Who is the best Hamlet you've seen? Tell us at the bottom of the page
Watch classic versions of Hamlet's famous soliloquy by Laurence
Olivier, 1948 I Derek
Jacobi, 1980 I Kevin
Kline, 1990 I Kenneth
Branagh, 1996 I Ethan
Hawke, 2000
At last count I'd seen 40 Hamlets, beginning with Richard Burton, of whom my
boyhood memory is simply that he scowled and throbbed and would rather have
been drinking in Swansea than dying in Elsinore. God help me, I've reviewed
35 of them. I've seen virtuous Hamlets like Simon Russell Beale and baleful,
brooding ones like Nicol Williamson, mad ones like Mark Rylance,
sound-minded ones like Toby Stephens, and several so mentally ambiguous that
they justified Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's summing-up of the prince in
Tom Stoppard's Shakespeare spin-off: “stark raving sane.”
I've seen some manage the near-impossible, which is to be dull, and some
become highly eccentric. I've seen Paul Rhys's willowy, weepy Hamlet scrub
his nails and Yorick's skull in a bath while orating about destiny, Jonathan
Pryce internalise his father's ghost into a deep voice that burped its
demands up from his stomach, Samuel West's scruffy student prince share a
joint with the Rosensterns, and Frances de la Tour, my first female Hamlet,
mooch lankily about in clothes best suited to a transport cafe specialising
in soggy chips. I've even seen George Anton's druggie prince (isn't he said
to be “blasted with ecstasy”?) rape an Ophelia whose corpse was also used by
a necrophiliac Horatio; but that time the director was Calixto Bieito, the
Catalan maverick of whom the rest should be silence.
Who is the best Hamlet I've seen or, to put it another way, the worthiest heir
to gentle Garrick and ferocious Kean, sensitive Gielgud and ballsy Olivier?
That's a question well worth asking now, with David Tennant soon to emerge
from his Tardis to play Hamlet, Kenneth Branagh directing Jude Law's prince
next year, and Jonathan Miller staging the play in Bristol next month. But
it's hard to answer because the search is for a complete Hamlet and, really,
there's no such being.
His own testimony is that he is very proud, revengeful and ambitious,
Ophelia's that he is the glass of fashion, the expectancy of the state and a
noble courtier, soldier and scholar, and Fortinbras's that he would have
“proved most royal”. But every claim needs qualification.
He is loving, callous, fastidious, coarse, contemptuous, considerate,
vindictive, prudish, indecisive, tough, incapable, philosophic, violent,
melancholy, resilient, vulnerable, intense, detached, humorous,
aristocratic, demotic, articulate, self-hating and much else, including a
stage director and Denmark's premier theatre critic. He is Dr Jekyll and
perhaps he is also Mr Hyde, in D.H. Lawrence's words “a repulsive, creeping,
unclean thing”. He is a success, for he gets his man, and a failure, for he
leaves behind eight bodies, including his own, when there was meant to be
one.
Coleridge decided in an opium haze that he was Hamlet, and so might you and I,
for perhaps he is all of us at our most maddeningly unpindownable. And
here's the central problem. How can an actor make the prince's
inconsistencies consistent? Well, the answer is simple. He can't. Derek
Jacobi acknowledged this when he called the role “infinitely adaptable” but
added that every actor could only bring his own “emotional bank” to the play
and try to be spendthrift. Sadly, though, every actor is ultimately doomed
to live within his means. Every actor's resources are finite, however
daringly he maximises them.
In a brilliant study of past performances, The Masks of Hamlet, Marvin
Rosenberg divides actors playing the role into “sweet” and “powerful”. It's
a start. Russell Beale has said that he was surprised to discover how
attractive Hamlet was, and his warm, thoughtful performance showed it. I'd
also put Michael Pennington, John Neville, a somewhat prim Tom Courtenay, a
gravely intellectual Alex Jennings and Jacobi himself in that rough
category. The powerful would be led by Williamson, who looked older than his
own mother and stalked through the Danish fleshpots like an angry Luther,
unnerving Anthony Hopkins's Claudius with his stare and puritan snarl. He
was clearly a king-in-waiting, which was good, but left you wondering why he
hadn't skewered his uncle by Act II: which is the trouble with “powerful”
Hamlets.
Another division is between the princely and unprincely, especially as the
latter has become common ever since 1965, when David Warner shambled onstage
in a college scarf in a Peter Hall revival that spoke to a new era. Albert
Finney's Hamlet was a disorderly dropout from Wittenberg University, a
turbulent bull who could hardly enter an anteroom without knocking over the
people as well as the china. Stephen Dillane's sardonic prince blundered
about wearing what might have been called Godot chic, painfully aware that
he was more a modern alternative comedian than a Renaissance avenger.
