The Stage

Chit chat - Hamlet’s all a-twitter

Published Tuesday 16 June 2009 at 11:30 by Tabard

The Royal Shakespeare Company has gone all 21st century.

While on set filming the TV version of David Tennant’s Hamlet, members of the company have been posting ‘tweets’ about their progress on Twitter.

Now, I’m sure there are many of you scratching your heads right now, perhaps having conjured up an image of a small bird being put through a letter box. Certainly, that was Tabard’s initial reaction.

So, for all you technophobes out there, a tweet is essentially a message, a bit like a text message, of no more than 140 characters in length. People put these on Twitter, which is a giant message board on the internet. Don’t ask us why. It just is.

Now that we’ve got that sorted, we’ll continue.

The RSC’s Hamlet team clearly had some time on their hands and decided to run a competition to see who could create the best ‘tweet’ encapsulating the entire plot of Hamlet into 140 characters or fewer. Coincidentally, Tabard would like to note, there are 140 syllables in a Shakespearean sonnet.

The competition was open to the public and the RSC company chose six winners.

They were:

“Madness feigned, madness caught. Revenge is hard and life is short.”

“Usurpation, apparition, alienation, infatuation, dramatisation, hallucination, self-inundation, exhumation, assassination, invasion!”

“Cld-Kn+Gtr=angryHlt. Hlt+gst=hesit8. MadHlt=Elsinore-(Po+Of). Ltr-(Po+Of)=rvng. (Ltr*Cld)+Hlt=fight+death”

“Freudian family foibles finish fatally”

“Tragedy Strikes in Elsinore/Dead King’s ghost leaves son in awe/ Young Prince has ruse/Chaos ensues/Bodies lie strewn on the floor”

“Moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan moan. Dead”

We’re glad to report that the final winner listed above - the one which you can tell much time and care has been lavished upon - was The Stage’s entry.

If you want to see the full list of entries - and you’re technologically inclined - go to Twitter and search for “#hamlet”.