Desperatly Waiting For Scott Hamlet

To be or not to be? That is the question. The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.

I love Hamlet. Growing up, I knew some of the lines without ever knowing what the play was. I knew Shakespeare before I knew Shakespeare. Then again, so much of our everyday terms comes from Shakespeare so it's kind of hard not to know Shakespeare even if you don't know the works. Anyway! I'm getting off track. Like I said, I knew bits and pieces of Hamlet before I ever even heard of the play. It wasn't until I was in my last semester of high school that I read the play fully.

Christmas season of 2016, my mom was doing her customary "which would you rather have" questions. I was asked to chose between Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. That was a choice I did not want to make since I love both authors. Fast forward to Christmas Day. I open one of my presents and it is a huge book of every known play and sonnet written by William Shakespeare. This probably wouldn't excite many people but I was elated! I already knew about my parents' graduation present being a trip to London and I wanted to go to the Globe theater (which did not disappoint even if it is a few blocks away from the actual site which is now a parking lot) as well as possibly seeing a Shakespeare play (that did not happen sadly as there was not enough time). I also wanted to get a necklace from the British Museum which had one of the most famous quotes from Hamlet written on it: "Above all to thine own self be true". Polonius gives this advice to Laertes as he is leaving for school after the death of Hamlet Sr. I'm a nerd. I had never actually read Hamlet. I had once put on the TV and BBC was showing the play with David Tennant as Hamlet. I watched part of it then changed the channel. Like any kid, I had watched The Lion King many times. But I never realized that it was based off of Hamlet. So when, in my last semester of high school, my AP English teacher announced we would be reading Hamlet instead of King Lear, I was basically the only one who was looking forward to it. We did little activities to get ready for it because the language is kind of different and difficult as many people know. I'm not sure if this is good or bad but I am able to read and understand Shakespeare. It's good because it means I can read a lot more but it is bad because I am always called on to read whenever one of the plays is taught. I learned this in 8th grade when we read Macbeth. It happened again freshman year with Romeo and Juliet and yet again sophomore year with Julius Caesar. So it was no surprise when I was asked to read the part of Hamlet.

I fell in love with the play as I read. I loved Hamlet's descent into madness and how the play ends in a duel to the death. It was everything wrapped up into one play that could take up to three hours to perform (if you don't stop and start like we had to). While reading, we would stop at the end of a scene or act so it would not get confusing when we had to return the next day so this made it very easy to YouTube the David Tennant version that BBC had shown and I had turned off once upon a time. It wasn't like I did it to help me remember things. I did it because I wanted to see how it was performed. As the play started to progress, we had to start "performing" it in class as well and I'm pretty sure Tennant influenced the way I played Hamlet, especially as he was going mad and eventually dying. (I'm not going to spoiler alert this because it's been over 400 years since it was written and pretty much everyone knows the story so it would be pointless.)

This would lead me to London. My mom and I had looked at the different plays being performed at the Globe (because if you see Shakespeare, it has to be done right. The way it would have been if Shakespeare saw it). They weren't showing Hamlet, but they were showing Romeo and Juliet and I thought that was okay since my mom hadn't really read the plays or seen them and while I would have liked for her to see Hamlet, I thought Romeo and Juliet would be the better choice. Sadly, we didn't get tickets but I'm jumping forward in time. It was the first day of the trip. Like I said, I'm a nerd. I absolutely had to go to 221B Baker Street and see the Sherlock Holmes museum. I love Sherlock Holmes. I've read the books and seen movies and the TV shows. I have my favorites like any fan does and I love the BBC version with Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock, Martin Freeman as John Watson, and Andrew Scott as Jim Moriarty. This is where my story becomes kind of funny. My mom and I had gotten our tickets and were standing outside of 221B waiting to go in. We were talking, most likely about Sherlock, and I was looking around. To be honest, I was looking for the street sign that said "Baker Street" but I found something that made my day, even if it was only like 10 AM. I saw a double decker red British bus with the best ad I would see on that trip. It had an ad for Hamlet. And I will never forget this because the actor playing Hamlet was none other than Jim Moriarty himself: Andrew Scott.

I started to laugh and my mom asked what was so funny so I told her. Moriarty is playing Hamlet. While we were in London. And I had just seen the ad while waiting to go into Sherlock Holmes' flat. Those odds were insane. But I couldn't be happier. It was the best surprise of my life. Sadly, I did not get to see Andrew Scott perform live. I wanted to. The tickets were affordable and the theater was easy to get to but there weren't tickets for seats next to each other for my mom and I to be able to go to see. The closest we could have gotten to each other was a full section apart. Not a great idea for two tourists who are out of the US for the first time ever. So we didn't go. I was forever on the lookout for another ad though since I didn't get a picture the first time. I eventually did, with a little help from my mom, and I got a flyer for the play as well. When we returned to America, I was happy I got to see the ad where I did and that I had gotten a picture of it and I had a flyer for it but I was a little sad that I didn't get to see the play. It wasn't until the next week that I was cheered up.

About a week after I had come back, BBC America was showing the first two seasons of Sherlock and my parents were nice enough to let me do nothing but watch it all day. I got up at 5 in the morning (unheard of for me on the weekends) and watched until 5 that night. That's when I got the news that made me super excited. BBC1 (or PBS to us in America) would broadcast Andrew Scott as Hamlet sometime in January 2018. Since then, I've been waiting for more news. I really want to see this version. I love the David Tennant version and I really want to see how someone else portrays the Danish prince. Well someone aside from Kenneth Branagh. 

I have been checking YouTube constantly for some part of the play. Even if it is just the audio of the "To be or not to be" speech. I am so excited for this and I cannot wait. But there is a bit of a lack of information now and I am a little worried that this will turn out like the last time BBC said they would air something. It was Coriolanus with Tom Hiddleston and while BBC said they would put it on TV, it was only a few select theaters in the US. I'm hoping this is not the case. But if it is only a few select theaters, I would pay to go see it if I can. I just hope this time they let people know what they are doing before they do it or else no one knows about it so no one goes to see it. David Tennant and Andrew Scott are two of my favorite actors. I've seen one play the lead in my favorite play. Now I'm just waiting for the chance to see the other do the same thing. 

Included in this post are (in order of appearance) the video ad for Andrew Scott as Hamlet, two pictures of the ad that I took while waiting for a bus, the actual ad for the play, and the "to be or not to be" speech from the BBC Hamlet (2009) starring David Tennant in the leading role.