Re: Hamlet

Kevin Goldsmith (unitcirc@netcom.com)
Tue, 23 May 1995 16:30:12 -0700 (PDT)

> Or maybe a place where you must wear period costume, and speak
> Elizabethan English in order to be accepted?
>
> I guess you could write an Elizabethan English language parser, that
> would insist on having sentences with certain words and phrase
> constructions. What you suggest is an interesting technique for
> enforcing atmosphere.
>
What if you're "audience" doesn't know Elizabethan English? How
about instead that your audience can say whatever they want and it gets
turned into Elizabethan English? Not as Draconian, and easier (and
possibly more fun) to use.

> Do you mean within Hamlet? Or something else? In Hamlet, I think my
> first stop would be the cemetary, then the local village, then a high
> cliff above the coast as Hamlet arrives and departs. I would then try
> to scale the castle from cliff-side, since going in the front door
> would be too boring. I'd watch the final fight scene hanging from a
> chandelier on the ceiling.
>
What if you didn't know the story of Hamlet and this was your
first exposure to it. How would you know to be at the right place at the
right time?

> All pretty passive stuff, really. I'd probably watch it once all the
> way through, then get some "what if..." ideas in my head, and go back
> and muck things up a bit. Like, what if I switched swords on (damn, I
> forget his name) the guy who wants to kill Hamlet, so that his sword
> has no venom on it? Suddenly some people are left alive at the end
> that wouldn't have been otherwise. Does this mean the narrative
> continues into a new story?
>
That's an interesting point with user control. I would believe
that it would depend on the "author" or artist or whomever. Hamlet might
be hard to change since it wasn't written with interaction in mind. A
new story however, where these things could be taken into account would
be a very hard exercise for the creator.

KEvin