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John Barrymore's ‘Hamlet’ at the Haymarket Theatre, 1925

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Michael A. Morrison
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Abstract

John Barrymore's Hamlet, first seen in New York during the season of 1922–23, stands as a high-water mark of Shakespearean interpretation during the inter-war period. But although biographical studies of the actor and his family have appeared steadily over the years, little effort has been made to situate Barrymore's distinctive contribution to the acting of the character within the broader context of nineteenth-and twentieth-century Shakespearean production. Here Michael A. Morrison examines the circumstances surrounding Barrymore's visit to London with his Hamlet in 1925, and the far-reaching influence of his achievement on future generations of actors and directors. Michael A. Morrison is a New York-based writer and teacher, who is presently a doctoral candidate in theatre at the City University of New York, where he is preparing a study of Barrymore's work on Shakespeare.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 7 , Issue 27 , August 1991 , pp. 246 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

Notes and References

1. Teague, Francis, ‘Hamlet in the Thirties’, Theatre Survey, XXVI (05 1985), p. 63–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Woollcott, Alexander, ‘The Play’, New York Times, 8 03 1920, p. 7Google Scholar.

3. Margaret Carrington, ‘The John Barrymore I Knew’, unpublished essay, Special Collections, University of Colorado Library, p. 5.

4. Fowler, Gene, Good Night, Sweet Prince (New York: Viking Press, 1944), p. 208Google Scholar.

5. The press made a good deal of the fact that Barrymore had broken Edwin Booth's record of one hundred consecutive performances of Hamlet, set during the 1864–65 season. During the 1912–13 season, however, John E. Kellerd had played Hamlet in New York for 102 performances.

6. Barrymore, John, We Three (New York: Saalfield Publishing, 1935), no paginationGoogle Scholar.

7. Barrymore, We Three, no pagination.

8. Lark Taylor, With Hey Ho!, unpublished autobiography, Joint University Libraries, Nashville, p. 363–4.

9. Barrymore, , Confessions of an Actor (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1926)Google Scholar, no pagination. The last Hamlet in the West End had been Ion Swinley's brief appearance in repertory with the Old Vic company in 1924. Five years earlier, John Martin-Harvey and Frank Benson had starred in productions during the 1919–20 season. Ernest Milton played an acclaimed Hamlet at the Old Vic during the 1918–19, 1922–23, and 1924–25 seasons. See Trewin, J. C., Shakespeare on the English Stage, 1900–1964 (London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1964), p. 264–6, 287–8Google Scholar.

10. Dean, Basil, Seven Ages (London: Hutchinson, 1970), p. 231Google Scholar.

11. Constance Collier, unpublished essay on John Barrymore's acting, Special Collections, University of Colorado Library, p. 7.

12. Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination.

13. Barrymore, We Three, no pagination.

14. Compton, Fay, Rosemary (London: Alston Rivers, 1926), p. 226–7Google Scholar.

15. Collier, essay on Barrymore's acting, p. 7. On 24 January 1925 Barrymore presented Harrison with a cheque for £3,300 to cover six weeks rent at £550 per week. This sum represented a tidy profit for Harrison, whose lease stipulated a weekly rent of £167 10s 6d (production account books, Haymarket Theatre Archive, London).

16. For an account of Maurice Barrymore's seasons at the Haymarket, see Kotsilibas-Davis, James, Great Times Good Times (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977), p. 214–42Google Scholar.

17. Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination.

18. Interview with Alison Leggatt, 12 August 1988.

19. Webster, Margaret, The Same Only Different (London: Gollancz, 1969), p. 297–9Google Scholar.

20. The main difference between the American and British productions, according to Barrymore, lay in his interpretation of his role. To one interviewer he commented that ‘I am playing Hamlet in London less emotionally, on purpose, than I used to do it in America. One learns a great deal about the character by not playing it for a while. My conception of the character will probably go on changing until I am ninety, when I feel that I at last know how to play it.’ (‘Was Hamlet an Englishman’, Daily Express, 21 February 1925, p. 1).

21. E. Harcourt Williams notes that Mrs. Carrington worked with the company for an extended period of time. Although he does not state that she staged the play-within-a-play scene, Lark Taylor reveals that this was among her many duties in connection with the American production. It seems likely that Barrymore did, in fact, ask her to restage this scene for his English company. See Williams, E. Harcourt, Four Years at the Old Vic: 1929–1933 (London: Putnam, 1935), p. 20–1Google Scholar, and Lark Taylor, With Hey Ho!, p. 333.

