My Idea of Hamlet
By ALEC GUINNESS (Mr. Alec Guinness's much-discussed production of Hamlet, In which Mr. Guinness played the title part, at the New Theatre ended last Saturday after a six weeks' run.) fig
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F it be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play needs no epilogue." Hamlet, the play, is not in question, I hope ; the recent production at the New Theatre, in which I played such a large part. most certainly is. The fact that the Editor has kindly asked me to write something in the form of an epilogue or obituary proves Rosalind's point mercilessly.
Perhaps it would be advisable, although this article must of necessity be brief and sketchy, to start with my own personal experience of Hamlet in the theatre. This has consisted of see- ing nine Hamlets, of which that of Ernest Milton was un- doubtedly the greatest. I played Osric for Gielgud in 1934, and watched his performance with profound admiration from the wings every night for about one hundred and seventy perform- ances. Two years later I understudied Olivier in the part. When I came to play Hamlet for the first time, in 1938, in Guthrie's modern-dress production at the Old Vic, I was merely a pale shadow of Gielgud with some fustian Freudian trimmings, encouraged—he will forgive me, I know—by Guthrie. I list these things, as I believe they are important in the way of tradi- tion and as showing how an actor can react against the traditional and yet be steeped in it and love it.
I often hear it said that actors read too much. I agree, but think it reasonable to retort that audiences read too much as well. How wretchedly unfair it would be if audiences were permitted, to pick the brains of the prqfessors, and could sit in judgement on actors who, notoriously feather-brained, were not allowed to open a book. I admit I have read a lot about Hamlet—the usual stuffbut I must confess I have never found anything that appealed to rne. The only book on Shakespeare that opened windows on new horizons for me was Edward Armstrong's Shakespeare's Imagination—and that has nothing much to say about Hamlet. Granville-Barker I took gravely and steadily over a period of years, but he never fired me. When Madariaga appeared with his bombshell I was thrilled and appalled for a week, but came to the conclusion that I hardly agreed with a word he said.
It was a challenging book, however, and from it sprang one aspect of my recent production: I was completely convinced by his assumption that the Elizabethan world was as much influenced by Spain as we are today by America. So a fine Spanish designer was engaged and told not to be Spanish : but Andreu cannot help being Spanish, so the precise effect I was seeking was achieved. I do hope I haven't to argue the case for doing the play in the costumes of 1600 and all that. One acute problem arose from the decision to be Elizabethan. Were we to strive after accuracy, having the women wear the correct-sized farthingales and the men peascods, or were we going to dim- promise with popular stage and screen taste ? Do you realise how popular taste demands padded shoulders in every century, and fancies such things as Restoration wigs worn behind the ears ? People who will cheerfully accept a Nicholas Hilliard miniature hold up their hands in horror when they see it animated. Andreu and I decided the only honest thing to do was not to compromise—in fact to do what we knew we liked. '
The setting, a formal and rather bleak affair, I take full respon- sibility for. It was partly the result of reaction against per- manent, semi-permanent and realistic sets in Shakespeare, and, above all, a stubborn dislike of the rostrum. Rostrums, apart- from cluttering the stage, tend to produce a one-foot-up, one-foot- down, sort of acting which I find peculiarly dispiriting. I have very few conversations on the stairs in my own house, and see no good reason for making God's gift to an actor—a flat square stage—into something like the entrance to the Athenaeum. I wanted a suggestion of reality here and there, and came to the conclusion that each scene could be played round, or influenced by, one or two specific real things • for instance, the battlement scene round a Tudor cannon, the Polonius household a table with a globe and papers, the main court scenes dominated by a large Renaissance classical doorway, and for the rest blackness and open wings. This did not work out over well, and was not put to the best use, but as an attempt to blend theatricality with reality, cor- responding in a way to the poetry and prose in the play, it seemed worth attempting. The fundamental I was seeking was flexi- bility, with its attendant sisters, simplicity and speed. We never achieved the speed (or quiet for that matter) largely for technical reasons which were not foreseen. Ideally, I suppose, the play should be done in some modern equivalent of the Elizabethan playhouse yet to be found. Any attempt to pretend that a picture-frame theatre is Elizabethan is doomed to failure, and for my money is as embarrassing as crowds rushing through the audi- torium in Greek plays. (You begin to doubt your neighbours and glance around for painted faces and bare feet.) Very little of the play was cut. Maybe this was a misjudge- ment, for it has only recently occurred to me that perhaps Elizabethan audiences were able to stomach long entertainmeats for the simple reason that they were in the open air. I followed Granville-Barker's advice and did not drop the curtain, as is usual, at the end of the " Rogue and peasant slave " soliloquy. Now this seems to me to be the only daring, original and exciting thing we did in the whole production, with immense results, and it escaped the critics' notice. If the curtain is dropped at the end of that particular speech, the audience expects, and rightly, some startling theatrical effect. (When I played the part in 1938 I squatted on the stage like a gnome, tapping a drum. It didn't mean a thing, but it was an effect, and the curtain could safely come down.) If the audience is deprived of this gaudy nonsense, what do they get in its place? They get " To be or not to be " within a minute and a half, followed by the " nunnery " scene, followed by the social ease of " Speak the speech "—in fact they get the greater part of Hamlet's character stripped bare before them— the full complexity of a man who can be determined and yet undecided, convinced by the memory of a ghost, deny that ghosts can return from the grave, be cruel to the girl he loves and tender to his friend, charming to his social inferiors and go off the deep end in public. And all in the space of about fifteen minutes. To attempt to achieve that, even though I knew that personal limitations would obscure it, seemed to me worth all the drum-taps, heroics, struttings and beilowings of Christendom. Nothirn, was done for the sake of novelty, but everything attempted in good faith to the honour of the author. My apologies to him and to no one else. " Let be."
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