Did everybody catch Jude Law, fresh off of Hamlet (and pimping the upcoming “Repo Men”) on Saturday Night Live this weekend? Thanks to the miracle of DVR I did not miss it, although I’m a bit late :). Luckily for us Shakespeare geeks he did a bunch of Shakespeare material! Sorry for the links instead of embedding, but I can’t figure out how to make Hulu go right in the post. And while the vids are in YouTube, they are loaded up with spam and I can’t stand that. Opening Monologue All about his “impressions” of Hamlet, which for a Shakespeare geek were hysterical.
“These people came all this way, dressed up real nice, and I don’t want to get in trouble like Piven.” “Hamlet is sent to England, and this is my favorite part of the play because I get to go back to my dressing room, maybe play on Twitter, have a biscuit. … And then I come back out on stage and Ophelia’s dead, I don’t really know what happened there I’ve never read that part.”
Interesting “mistake” there, as he says “Hamlet kills the guy in the hat and is sent to England by mistake.” Clearly he means, “kills the guy by mistake, and is sent to England.” Hamlet Auditions Jude waits for his audition spot along with Nathan Lane, Al Pacino, Nicholas Cage (irony!! Oh, the bees!), and Sam Elliott.
“How you gonna play Hamlet? I’m torn between black and Puerto Rican!”
Could have done more with this. Then again, they could have done the whole thing with Al Pacino, if you ask me. 🙂
I saw the clip yesterday, and was disappointed. I thought it was a rather lame. I wish; however, that I had been able to see Law as Hamlet.
True, but how often do you get Shakespeare on SNL? I'll take what I can get. 🙂
On that we agree!
Cheers!
I actually got to see him do this role on Broadway. He was very good, and so was the overall design of the show. One of the best scenes was Gertrude's bedroom, where Polonius was actually hiding close to the audience behind a tapestry through which we could see Hamlet and Gertrude's silhouettes. When Hamlet stabbed Polonius, the enormous tapestry came fluttering down from the ceiling and wrapped around Polonius on the floor, opening up the rest of the stage to our view. 🙂 Wonderful show.