William Shakespeare
Hamlet
Cast
Bernardo - Richard Williams
Francisco - Stanley Groome
Horatio - Sebastian Shaw
Marcellus - Anthony Jacobs
Claudius - Andrew Cruickshank
Voltimand - Hugh Manning
Laertes - Hugh Burden
Polonius - Baliol Holloway
Hamlet - John Gielgud
Gertrude - Marian Spencer
Ophelia - Celia Johnson
Ghost - Leon Quartermaine
Reynaldo - Frank Atkinson
Rosencrantz - Bryan Coleman
Guildenstern - John Chandos
First Player - Hugh Griffith
Player Queen - Denise Bryer
Fortinbras - Andrew Faulds
Captain - Denis McCarthy
Gravediggers - Charles Leno / Preston Lockwood
Priest - Arthur Ridley
Osric - Esme Percy
Gentleman - Alastair Duncan
Director John Richmond
‘When Gielgud speaks a line, you can hear
Shakespeare thinking.’
Lee Strasburg, American Director.
Gielgud played the role for the first time at
the end of the Old Vic season of 1929/30 and
immediately created a sensation and the play
was transferred to the Queen’s Theatre. At
the age of 26, not only was he the youngest
leading actor to play the part in the West End
since Henry Irving (who was 37), but he was
on all sides acclaimed as the rising star. James
Agate (London’s leading dramatic critic)
wrote: ‘I have no hesitation whatever in
saying that it is the high water-mark of
English Shakespearean acting of our time.’
Immediately afterwards, he recorded some
of the soliloquies for the Linguaphone
Company, and these reveal that, though they
are spoken with great beauty and
intelligence, they are light-years from the
mastery of Shakespearean speech that he was
later to achieve.
He directed the play with huge success at
the New Theatre (now the Albery) in 1934,
and Raymond Mortimer called it ‘The best
production of Hamlet that I have ever seen or am ever likely to see.’ In 1937, he played it in
New York, under the direction of Guthrie
McClintic, and well surpassed the previous
record for the run of the play achieved by
John Barrymore.
In 1938, he revived the play for two weeks
at the Lyceum Theatre as a prelude to
performances at Elsinore in Denmark, and in
October 1944 he played in George Rylands’
production in a repertory season of five plays
at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. A tour of
Burma for the troops finished in Cairo, where
he gave his final stage performance in the
theatre built specially for the world-premiere
of Aida. In all, he had played the part over
500 times.
You can readily see that for a period of
sixteen years, his passion for getting the part
‘right’ dominated his professional life, as he
experimented with all the myriad options that
every scene offers to the actor.
In 1948, the BBC Third Programme
broadcast an ‘entirety’ version (even ‘the
dram of eale’ is there) directed by John
Richmond and with a superb cast, including
Leon Quartermaine as the Ghost and Marian
Spencer as Gertrude from the Haymarket production. My future wife, Gwen Watford,
and I heard it then and agreed that John
Gielgud’s performance exactly mirrored what
we had seen in the theatre—she had seen it
three times and I six times.
Gielgud’s mind was not only mercurial but
also beset by a passion for perfection. Though
I only saw the last of his Hamlets, I am certain
that what I saw was the best. Agate again
thought so: ‘He has stopped all the gaps
and…is now completely and authoritatively
master of this tremendous part.’ Even more
authoritative is the opinion of Robert
Speaight (the professional creator of Becket in
Murder in the Cathedral) whose
autobiography The Property Basket contains
this: ‘the mark of John Gielgud’s Hamlet was
its completeness. He presented more aspects
of the character as it is commonly understood
than anyone else. He did not necessarily move
you or excite you more, but he left nothing
out. The elements of the part were mixed in
very accurate proportion, so that what you
took away with you was not a special
pleading but a balanced statement. There
was no essential point upon which you could
say that he was wrong. He had the right
weight of years and physique, the necessary
neurosis, and the necessary charm. He had
the technical ability to sustain the part
without monotony right through to the end. He was not notably better in one scene than
another. But his general comprehension of
the part was extraordinarily satisfying—as
consistent as his theatrical expression of it. He
played it often over the next ten years, and
many people will tell you that his first
performances were the best. I never thought
Gielgud so good as in George Rylands’
production at the Haymarket in 1944.’ This
remarkable tribute from a later Old Vic
Hamlet is typically more detailed and
perceptive because it comes from a fine actor
than from a mere theatrical critic!
