Ophelia joined the group Maidens Who Don’t Float

Ian McCarthy just showed me I was happy to learn of Sarah Schmelling’s version of Hamlet in Facebook newsfeed form. You can read it over at McSweeney’s.

Given my interest in Facebook and in adapting literature for the computer, I found it particularly nice to see how Schmelling’s Hamlet made deft use of the conventions of Facebook news feeds in addition to just the length constraint. For example, dead people “become zombies”; the play within a play becomes an event posting; and odd characteristics become group joins.

Unlike the annual performance of Ulysses’s central chapter Ian and I do on Twitter, Hamlet for Facebook doesn’t use the platform itself as a stage, although admittedly that would be difficult given Facebook’s tendency to shut down accounts that can’t be tied directly to individuals.