The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 23.0245 Thursday, 14 June 2012
[1] From: Paul Barry <
Date: June 13, 2012 12:33:49 PM EDT
Subject: Re: Yale Hamlet
[2] From: Charles Weinstein <
Date: June 13, 2012 11:24:10 PM EDT
Subject: Yale Hamlet
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Paul Barry <
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 <
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