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ligious, political and hate-filled have been written about this most inconsistent and disjointed creation of Shakespeare. He is so illusive that he can be (and has been) played as a homosexual, as a man of action (someone once told me that Olivier's performance of Hamlet was the best performance of Hotspur he has ever seen), as demoniacal, as one suffering from satyriasis as a poet, as an intellectual, as a brilliant but tragic comedian an so on through endless permutations of these and many other labels. He has even, as we all know, been played by women. My own theory, if you can call it one, is that no actor has ever been right or perfect as Hamlet, and that everybody has been right and perfect. Let me quickly qualify this by adding that any weakness or strengths of the individual actor will be exaggerated under the blinding light of this most search [new column] ing of parts. You'll see the man reveal himself for what he is when the great Prince gets at him--exciting, vulgar, envious, perversely witty, obscene, poetic, exotic, brave, cowardly, cynical, romantic, empty, mystical, posturing, lovable, charming, self-pitying--a combination of some or all of these things and more, or that most dreaded revelation of all--prosaic, inadequate and dull.
I have played Hamlet many times and in many ways. I played him first with no thought of his inconsistencies but with sheer delight in the verbal magic of each individual scene. I later played him with some attempt to connect up all the apparent incongruities. (I found this exhausting and fell back easily into self pity.) I played him again, as Hugh Griffith put it, as a Welsh preacher, bewildered but determinedly sonorous in the labyrinthine [new column] ways of Elsinore. I tried him once as a crafty (but poetically gifted) politician, anxious that never again would anyone pop in between the election and my hopes. I am, at the time of writing, playing Hamlet again and there is no knowing in this production [new column] (and no Hamlet has been given greater freedom or more help from a director) how this Hamlet will turn out. But whatever the verdict, I hope that whatever happens, I will not qualify for the last three words of the previous paragraph.
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Sir John Gielgud
To play the part of Hamlet is the ambition of every young actor. My first Hamlet in 1929 at the Old Vic was probably somewhat hysterical. The angry young man of the twenties was somewhat more decadent 9and rather more affected it now seems to me) than his counterpart in the fifties and sixties, but the rebellion against convention, the violence and bitterness has surely always been the same in every generation. The part demands declamation, macabre humour, passionate violence, philosophical reflection. There are scenes of love and tenderness, outbursts of bitterness and despair. It is a temptation for the actor to develop the possibilities of each scene for its individual histrionic effect, instead of presenting a complete basic character in which the part may progress in a simple convincing line. Hamlet must seem to experience before the audience everything that happens to him in the course of the play, and the actor must find in himself his own sincerest personal reactions to every episode. The scenes themselves are so strikingly dramatic that they may betray the actor into sheer effectiveness (in a theatrical sense), more easily attained than the truth that will reveal the man himself. It was only as I grew older and more experienced that I became aware of these pitfalls. 
In spite of all its complicated problems of psychology, I believe Hamlet is what we actors call a "straight" part. [[new column]] The man who essays it must obviously be equipped with certain essential qualities - grace of person and princely bearing, youth, energy, humor, and sensitivity. He must have a pleasing voice of great range, and a meticulous ear for verse and prose. He must be neither slow or ponderous. He must have wit and gentleness, but also power, edge, and a sense of the macabre. He must fascinate by his quick changes of mood. The soliloquies and cadenzas must be spoken in a special way to distinguish them from the conversational 
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