#lean-wolf

okay soooo obviously the first source you want to examine is the text itself. I mean there’s nothing you can pull out and be like ‘here’s a quote that totally proves it’ but there are little things you can point out, mostly like the comparison between how hamlet sees/treats women - esp his so-called girlfriend ophelia - compared to how he treats horatio. like yeah fine you could say ‘oh well they’re just good friends’ but um horatio is literally the only person hamlet doesn’t write off as betraying him or fucking with him soooo. also the use of the word ‘coped’ (‘ever my conversation coped withal’) - that word definitely has a sexual meaning, shakespeare used it in a sexual context in othello and (I think) venus and adonis. I did make a post about that but my internet’s really slow so it would take 100 years for me to find it but it’s definitely somewhere in my tragic danish boyfriends tag. also it had a link to a critical source so bonus!

also look at pronouns? I’ve never taken a really indepth look at them (it’s on the to-do list) but hamlet is veeerrry familiar with horatio you know. 

also talking of the tragic danish boyfriends tag I’d look through it; I dunno whether I’ve ever written actual meta on the subject but there’s def a lot of discussion in there!

adaptations with subtext! now I’ve not seen them all, but I’ve seen most, and I’d take a good look at the 2009 version with david tennant because oh man the gay is strong in this one. there’s a gif floating round of when hamlet and horatio met at the start of the play and they are literally embracing like lovers (there are many gifs of this in the tdb tag heh). hamlet at elsinore is good for horatio as gay because michael caine literally played it that way, and said so, but that’s probs not much help to you!

um um um I did a quick search of my uni’s article database and couldn’t find anything, but if you want I could do a much more thorough look (I was pressed for time when I searched), I’m sure there’s plenty that’s been written on the subject!

unfortunately because I’m moving on saturday all my books are packed away but I’m pretty sure that anything really interesting would have been typed up and posted in the tragic danish boyf tag at some stage. come saturday I’ll be unpacking them all so if it’s not too late I could have a look through my various books then and post anything I find

I mostly can talk about hamlet and horatio but you could definitely strengthen your discussion by mentioning the evidence for hamlet and laertes having a bit of a thing pre-wittenberg because I think there is evidence for it but for that I’d talk to alex who’s like the laertes expert and also writes great stuff.