Page 102 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

STAGE-HISTORY xcv

tarily after the departure of the Ghost; but as lonely,
resentful, and weak, a quick and youthful nature over-
burdened by love for his father and instinctive loathing
of his uncle. His Ophelia in his later performances was
Miss Gertrude Elliott (Lady Forbes-Robertson). In
May, 1905, at the Lyric Theatre Sir John Martin-
Harvey gave the first of many performances of Ham'let.
His Hamlet was a beautiful and passionate study in the
romantic tradition; and in the course of a long series of
productions—the last of which up to the present was
that, played with curtains and tableaux, at Covent Garden
in December, 1919—he so simplified his staging that he
was able to include part of Reynaldo, Fortinbras in the
final scene, the soliloquy during the King's prayer and
the questioning of Hamlet about the disposal of the body
of Polonius. The Dumb Show he left out; and a dis-
tinctive feature of his production was that neither Ham-
let nor Ophelia knew that their meeting was being spied
upon by Polonius and the King. The effect of terror
conveyed in the first scene of all was to be noticed
also, to a remarkable degree, in the production by the
American actor Mr E. H. Sothern (with Miss Julia
Marlowe for Ophelia) at the Waldorf (now the Strand)
Theatre in May, 1907. He too kept in the soliloquy
during the King's prayer. A hearty, straightforward
performance at cheap prices by Mr Matheson Lang at
the Lyceum in May, 1909, possibly conveyed an idea of
what Hamlet meant to the groundlings at the Globe.
A production by Mr L. E. Berman at the Prince of
Wales's Theatre in May, 1925, kept in all the scenes
following the Closet scene, and also the Dumb Show,
which was mimed as a comic interlude to music and
made the King laugh. The Hamlet was Mr Godfrey
Tearle, who at the Haymarket in March, 1931,
showed a winning, warm-hearted Hamlet, even gentler
with Ophelia (Miss Fay Compton) than most modem
Hamlets are. The Stratford-upon-Avon Festival Com-