AHC: Oh My God Hamlet! I Just Saw A F****** Vampire!

Based on this sketch, language warning:


But your challenge is to get Shakespeare to write a play about Vampires. He had worked before with mystical and mythical elements in his plays, although I'm not entirely sure how widely known Vampiric myths were in England at this time. Bonus points for it effecting how we see Vampires to today.
 
Bonus points for it effecting how we see Vampires to today.

Shakespeare writing a play about vampires wouldn't affect how we see vampires today, it would define how we see vampires today, at least in the Anglosphere. Although revenants were a theme across European folklore in OTL, the term vampire was mostly confined to the Balkans until the 1700s, so Shakespeare would be introducing something new to English audiences. I can't say how Shakespeare might have used vampires in a play, but I very much doubt that his conception of them would resemble our modern one at all other than as some kind of undead that preys on the living. Shakespeare's characters would definitely become the archetypical characters of vampire fiction though.
 
Shakespeare writing a play about vampires wouldn't affect how we see vampires today, it would define how we see vampires today, at least in the Anglosphere.

Ah, that's more akin to my meaning. Would possibly define how people in the English speaking world see Vampires, as you say.
 
Scottish and Irish folk tales of blood draining fairies. Use a Scottish legend to honor King James or to compare all Scots to blood draining monsters.

So, do a "Scottish Play" with the latter in mind. The Spanish occupiers like it because it makes the Protestant King of Scots look bad and we don't want him to lead a Protestant revolt, do we?

Think Midsummer's Nights Dream meets Macbeth.
 
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I remember reading somewhere that during Shakespeare's day, the popular image of a vampire was a bloated corpse. Of course, I also remember reading that there were plenty of regional and even local variants on vampire folklore, so take that with a grain of salt.
 
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