I had already seen three other Hamlets but
my first sight of John Gielgud in the role
wiped the slate clean—for the first time I was
in touch with Hamlet’s ‘racing’ mind. It was
also the last time, as, even after at least thirty
other Hamlets, I have never encountered
anyone with the necessary lightning
quickness of mind to think Hamlet’s thoughts.
Much of this, I am convinced, was due to
Gielgud’s own brain, and confirmation of this
comes from a BBC talk he gave in 1954 called
‘Hamlet—The Actor’s View’ also included as a
bonne bouche on this set of CDs. Talking of
his first night in 1930 he said: ‘When I first
played Hamlet I never expected to be
successful…I had seen it seven, eight, ten
times when I was young. I devoured
everything about Irving and I thought that I shall just go on and give a lot of clichés and
imitations of things that I think Hamlet ought
to do. But in some strange way—I remember
it very well—at the first performances, I had a
kind of feeling when I began to play it that
there was only my own way to do it and I kind
of found the part as I went along in a very
strange and sincere way which I had really
never done before in acting. And I think I
found for the first time a way to communicate
my own feeling to the audience because it
was so very strong. And it wasn’t the feeling I
had expected from seeing the play or from
rehearsing it.’
Almost accidentally, and more from natural
instinct than any kind of plan, he had found
all of himself subsumed into the part. Of all
the Shakespearean tragic roles, Hamlet needs
all the idiosyncrasies of an actor’s personality
to begin with before he is subjected to the
amazing richness of experience he is about to
undergo. However inadequate these early
performances may have been, he had seized
the greatest prize of all—and which never
afterwards left him—that he had plucked out
the heart of Hamlet’s mystery.
A major decision was to insist that at no
stage is Hamlet actually mad, though there
are occasional moments when he is close to
losing control. By doing this, he was able to
lighten the play with comedy and wit, particularly in the scenes with Polonius. When
we first encounter him, he is not only grief
stricken by the death of his father, he is
acutely aware that his own accession to the
throne has been blocked by his uncle’s
usurpation and marriage to his mother. His
emotional balance is clearly disturbed and he
is already playing with the idea of suicide in
the first of the soliloquies. From then on, you
will clearly mark the development of the
character because of the certainty and skill of
Gielgud’s execution. It is also the fastest
‘entirety’ Hamlet ever recorded largely due to
his mastery of the architecture of the big
speeches and to the perfection of his diction.
The ‘Closet’ scene with Gertrude combines an
emotional depth and speed that allows you to
hear changes of thought in mid-sentence.
At the Haymarket, from the first instant
that you set eyes on John Gielgud seated on
a cross-legged ‘Hamlet’ chair close to the
front edge of the stage, (as he listened
intensely to the Council meeting being
conducted by Claudius behind him), you were
acutely aware of his involvement in its detail
and significance. You accepted that he was a
royal prince, with all the breeding and bearing
of one—both consciously and unconsciously.
From many possible instants, witness the
arrival of Horatio, Marcellus and Bernado to
meet Hamlet—joy in seeing Horatio again, recognition for Marcellus and
acknowledgement for Bernado. The
constraints and minor embarrassments
imposed on him by his position in life were
etched in with a similar subtlety.
All in all, I have seen no other performance
on the stage as rich in detail. He made you
feel that you had encountered, and become
intimate with, an immensely complicated
human being of overwhelming charm.
You will remember that the original performance was broadcast live in 1948. This
accounts for a hilarious interpolation by the
eccentric Esme Percy in the Osric scene in
Act 5. In the tiny gap between Hamlet’s
dismissal of the messenger and his turning to
speak to Horatio, Osric can be heard excitedly
calling out ‘Oh! Oh! He’s enchanting!’ You
know, I have an idea that Shakespeare would
not have objected over-much.
Notes by Richard Bebb