22. Williams, Four Years at the Old Vic: 1929–1933, p. 20–1.

23. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 301.

24. Malcolm Watson, ‘London at Last to See John Barrymore and His Hamlet’, Daily Telegraph, Harvard Theatre Collection clipping, no date.

25. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 300–1.

26. Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination; Compton, Rosemary, p. 228–9.

27. ‘Mr. John Barrymore's Hamlet’, Morning Post, 20 February 1925, p. 7.

28. ‘John Barrymore in “Hamlet” Wins London Ovation’, New York Herald, 20 February 1925.

29. Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination.

30. Ibid.

31. For the stage business of Barrymore's Hamlet, see Mills, John A., Hamlet on Stage: the Great Tradition (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 189–207Google Scholar.

32. See comments in The Star and the Daily Telegraph, 20 February 1925.

33. Pearson, Hesketh, ‘Hamlet’, Theatre World, 03 1925, p. 33Google Scholar.

34. Lark Taylor, ‘My Season with John Barrymore in Hamlet’, unpublished essay, Joint University Libraries, Nashville, p. 4. Barrymore retained the Fairbanks-staged duel scene and other business in the English production.

35. Agate, proclaimed the set to be ‘the most beautiful thing I have ever seen on any stage’ (Sunday Times, 22 02 1925)Google Scholar; see also Farjeon's, Herbert comments in The Sphere, 7 03 1925, p. 272Google Scholar.

36. See also Daily News, 20 February 1925.

37. George Bernard Shaw, letter to John Barrymore, 22 February 1925, Manuscript Division, Boston University Library; the letter is reprinted in full in Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination. Shaw's views on Shakespearean production were well-known and predictable. For a notice that makes virtually the opposite points, see Shaw's review of Forbes-Robertson's Hamlet, 2 October 1897, reprinted in Our Theatre in the Nineties, Volume III (London: Constable, 1932), p. 200–7. Shaw praised Forbes-Robertson for restoring a good deal of Shakespeare's text and noted that he ‘does not utter half a line; then stop to act; and go on with another half line; then stop to act again, with the clock running away from Shakespear's chances all the time. He plays as Shakespear should be played, on the line and to the line with the utterance and acting simultaneous, inseparable and in fact identical.’

38. Shaw was far from alone in decrying the cuts in the play. See, for example, Pearson, Hesketh, ‘Hamlet’, and Speaight, Robert, William Poet and the Elizabethan Revival (London: Heinemann, 1954), p. 27–8Google Scholar.

39. Telephone interview with Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, 15 August 1988.

40. Telephone interview with Maurice Evans, 17 December 1988.

41. Telephone interview with Sir John Gielgud, 7 September 1988.

42. Olivier, On Acting, p. 60–1.

43. Massey, Raymond, A Hundred Different Lives (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1979), p. 286Google Scholar.

44. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 301. See also Bancroft, George Pleydell, Stage and Bar (London: Faber and Faber, 1939), p. 272Google Scholar.

45. Collier, essay on Barrymore's acting, p. 9–10.

46. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 302.

47. Fay Compton, interview on BBC Radio, broadcast 26 September 1962 (recorded 5 June 1962), BBC Sound Archive, London.

48. Strange, Michael, Who Tells Me True (New York: Scribner's, 1940), p. 214–16Google Scholar.

49. Kobler, John, Damned in Paradise: the Life of John Barrymore (New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 200Google Scholar.

50. Power-Waters, Alma, John Barrymore: the Legend and the Man (New York: Messner, 1941), p. 137Google Scholar; ‘Hamlet in German, Barrymore's Plan’, New York Times, 7 May 1925, p. 16.

51. Webster, The Same Only Different, p. 301–2.

52. Arnold Bennett's Journal, Volume 26, entry for 21 March 1925, Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

53. Telephone interview with Sir John Gielgud, 7 September 1988.

54. Arnold Bennett, Journal, Vol. 26, 10 April 1925.

55. Barrymore, Confessions of an Actor, no pagination.

56. Collier, unpublished essay, p. 8.

57. Wilson, A. E., Playgoer's Pilgrimage (London: Stanley Paul, 1948), p. 189–90Google Scholar.

58. Quoted in Kobler, Damned in Paradise, p. 200.

59. Teague, ‘Hamlet in the Thirties’, p. 68–9.

60. Barrymore, We Three, no pagination.

61. Olivier, On Acting, p. 61.