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Position:Home>General - Arts & Humanities > Have you ever heard of a video short thing called "Hamlet in 30 Seconds&quo


Question:

Have you ever heard of a video short thing called "Hamlet in 30 Seconds" or "Shakespeare in 30 Seconds"?

When I was a senior in high school (10 years ago), we watched this hilarious video of Hamlet, only they kept having to shorten it.

It was live-action, kind of had a Monty Python feel to it, and the part that stood out the most was when Ophelia died in the shortest version, her "death scene" consisted of dunking her head in a bucket of water.

Does anyone know what I'm talking about, have you seen it, do you know where I can view it.

It's not the animated short that comes up if you type in "Hamlet in 30 seconds" in either a Google video search, or a YouTube.com search.

Additional Details

2 months ago
First paragraph didn't make much sense. The beginning of the video had them trying to do Hamlet in either five or seven minutes. They kept shortening it until it got down to 30 seconds.


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

The play/film you're referring to could be "The 15 Minute Hamlet" by Tom Stoppard. It was made into a film in 1995 - the imDB result is here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0125746/... .

Edit
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Had to dash off to a meeting and didn't finish my post. :) Anyway, I've seen the 15-Minute Hamlet performed with an encore, where it's shortened again, but I'm not sure if that's on the video...

The Reduced Shakespeare Company also have a repeated Hamlet script, which has a short, very short, and super short version; and finally, a backwards Halmet version - no other script has that, and if you remember a "backwards" version then it's likely that it's the RSC version you saw. Their Hamlet material comprises the second act of their "The Complete Works of Shakespeare in 97 Minutes," and is available (abridged) in video form (2002): http://www.amazon.co.uk/reduced-shakespe...
(which is just 90 minutes long altogether).

It'll be one of these... :)