Hamlet Proposals

Actual project is the web comic medium of #2 with an intent/message similar to proposal #1: to provide satire or commentary on embedded philosophies about death and the afterlife, in the play -- as well as on individual characters' own revelations and views pertaining to the same. The web comic medium is intended to connect Hamlet with a modern audience across the heavily trafficked world wide web. With the use of the original text (fair amount), this project orients itself more toward the group [that was mentioned in my Hamlet on the Web essay,] more fluent in Elizabethan English.
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Proposal #1: a critical essay which focuses on Hamlet’s contribution to philosophical/religious discussion, in Shakespeare’s, and our own time. Specifically, I will be looking at how the audience’s interest in Hamlet’s addressing of the afterlife, has shifted from a religious standpoint to philosophical one. Shakespeare builds the plot on/has the character’s abide by both Catholic and Protestant beliefs (ghost talks of purgatory, while Hamlet states God controls everything before his duel with Laertes); the play was written not too long after the English Reformation, where the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church, partially influenced by the Protestant Reformation. Today’s audiences – long after the Christian Reformations, and with a growing number of atheists, and agnostics – look to the play for answers/stimulus to their own questions about the afterlife. The diversity that Shakespeare instilled into his characters is what makes the play so appealing to them: Ophelia sees the afterlife as an escape from her misery, Claudius decides his present state of “inherited” power is of greater importance than his well being in the afterlife (therefor does not ask for forgiveness), and Hamlet is balanced in between – uncertain of whether to commit suicide, or to continue to avenge his father’s death, risking his own damnation (kills Polonius and Laertes, and has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed).

Proposal #2 (Similar subject matter as the above: religion/afterlife): a web comic which depicts alternative versions of a scene, structured around the beliefs of other philosophies/religions (not Catholic or Protestant). Which scene and what religions has yet to be determined, although the scene would have to deal with the afterlife (encounter with the ghost, Yorick’s grave, the ending, etc. – one of those). There would be a total of 7 strips – one for every day of the week. I was browsing for “Hamlet comic strip” to see if it had been done before, and came across Stick Figure Hamlet (http://stickfigurehamlet.com/act1/scene2/page01.html). It covers the entire play in 80 pages (that’s a lot), so I wanted to do something different/more focused.