Free Hamlet by William Shakespeare Page A

parallel occasions in their own lives. 4
    The early eighteenth-century actor-manager Colley Cibber described Betterton’s performance as restrained, “governed by decency, manly, but not braving; his voice never rising into that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what he naturally revered.” 5 The actor seems to have attended to Hamlet’s advice to the players at the beginning of Act 3 Scene 2, although these lines were cut in the so-called “Players’ Quarto” (1676) which was used, as were the Ambassadors, Polonius’ talk with Reynaldo, his advice to his son, Laertes’ advice to Ophelia, and most of Fortinbras. Many other speeches were thinned, including all the soliloquies apart from “To be, or not to be,” which was presumably too well-known to be cut.
Hamlet’s
complicated textual history and length has led to a stage history characterized by cuts and exclusions designed to create a fast-paced script concentrating on narrative and action.
    David Garrick, the outstanding eighteenth-century Hamlet, used a version of the same text for much of his theatrical career until 1772 when he decided to cut most of the fifth act and have Hamlet reappear after Ophelia’s final exit, fight and forgive Laertes and kill Claudius. This drastic action had the positive effect of enabling much of the material from the first four acts to be restored, adding depth to the other characters and making Hamlet a more complex, ambiguous figure. Garrick’s performance was noted for its liveliness and energy and was based on a conviction of Hamlet’s deeply felt love for his dead father. In an age of feeling, “The basis of Hamlet’s character seems to be an extreme sensibility of mind, apt to be strongly impressed by its situation, and overpowered by the feelings which that situation excites.” 6 Walter Scott characterized Garrick’s acting as “impetuous, sudden, striking, and versatile.” 7 He was also known for carefully thought-out stage business, including a collapsingchair, a wig wired so that the hair stood on end and his famous “start” on first seeing the ghost. The German scientist and Anglophile Georg Lichtenberg described how
    His whole demeanour is so expressive of terror that it made my flesh creep even before he began to speak. The almost terror-struck silence of the audience, which preceded this appearance and filled one with a sense of insecurity, probably did much to enhance this effect. At last he speaks, not at the beginning, but at the end of a breath, with a trembling voice: “Angels and ministers of grace defend us!” 8
    The liveliness of Garrick’s interpretation contrasted markedly with the late eighteenth-century actor John Philip Kemble’s melancholy prince. The memoirist Mary Russell Mitford thought him “the only satisfactory Hamlet I ever saw—owing much to personal grace and beauty—something to a natural melancholy, or rather pensiveness of manner—much, of course, to consummate art.” 9 The Regency star Edmund Kean, by contrast, was passionate and impetuous. At the end of Act 3 Scene 1, for example, according to the Scottish poet Theodore Martin, after screaming “get thee to a nunnery” at Ophelia, he was about to leave
    when he stops, turns round, and casting back the saddest, almost tearful look, stands lingering for some time, and then with a slow, almost gliding step, comes back, seizes Ophelia’s hand, imprints a lingering kiss upon it with a deep-drawn sigh, and straightway dashes more impetuously than before out of the door, which he slams violently behind him. 10
    William Charles Macready’s performance in the mid-nineteenth century was described as a “composite,” 11 combining “the classical dignity of John Kemble with the intense earnestness and colloquial familiarity of Edmund Kean.” 12 Reviewers praised his naturalism and ability to suggest subtle, complex feelings, but in his diary Macready confesses how difficult he found it to achieve “the ease and