Word: hamlets
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Barrymore's new Hamlet is the best I have ever seen," says...
...there is no century-coupling antiquarian who has seen all the great Hamlets from Garrick down and could give a real standard for comparison. Even at that such a man would probably exasperate everyone by doting upon some obscure Hamlet of two hundred years ago whom he saw just after falling in love for the first time...
After those strenuous hundred years come Hamlets whom men now living can remember. An eye-witness talks of one Henry Irving, a "travelling Hamlet" and his ovation at the Lyceum,--such as only a presidential candidate or Babe Ruth would get today. Then came Booth, the admirable nobleman, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, flawless in technique...
There followed a series of pretenders to the throne--men like the lesser Roman emperors who fill up the gaps in the annals. At last Beerbohm Tree, in the name of variety, appeared as a red-headed, red-bewhiskered Hamlet, but failed. With no ghost and no Ophelia it is conceivable that a sandy lunatic might have been a great hit. Next the gentle Forbes-Robertson carried off the laurels with a kind of paradoxical, superplussed magnetism. Then, after Southern's admirable elocution and Walter Hampden's colloquialism -- which doesn't at all describe his acting--we come to Barrymore...
Since every generation has declared its Hamlet the best, are we to be left behind? Of course not! We bring out the old phrases used by our ancestors and invert the predicates, arranging the whole with a clever and unequalled style, so as to give zest and originality to our praise. But we have more than one Hamlet; therefore we shall have something to argue about after disposing of the Hamlets of history...