The Lion King – and Hamlet?

Posted By on September 29, 2011

Last night three of my grandangels and I went to see THE LION KING in 3-D.   It was quite entertaining and somehow it was a lot funnier last night than I remember it being the first time I saw it (before 3-D).  It was first released by Disney in 1994 and I am GUESSING that I saw it with a few grandangels sometime after it came out on video (anyone remember videos?)

Leanna and Cooper looked pretty cool in their 3-D glasses!

Leanna and Cooper ready for the movie

 

And Sarah and I were pretty cool too!  LOL.

What I didn’t realize (until my Grandangel, Leanna told me)  was that The Lion King was loosely based on Shakespeare’s play HAMLET.  WOW…..from Hamlet to The Lion King.  I had to look that up on the internet when I got home (don’t you just love having all of this information floating out there in cyberspace!)

Simba, the young lion cub,  is likened to Hamlet Jr.    Both Simba and Hamlet Jr. were extremely saddened by their fathers’ deaths – and BOTH RAN from their responsibilities.  Retribution for these deaths were delayed in both The Lion King and Hamlet….(and while I don’t usually celebrate death, I have to admit that I wasn’t sad when the lion SCAR, Simba’s uncle who murdered his own brother Mufasa, died at the end of  The Lion King.

The two fathers were also similar. The father in The Lion King, Mufasa and Hamlet Sr (King of Denmark) were both peaceful rulers and were both killed by their brothers!  Did you know all of this?  Did you WANT to know it now?  LOL

 

And here are some QUOTES from Hamlet that I found interesting!

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain!   (That would be Scar!)


There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

(Shakespeare never went to a university; yet he appears to have understood Cognitive Behavior Modification!!)


Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan oft loses both itself and friend.

(I don’t know how this fits with The Lion King – but it is a quote from Hamlet!  Maybe you could explain that to me!)

 

And did you know that this famous quote is from Hamlet???

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

OK – SO ALL THIS JUST SO THAT I COULD RECOMMEND THAT YOU SEE THE LION KING…..(I got a little wound up, didn’t i!!?)

 


 

 

 

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