It’s Father’s Day, and we could talk about Katherina’s good father Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew, but we won’t.   Instead, we’ll talk about the evil step-father who kills his own brother to attain the throne - Hamlet’s uncle/father Claudius. It’s not that I don’t love my father, because I do. It’s just that I know plenty of people who don’t.  And even bad dads are supposed to be honored this day.

Hamlet is probably the most filmed Shakespeare play of all time. Check out the search list on IMDB to see what I’m talking about. Since young Prince Hamlet pretty much steals the show, you hardly think about Claudius, except in the havoc he wreaks. But he’s one bad dude. Not only does he kill his brother to get his throne and his wife, he also kills poor Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who weren’t hurting anybody.

Anyway, I have a few things to say about young Hamlet, and we’ll talk about that soon.  But while I’m on the topic of wicked step-fathers, I can’t help but think of the TV show Lost.  Terry O’Quinn, who plays John Locke on Lost, has been in a hundred different things, but every time I see him, I can’t get The Stepfather out of my head. Jerry Blake was way more blood thirsty than Claudius. Of course, it’s hard to compare a slasher movie with a classic tragedy. But there, we just did.

Happy Father’s Day.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 10:26 am and is filed under Shakespeare in the Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.