"HAMLET."
Mr. MARTIN HARVEY has evidently approached this high matter of the
SHAKSPEARE Tercentenary celebration with the sincerity and
thoughtfulness which have so often laid us under debt to him. He makes
you feel that his heart is more with his "darling" author than with any
other lesser man. It is only an implacable public that has attached him
so persistently to the steps of a guillotine against a blood-red sky.
It shows a considerable virtue in him to have adopted, without straining
after a perversely original and disquieting effect, the very sensible
simplifications of our modernist school. To play substantially the whole
of _Hamlet_ in under three and a-half hours is a highly creditable feat
of stage direction. But the curtain method does more than give speed.
Its rich simplicity provides an excellent foil for the jewel of this
wonderful stage play. Of course it has its disadvantages. It tends to
muffle the voice. On the other hand it lets through a certain amount of
unrehearsed effect. I noted, for instance, even as _Polonius_ was being
pinked behind the arras, the voice of a stage carpenter complaining to
his mate.
It showed wisdom, too, to confine the curtains to the interiors. The
built-up crenellations of the battlement scenes, with the series of
broad steps in front of them, was admirable for grouping and for
movement, though it may be doubted whether the parapet would have
provided adequate cover against the slings and arrows of a tough enemy;
or even if it would have sufficed to prevent the Danes, when under the
influence of wassail, from toppling into the moat. In the play scene the
setting of the "Mouse Trap" against the "fourth wall," whereby the
audience had a fuller view of the principals, entirely justified itself.
The lighting was effective without being fussy.
The costumes call for little comment, which is as it should be. I fell
to wondering in the last Act about what I took to be a team of local
base-ball players--the four stout fellows with the black raven on their
sweaters. And most distinctly would I counsel Mr. HARVEY, at his
entrance in the graveyard scene, to show a leg. In the murky gloom, with
his inky cloak and proudly feathered bonnet, he was dangerously near
giving the impression of a very smart young widow walking out with
_Horatio_.
Mr. HARVEY seemed at his very best in the earlier phases of the play.
The reflective passages were excellent; the homelier bouts of dialogue
were easy and varied; and his fine voice often enriched the splendid
text. As the plot thickened and the eternally unsolvable in the reading
and rendering of _Hamlet's_ malady became more pressing, he seemed a
little to lose grip. As, certainly, he lost the essential pace--the
death scene unquestionably limped. His slurs, his impetuous
_accelerandos_, his rather violent _sforzandos_, perhaps challenge
criticism. But let us acknowledge them to be trifles. Mr. HARVEY filled
three short hours with the glory of a great name, and that should be
reward enough for him.
I see no reason to protest against Mr. RUTLAND BARRINGTON'S unusually
whimsical _Polonius_. True it did not fit that noblest of purple
passages, the homily to _Laertes_. But then neither does the _Polonius_
of the rest of the text--our WILL is like that. Mr. ROSS'S notable bass
and admirable elocution lent mystery and majesty to the _Ghost_. A full
audience applauded long and heartily at the curtain's fall. No one would
be less inclined than Mr. MARTIN HARVEY to keep back grudgingly any
share of that applause which was meant as a tribute to the memory of the
exalted dead.