at all. but he sews the first seeds of doubt in dorian, he’s the reason dorian starts to freak out about the impermanence of youth. to me, he functions as the ghost. i mean, think of it:
basil/horatio meets henry/the ghost in the first scene, dorian/hamlet comes along and basil/horatio BEGS for him to be careful because he doesn’t want his best friend to suffer corruption. henry/ghost and dorian/hamlet have a private conversation which alters the latter’s outlook and mental state, and when he returns, he isn’t the same.
i’m so,,, i’m so normal about this.
also sybil’s suicide/not suicide. AGHHHHHHH