Neither Sam West's hoodie Hamlet nor Ben Whishaw's despairing adolescent nor
Alan Cumming's whipped, defeated Peter Pan of a prince nor Anton Lesser's
childishly blubbing youth nor Peter Eyre's furrowed, bookish student nor
Frank Grimes, who played hide and seek with Polonius in Lindsay Anderson's
1981 revival, nor Alan Rickman, an upmarket Eeyore dolefully regarding his
burst balloon - no, none of them looked likely to have proved most royal.
On the other hand, Ralph Fiennes made you believe that Claudius had stolen the
throne from its rightful heir and, as a naturally virile man, was baffled
and infuriated by his own passivity. Edward Fox was so much the patrician
that Claudius seemed a nouveau-riche interloper from suburban Copenhagen.
Kenneth Branagh was a strong, upright Hamlet who had Barnardo and Marcellus
jumping nervously to attention at the very start. Kevin Kline was
intelligent, composed, formidable. Toby Stephens went farther, flashing the
whites of his eyes and whiter-than-whites of his teeth and refreshing jaded
appetites with the sort of dashing, romantic, robust prince we thought had
disappeared with John Barrymore's once-famous Hamlet.
Actually, the best Hamlets are a mix of the sweet and powerful, princely and
unprincely. They embrace inconsistency, hint at confusions that explain
their failure to act decisively, and find fresh complexities to add. Fiennes
was impressively noble, yet he could violently shove his mother's face into
her mattress and crazily mime rear-end sex with her. Like many Hamlets he
suffered from the Oedipals - Daniel Day-Lewis gave Judi Dench's Gertrude a
big, incestuous kiss on the mouth - and, also like many, he needed the
abortive trip to England to change, grow, become a plausible avenger.
I've often felt that the pirates who captured Hamlet had a resident
psychiatrist along with their store of planks and cutlasses. Michael
Maloney's Hamlet for Yukio Ninagawa fought a long internal battle between
immaturity and maturity that ended the adult way. Likewise with Alan
Howard's volatile, unpredictable prince for Trevor Nunn. When the shocked,
enfeebled Ian McKellen of Act II yelled “oh vengeance!”, he looked at his
melodramatically raised hands and silently acknowledged how clean, white and
absurdly unmurderous they were; but by Act VI he seemed to have grown in
years as well as weight.
Again, Ed Stoppard, Paul Rhys, Sam West and Alex Jennings all had to cope with
suicidal impulses that, in Jennings's case, meant that he carried a pistol
in a grocery bag and aimed it at his head in the “to be” speech.
And others didn't realise how much depression had escalated into the insanity
that they themselves claimed was a ruse to unsettle Claudius. Rylance
wandered about in an excrement-streaked nightgown, bared his bum, biffed a
sack that the appalled court thought contained Polonius's head, only to
reveal this to be a cabbage; yet he, too, was a new man by the end.
The critic James Agate wrote that Hamlet “must make us cry one minute and
shudder the next”, and with his mix of grief, affection and wayward menace,
Rylance came close to achieving that. He is among the near-complete Hamlets,
along with Pryce, Branagh, Russell Beale and Ben Kingsley. I won't forget
the sad, moody, impulsive Pryce's wolfish howls at Ophelia's death or,
conversely, the way the often tender Branagh spat in her face and savagely
humiliated her. Or how Kingsley's intolerably hurt and stressed Hamlet found
release in wry humour and self-mockery, actually puffing out his cheeks and
satirically popping them on his last words, “the rest is silence”.
Did Russell Beale lack fire and fierceness? A bit. But his witty, troubled,
caring, self-knowing, morally sturdy and supremely incisive Hamlet defied
his physical constraints - one headline read “tubby or not tubby, fat is the
question” - to touch the heart and, dare I say, soul.
At times he had the quality for which Edwin Booth, the American actor whose
brother killed Lincoln, was famous: a haunted other-worldliness, a
spirituality lacking in our theatres and our lives.
So maybe he is my best, or least incomplete, Hamlet. But let Olivier, who was
too fiery and fierce, have the last word: “Every time you read a line it can
be a new discovery. You can play it and play it and still not get to the
bottom of its box of wonders.” There are surprises and marvels yet to come.
Playing Hamlet: actors' views
Interviews by Dominic Maxwell
SIMON RUSSELL BEALE
Played Hamlet at the National Theatre, 2000
I was such a ludicrous piece of casting. Alex Jennings, Paul Rhys, Kenneth
Branagh - I was Second Gravedigger in his film - Ralph Fiennes, these are
the real Hamlets, so I couldn't compare myself to them anyway. I knew I
wouldn't be like anyone else.
As always with those great parts, you go to places where you don't expect to
go. I was obsessed with the madness question - I felt that this Hamlet was
grieving, not mad.
