John Gielgud’s Hamlet
is probably the greatest of the 20th century. He debuted in 1929,
aged just 26, the youngest ever to do so on the West End stage. Over twenty
years, he acted the part more than five hundred times, in a number of
productions. Most other actors who take the role take it only once.
What made him
great? Certainly, his delivery of the lines marks him apart from the rest.
Beautiful, mellifluous and astonishingly accurate, he could achieve a speech
with greater speed and still sustain greater clarity than other actors could
– or can. By way of proof, this 1948 ‘entirety’ recording comes in at
three hours and twenty-six minutes, compared with Kenneth Branagh’s ‘full
length’ version at a full four hours.
Gielgud
understood the lines, the structure of the thoughts and the character that
uttered them, the ideas that generate the utterance, the feelings that give the
utterance weight. How many Hamlets are slow, ponderous, introspective beings,
at odds with the character’s quick wit and nimble mind racing dangerously out
of control? Just think of David Tenant choking on ‘to be or not to be’, Mel
Gibson staring around the crypt hardly knowing where he is or why, or Olivier
slowly whispering private thoughts. (It were best you think not on Branagh at all.)
Once you have thought on them, listen to this Gielgud recording and mark the
difference.
