Word: hamlets
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...early Council Scene, I wonder whether Hamlet would really remain sitting on the floor when speaking with the Queen. But later there no doubt that Hamlet is feigning madness--a topic of endless controversy over the generations. Gilbert (without collaboration from Sullivan) wrote a delightful burlesque of Hamlet in which Ophelia runs through a host of theories and concludes. "Hamlet is idiotically sane With lucid intervals of lunacy...
...rather than the fuller Second Quarto or First Folio. Even so, Coe placed Shakespeare's most famous soliloquy after the Nunnery Scene, and in fact makes it a part of the discourses. Thus it is no longer a solioquy, but is addressed directly to Ophelia, to whom Hamlet gives his dagger while speaking it. I suppose that this is one way of making its nutoriously enigmatic thought seem like intentional nonsense...
...nearest approach to Walken's Hamlet in my experience is the snarling and unpoetic one that the overtouted Nicol Williamson came over from England to inflict on us in 1969. For a reminder of how a superb actor can capture 100 facets of Hamlet's nature and meld them into one believable characterization, turn not to the dreadful Olivier film version but to Derek Jacobi's 1980 portrayal for BBC television (which will doubtless be shown here again soon...
...lost with his Hamlet, he has won with his Queen Gertrude. For this he imported Anne Baxter, a Hollywood veteran with more than 50 films to her credit. At age 59, she is now essaying Shakespeare for the first time, and has come up with an admirable performance. During the first preview, she fractured her left foot, but insisted on going ahead even without a plaster cast. Three performances later, one would never have guessed she had sustained an injury if a cautionary announcement had not been made to the audience...
...offering us a warm and solicitous Gertrude. She speaks with feeling and understanding, and nicely fulfills the demands of the difficult Closet Scene. This is a perfectly credible portrayal, though I think an ideal Queen would show more sensuality. When Hamlet is duelling, the Queen is supposed to comment, "He's fat, and scant of breath." Coe has, however, changed the first adjective to "hot." The playwright's text tells us three things about the physical Hamlet--that he wears a beard, is 30 years old, and is fat (the role was written, after all, for the portly Richard Burbage...