Benedict Cumberbatch talks about Hamlet and I talk about that and accidentally go on a tangent about steaks and teenage angst

Link to the interview.

Woah! It's Benedict Cumberbatch! It's the guy that all of my friends cry about as the star of that show, Sherlock! Woah!

Now that that's over...

This interview is all about the totally amazing and hot Benedict Cumberbatch playing the titular Hamlet in the play, Hamlet. The interviewer asks Cumberbatch about the famed monologue, "To be or not to be", and why it's a monologue rather than a conversation between the insane Hamlet and some friend of his. Of course, Cumberbatch replies that it's so that the audience (and I suppose readers) can "empathize with Hamlet".

Personally, I can't relate.

For most of Hamlet, it lives up it's name as a tragedy. It's pretty bad for all the characters, it's kinda dark, and characters and readers alike are miserable thanks to the situation they're forced into, whether by Shakespeare's hand or a teacher's assignment.

There's just so much depressing dialogue and events up to this point that it just becomes horribly dull and monotonous. By the time that Hamlet's only begun to deliver his famous soliloquy, I personally find myself either having abandoned the tale of the Danish prince's plight or sound asleep.

Personal complaints aside, I do find that monologues in literature or media tend to have two purposes. One, for the villain to gloat about his imminent victory, and two, for characters to tell their audience or readers about certain subjects. In this case, Hamlet's telling himself (and us) what essentially could just boil down to, "I'd like to kill myself, because life sucks. But at the same time, being dead sucks."

This whole play makes me feel like it's just long, drawn out teenage angst with a healthy mix of a dead father and his ghost, your murderer of an uncle marrying your mom, and some good old insanity.

I mean, as a teenager, it's pretty easy to relate to other people's angst, but when you just deal with so much of it, it's just immensely frustrating and also pretty ridiculous to see a thirty-something grown man dealing with it in the same way a sixteen year old girl would after a breakup.

Like, imagine this, you're a sixteen year old girl, fresh out of a breakup, maybe it's your first "real" relationship and you were both SO into each other and suddenly he turns to you and says "I'm done with this relationship shtick, peace." And then you go full Bella Swan mode and start crying about how "Oh I loved him so much now I feel dead inside."

Whoops, went off on a tangent...That'll probably happen a lot.

Hamlet's angst and speech is sort of relatable? I'm sure almost everyone's going to go through a period of sadness after any major and bad event, whether it be a breakup or a dead father or heck, a lot of homework and this one assignment that's a blog post about this story you're obviously not a huge fan of and how you gotta do a write-up about it.

Unfortunately, at the end of the day, you're gonna have to buckle up and get over it and solve your problems because wallowing in your sadness is going to solve nothing and I really wish someone told young William Shakespeare that because I think a lot of his really famous plays involve a lot of the whole "wallowing in sadness followed by suicidal thoughts" thing.

Yeah, I get that people need time to grieve after times of trauma or sadness, but it really shouldn't have progressed as quickly as it did. Hamlet's dad Hamlet has been dead for like a month or two and Hamlet's son Hamlet is talking about the nuances of life and death and discuss his revenge and/or lack of exacted revenge with himself. It's been just a month, dude.

Anyways, I think my point has been made. Hamlet and his famed speech can be perceived as an unexpectedly bad steak from a restaurant with five stars on Yelp. And all your friends and your parents and your parents' friends have been there and they're like, "Wow, this place has really great steak! You should try it!" And you're like, "Okay! I trust your decisions on choosing good steakhouses!" And you go to the steakhouse and order your neat little 6oz cut of beef and you wait a really long time for it to come and you figure, "Well maybe they're just taking a really long time to make sure it's really good, I can deal with that." So you wait some more, and eventually your steak comes and you look at it and it's three-quarters really gross and chewy fat and one-quarter semi-charred steak. BUT, there is this one tiny bite on the side, and it's really good and it makes up for the other 99% of the steak. That's this speech. A really bad steak with one really good bite.

That's my assignment-turned-rant.

Thank you for reading.