Word: gielgud
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...William Shakespeare who assures us that the entire production is under his personal supervision. Before very long Shylock, bursting in upon Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, is required to account for his presence in "Hamlet". Later there is depicted a feud in the best Montague-Capulet fashion, between John Gielgud and Leslie Howard, each of whom gives Beatrile Lillie a front seat ticket for the other's performance, each knowing that the performance will prove only a minor side-show to that amiable woman's extraordinary volubility. But Mr. Shakespeare is soon retired to an honorary presidency, and the dazzling variety...
...certainly intended his Prince to have runs throughout this entire production. At times the wit is biting, at times it is gentle, and again there is a touch of rich whole-hearted merry-making. It seems almost as though Mr. Howard had determined to avoid the pit-fall John Gielgud's humorless characterization of Hamlet has apparently fallen into in New York...
...appearance of a new Hamlet on the boards of an English-speaking theatre is traditionally the signal for drama critics to begin behaving like racehorse handicappers. For when an actor goes as Prince to Elsinore he invites comparison with the past performances of flashy favorites. Last week able John Gielgud appeared on Broadway in Guthrie McClintic's Hamlet. True to tradition, play-reviewers threw down their programs, rushed to their form books to weigh Mr. Gielgud's worth against every Hamlet from Barrymore, Forbes-Robertson and Irving to Booth and Burbadge. Consensus seemed to be that next month...
...John Gielgud, a sensitive and intelligent Englishman of 32 with a nose the size of a hockey puck, was seen in the U. S. last spring as the hero of a not very exciting British film melodrama called Secret Agent. Long before that, however, London had grown accustomed to acclaiming his Hamlets. He has appeared in four separate productions between 1929 and 1936. Many who witnessed the cast of his nighted colour in Manhattan last week had no difficulty in understanding Gielgud's popularity in the role. The size of Actor Gielgud's features, ludicrous when magnified...
Those who favored lustier interpretations of the part were frankly disappointed at Gielgud's refusal or inability to scale the dramaturgic heights in the grand manner. Those who preferred the new school of low-key interpretation considered that Actor Gielgud admirably analyzed his own fluid impersonation of the world's best-known literary case of frustration when in Scene II Hamlet informs the Queen: 'Tis not alone my inky cloak...