Abstract
In Privatbi’s 2018 fanfic, ‘Okay’, Hamlet and Horatio are ‘shipped’ – that is to say, the two characters are reimagined as lovers – and their erotic relationship played out in a scene in which Horatio’s textual (or canonical) dependability is envisioned as part of his romantic devotion to his beloved Hamlet. The fanfic’s readers are privileged to Horatio’s interiority, his tender thoughts of desire to protect his emotionally fragile lover. The penultimate line in the brief fanfic pictures the lovers entwined with Horatio yearning to forestall Hamlet’s breakdown: ‘If I just keep holding him, thought Horatio, giving in to wishful thinking, I can keep him from shattering.’ This moment draws from Shakespeare’s play, perhaps inspired by Horatio’s declaration to be ‘more an Antique Roman than a Dane’ (5.2.341), in which Hamlet’s friend suggests his willingness to kill himself so as not to live without Hamlet. While Horatio in Shakespeare’s play has a fairly familiar relationship with several characters, his lack of a soliloquy means his persona can only be surmised through his dialogue with Hamlet, Gertrude and other members of Claudius’s court. Although brief, Privatbi’s fanfic offers a glimpse into an imagined relationship between Horatio and Hamlet; its speculative reimagining combines a reading of lines from the playtext and the author’s affective interest in creating a subtext for Hamlet. The fanfic invites a reconsideration of the homoerotics of a Hamlet/Horatio relationship that might contribute to a new way to understand why Hamlet can only commit to loving Ophelia in the wake of her death....