Page 103 - Hamlet: The Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare

xcvi H A M L E T

P^any, under Mr Bridges Adams, has given several ver-
sions of the play. Fortinbras is always retained; the
Dumb Show is always omitted. For ordinary purposes,
Reynaldo and the Ambassadors are cut down, but the
soliloquy during the King's prayer is always retained.
A Hamlet in itself beautiful and moving and rich in
promise of future greatness was that of Mr John
Gielgud at the Old Vic in 1929-30 and at the
Queen's Theatre in 1930. In this version also the
Dumb Show is retained, but passes unnoticed by the
King.
Hamlet having suffered very little from the restorers
and adapters, there has been no very urgent demand for
its restoration to purity. Nevertheless the many cuts
demanded by time and determined, in some cases, by
taste, have roused in recent years the desire to see the
play'whole-.' The first to gratify this desire was Sir F.R.
Benson who, first in 1899, at the Shakespeare Memorial
Theatre at Stratford, and again in July, 1911, and later
in America, acted a composite text of the Second Quarto
and the First Folio. In April, 1916, and subsequent
years the Old Vic Company acted the full text of the
Second Quarto under Sir Philip Ben Greet, who had
produced it in America in 1905. In April, 1881, the
Elizabethan Stage Society,* under Mr William Poel,
gave at the St George's Hall 'the first public perform-
ance in England before curtains' of the text of the
Quarto of 1603, and again at Carpenters' Hall in
February, 1900. This text has also been produced
often in America, and in 1928, 1929, and 1933 in
London, by Sir Philip Ben Greet. On January 27,
1914, at the Little Theatre, Mr Poel produced a
version intended 'to show scenes never acted in versions
given on the modern stage.' Act 1, scene i was left
out, and so was all the Ghost until the Closet-scene;
and the effect was to lay stress on the importance of the
King and of the foreign politics of Denmark. In 1924,