He turned out to be a sweet prince. I'd like to have known him: a decent chap,
in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Hamlet is qualitatively different from any other part. You're very lucky if
you get the chance to play it: a man stripped down to his barest essentials.
It sounds pretentious to say it, but you are a different actor after playing
Hamlet.
DOMINIC DROMGOOLE
Artistic director, Shakespeare's Globe
The best performance I've seen was Simon Russell Beale's. It was very
delicate, very exacting. He portrayed a gentle spirit surrounded by much
harsher people. The production around him was not so good, but his
performance was very great. I'm not interested in directing Hamlet myself -
I've never really figured out how you can carry all that windbaggery. If you
look at Hamlet, there is one juggernaut in the middle, four or five decent
supporting parts, then a lot of rubbish parts.
ALEX JENNINGS
Played Hamlet for the RSC, 1997-98
It sounds a bit naff, but I didn't want to see any other Hamlets for a while
after mine. It does affect you. But seeing Simon Russell Beale was great,
because he's so different. His directness with an audience was fantastic.
There were a few lines where I thought, oh sh*t, I wish I'd said it that
way!
Did it change me as an actor? I certainly felt so at the time. It was very
hard to say goodbye to it - it was the best acting experience I've had.
ZOË WANAMAKER
Actress, daughter of the founder of Shakespeare's Globe Sam Wanamaker
My favourite Hamlet was my first - Olivier, in the movies. He was beautiful,
sexy, theatrical yet graceful, the embodiment of everything that we
fantasise about in Hamlet. He spoke it as if he had just thought of it. On
stage? Mark Rylance, for differerent reasons. He wasn't sexy or graceful.
But he was unusual - he had that watchability.
MICHAEL BOYD
Artistic director, RSC
It's the most challenging role there is for a young actor. It's huge, it's
emotionally and physically draining, and it requires a tremendous wit. I
would love to see Johnny Depp do it - he has the wicked mischief that the
part needs.
I have several favourites, including my first - Classics Illustrated, a
comic-book version. It saw him as a revenge hero. The first really vivid
production I saw was Jonathan Pryce at the Royal Court. The restless
internalising was the strongest I've seen.
SAMUEL WEST
Played Hamlet for the RSC, 2001-02
I loved Mark Rylance's first Hamlet, in 1989. He was unbelievably inventive,
brilliantly lonely. I've seen the play about 20 times, but only once since I
played it. It is the ultimate part for a young actor and you can never get
it entirely right. But you get to do a lot of working things out; you can be
pathologically self-centred, then you get to have a really good sword fight
at the end. I'd love to play it again.
Three days from the end of the run, I was heckled. That told me I was on the
right track. Our director, Steven Pimlott, always maintained that a
soliloquy should be directed to the audience: “If you ask the questions in
the right way then eventually someone will answer.” And they did!
It was the “rogue and peasant slave” speech. I said “Am I coward?” And someone
yelled out, “Yes!” The next line was, “Who calls me villain?” And he said,
“Me! Last row of the circle, don't know the seat number!” Stage management
met me in the wings and said, are you all right? I said, “It's the best
thing that's ever happened to me!”
Benedict Nightingale's top ten Hamlets
1 Simon Russell Beale (2000)
2 Mark Rylance (2000)
3 Jonathan Pryce (1980)
4 Kenneth Branagh (1992)
5 Stephen Dillane (1994)
6 Ben Kingsley (1976)
7 Ralph Fiennes (1995)
8 Samuel West (2001)
9 Michael Pennington (1980)
10 Alex Jennings (1997)
Three Hamlets that misfired
Alan Rickman (1992): Apathetic, brooding, poleaxed by grief and
maybe a death wish, he badly needed more colour, variety, excitement and
general pizzazz.
Tom Courtenay (1968): Pedantically reasonable and irked by
injustice, this great actor made his fiercest monologue sound as if a head
prefect were giving himself a dressing-down.
George Anton (2003): Not his fault that he was in a tricksy
production which required him to choke Polonius with a copy of Hello!
magazine and have a knife-fight with Claudius, but did he have to murder the
verse?
Hamlet facts
The full version is the Bard's longest play, at 4,042 lines (29,551 words)
Hamlet is the longest part in any Shakespeare play, with 1,507 lines
More than 50 women have played Hamlet, including Sarah Siddons (from 1777),
Sarah Bernhardt (from 1899, pictured right), Frances de la Tour (1979) and
Angela Winkler (2000)
The American company Synetic Theatre produced a wordless version -
Hamlet...the rest is silence - in Washington last summer
Hamlet was once performed without Hamlet in it on its second night at the
Richmond Theatre in 1787, after its star had an anxiety attack
