THE THEATRE
ANOTHER PIECE OF HAMLET
Tan new Hamlet from America was revealed to us at the foot of a formidable staircase which winds, at the Haymarket Theatre, up to the battlements of the Castle at Elsinore.
Criticism must not neglect this staircase, since few of the actors can avoid it. It will compel most of them, as well as the whole of the audience, to look up, not only at the battle- ments, but also at the player King and Queen who motion in dumb show at the top of it ; while, as in the Coq d'Or, their substitutes speak for them at the side. It will also necessitate the transformation of the graveyard scene, which as a rule forms, by its bright sunshine, a contrast of tragic irony to the things said and done there, into a counterpart of Juliet's tomb. It will huddle the actors nearer than they need otherwise have been to the front of the stage. Hamlet, especially, will be driven so close to the King, in the now will I do it " speech, that Mr. Barrymore will have to breathe his soliloquy, which he pronounces dangerously loud, almost down the neck of the kneeling and praying Claudius. Worst of all, Ophelia, of whorl: Miss Fay Compton makes the gentlest and sweetest of nine• teenth-century maidens, will be forced into a very trying gym- nastic of retrogression up it, as though she were backing, with her long skirt, out of one of the afternoon " drawing- rooms " of Queen Victoria. Finally, the dead Hamlet will have to be carried up it, as a last honour to his memory. One wishes one could get away from that staircase ! But it is the only feature of the production that gets on one's nerves. The rest is straightforward enough.
Need it be said that from Mr. Barrymore we get only a " piece " of Hamlet, as Bernardo encountered a piece " of Horatio on the castle platform ? Playgoers have long and wisely given up the hope of finding the complete Prince. And when they question you about a new selection from, or inter- pretation of, the mass of Hamlet's possibilities, they demand a single summarizing epithet as a clue. One must be found for Mr. Barrymore.
He told the audience on the second night that they were " adorable." And so, for the majority of them, was he. That is to say, he is charming in appearance, modest in manner, winning, sympathetic. He is also what Leigh Hunt, in his criticism of Henry Johnstone, said that Hamlet ought to be " gallant, philosophical, melancholy "—an " amiable incon- sistent." He is indeed less exquisitely urbane with Polonius and the players than Forbes-Robertson used to be ; but he is very gentle with Ophelia. His final "to a nunnery go" sounds upon the poor lady's perplexity almost as a discreet recom- mendation to the one legal way out of a scandal. She would hardly have believed him in earnest. And with the Queen Mr. Barrymore is not much more bitter. We are glad to be spared the physical violence lavished by If. B. Irving on the wretched woman in that dreadful scene. But consider the words that -lie strewn about the text there—words some- times omitted in days when we permit them only in satirical comedies about supposed "-fast sets " in London society. Consider the long exasperation that now bubbles up in the " repressed " Hamlet " Stye, stew'd in corruption, rank sweat, ulcerous place, rank corruption, compost on weeds, lug the guts " (of Polonius)—from this tortured vocabulary emerges a piece of Hamlet not shown us by Mr. Barrymore, even in " the towering passion " with Laertes at the grave- side. He is, .in fact, nearly always reasonable, deliberate, plainly unwilling either to " grapple " or to " rant." These subdued notes, turning the cruel critical moments to favour and to prettiness, contrast oddly with an occasional habit of seizing upon a word for excited emphasis in the soliloquies ; for it is then, rathor than in the more obviously violent passages, that lie lets himself go ; as he does, with excellent effect, in the " rogue and peasant slave " passage. But his " By Heaven I'll make a ghost of him that lets me " his " I do not set my life at a pin's fee " (with no emphasis on " life " or " pin "), his final scene, his rendering, in the portrait scene, of Hamlet's dry " good-night, mother "—"good-night " (pause) " mother " (with a suggestion of " please forgive me ")—all reveal, once more, the gentle Prince. It is a conception that dates from " Wilhelm Meister "—from Goethe's passably
sentimental picture of Hamlet as a mild youth merely misunderstood.
Yet clearly there was a case for the corrupted Court of Denmark. Obviously Hamlet made himself a nuisance. The later eighteenth century recognized it and became -anxious about " the immoral tendency " in his character. Dr. Johnson, with his inveterate taste for exact truth-telling, objected to Hamlet's telling a lie to Laertes. Others were shocked by his addressing Ophelia with open insult or murmured obscenity. Did he not despatch his two sehoolfriends to their death with- out a thought even of shrift for their " adder " souls? He " mouthed at the brother of the woman he loved, after mur- dering her father ; and, in general, taking very crooked ways to justice, he always did the wrong thing when he did any- thing at all. These may be evidences, perhaps, of the original blood-and-thunder " Ur-Hamlet," buried under the subse- quent strata of philosophy. This Hamlet exists nevertheless —not in Mr. Barr,ymore's interpretation.
And that may account for the impression one has that, beginning excellently, with a fine rendering of the first soli- loquy, he seems a little to lose hold towards the as usual much- reduced end. For by then events have moved—even if Hamlet has not—and by their motion they accentuate the reproach of his neglect. Here is the actor's chance of indicating an approach to the breaking-point. But Mr. Barrymore con- tinues to be eminently sane. Let us rest upon that epithet for him and wonder that the Court could ever have been deceived.
Let us also wonder, now that we owe so much to Mr. Barrymore for having whetted the appetite of West-end audiences for more pieces of Hamlet, whether we shall ever get a reaction against the " amiability " of the tradition that has prevailed for so long. It would be curious to see the Hamlet of immoral tendency," a Hamlet less discursively Emersonian—a prey to the excitements of blood as well as to the appeal of reason. He will come. He may be found already in treatises, of medical application, about him. I mentioned " repression " just now. That may give a hint for prediction. Some day an up-to-date actor will give us the psycho-analyst's Hamlet.
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