Page 128 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

I Know Not Seems I 117

why, then, would Hamlet decide to test the ghost? Hamlet sets out
to make sure it isn't the devil in disguise planning to trick Hamlet
into killing an honest man, thereby dooming Hamlet to hell for eter-
nity. This can be explained by viewing Hamlet as an intellectual
who, once his initial emotional reaction has passed, logically thinks
things through and is willing to delay a while for absolute certainty.
Then again, Hamlet may have some secret reason, one he hides even
from his conscious self.
Romantics perceived Hamlet as being weak of will and essentially
effeminate; for such a poetic soul to be ordered to kill was, accord-
ing to Goethe, like "a great action laid upon a soul unfit for it." Sub-
sequently, there were two stage traditions: actors like David Garrick
and John Philip Kemble offered a dignified, if bombastic, Elizabethan
prince, whereas Edmund Keane and Edwin Booth opted for an eccen-
tric, inwardly troubled coward. In time, the latter interpretation won
out; little matter that it contradicted Shakespeare's intended action
hero, if one more cerebral than most. The softer, gentler Hamlet
became the rule, unchallenged for so long that—for better or worse—
the public came to accept Hamlet as an indecisive, effeminate man.

Silents, Please

No wonder, then, that one of the more notable Hamlets of the early
twentieth century was enacted by a woman. Sarah Bernhardt won
acclaim in the part, though audiences had difficulty accepting her
as Macbeth or Othello. In addition to popular stage performances,
the legendary star performed in an early (1900) film version, a brief
rendering of the climactic Hamlet-Laertes duel. Surprisingly, this
antique, completed more than a quarter century before The Jazz
Singer, was a crude sound movie; music and voices, recorded on
phonograph records, were played simultaneously with the brief (less
than five minute) film. Following Bernhardt's minispectacle, there
were numerous other Hamlets, all silent, the most memorable
directed by George Melies (France, 1907), Luca Comerio (Italy, 1908),
William George Barker (England, 1910), August Blom (Denmark,
1910), Cecil Hepworth (England, 1913), and Eleuterio Rodolfi (Italy,
1917).
Each starred a man in the lead role; however, one silent film,
discussed next, took Hamlet's "effeminacy" to its illogical conclu-
sion.