The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0245  Thursday, 14 June 2012

 

[1] From:        Paul Barry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         June 13, 2012 12:33:49 PM EDT

     Subject:     Re: Yale Hamlet 

 

[2] From:        Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

     Date:         June 13, 2012 11:24:10 PM EDT

     Subject:     Yale Hamlet 

 

 

[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Paul Barry <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         June 13, 2012 12:33:49 PM EDT

Subject:     Re: Yale Hamlet

 

I may be setting myself up to be shot down, but it always amuses me how non-actors enjoy discoursing on what makes a good actor and what does not. The only proof of the efficacy of Giamatti’s Hamlet will be in the playing. Go see the production.  If he knocks your socks off, that’s it, that’s everything, nothing more.

 

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------

From:        Charles Weinstein <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>

Date:         June 13, 2012 11:24:10 PM EDT

Subject:     Yale Hamlet

 

Brian Willis writes:

 

“Has it come to this? Do we really require our actors to have ‘leading-man’ looks, whatever that is supposed to mean? I thought being an actor—let me clarify, being a GREAT actor—is so much more than this. By this criteria, John Gielgud had no business playing Hamlet.”

 

Ophelia describes Hamlet in the following terms:

 

The courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers. . . . 

 

To me, that sounds like leading-man looks, which the young John Gielgud certainly possessed, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/theatre-obituaries/1366805/Sir-John-Gielgud-OM.html.

 

--Charles Weinstein

 

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