Hamlet Simpsons Style

Today I had some spare time and guess what happened to be on the T.V.,The Simpsons so I just had watch it. The episode I saw today was about storytelling, Homer was telling them stories and one of them was Hamlet. Now The Simpsons are famous for their allusions to other famous works of art, the unique thing about there allusions is that they maintain the story like keeping it relatively accurate while still putting their comical spin on it. I don’t know if you have read Hamlet by William Shakespeare but since I had to read it in high school I will give you a quick rundown. Hamlet’s father died, and his father’s ghost comes to tell Hamlet that his uncle Claudius killed him in order to marry his Mother and become king. So Hamlet finds a way to see if what the ghost told him was for real, so he sets up a play that makes his uncle get uncomfortable because it was supposed to be a reenactment of the murder. In the end of the story Hamlet kills his Uncle Claudius but everyone else dies including Hamlet. Well in the Simpsons version this all still happens it’s just they way it does. In the end of the story Hamlet has a duel with Laertes, now the one of the swords is covered with poison and hamlet gets sliced with it, but then in a scuffle they switch swords and Laertes also get sliced with the poison sword. Since they will both die Laertes tells Hamlet what has happened, will it also turns out that Claudius poisoned some wine to kill Hamlet but his Mother drinks this instead so she dies accidentally. So now finally Hamlet kills Claudius, and then sadly Laertes and Hamlet both die. Well in the Simpsons version in the duel Claudius says that according to the rules Laertes is allowed one practice stab, but Laertes stabs himself instead of Hamlet. So then Hamlet proceeds to get his vengeance by killing Claudius, after that he was untouched but slips on the blood on the floor and dies, then his Mother kills herself because she doesn’t want to clean up the room. So although the Simpsons version their own comical twist they stayed pretty accurate, thus the writers of the Simpsons keep a great story alive and going strong.