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Understanding Hamlet through the soliloquies - Book Review
Contemporary Review, August, 2003 by Ralph Berry
Modern Hamlets and their Soliloquies. Mary Z. Maher. University of Iowa Press. Expanded Edition. 15.50 [pounds sterling]. p.b. ISBN 0-87745-826-X.
'Am I a coward?' asked David Warner's Hamlet of the theatre audience. 'Yes!' called out a voice from the stalls. Warner reacted at once. 'Who calls me villain? ... Who does me this?' And now a name was shouted out from the audience! Just as in the text, the soliloquy engaged directly with the spectators. For David Warner it was one of the most exhilarating nights of his career. For Mary Z. Maher, in her superb Modern Hamlets, it is the key test of the play's stagecraft. The seven pillars of Hamlet are the soliloquies. Mary Maher has interviewed nine of the most distinguished Hamlets of our time, leading up to Branagh and Beale, and has studied the writings and recorded performances of Gielgud, Olivier, Guinness, and Burton. She has also spoken to directors and leading actors. How, she asked, did the actor approach the play and the soliloquies? What emerges from these fascinating studies is a giant issue: should the soliloquies be internalised, or spoken directly to the audience?
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The stage's answer has been a deep movement from internal to external, a paradigm shift from the introspective self to the appeal for support. This shift, like much in the contemporary world, took place in the 1960s. Hamlets from Gielgud to Burton preferred not to make eye contact with their audience. Olivier, in his film, never speaks even 'To be or not to be' to the camera, making the soliloquy a dialogue with self. The 'outloud' was the more conscious voice taking precedence ('Perchance to dream'). Burton, on the cusp of traditional and modern, made no attempt at eye contact. But Ben Kingsley needed his audience--and they, him. In the middle of 'O what a rogue and peasant slave' he broke off, at 'Fie upon't, fie' and actually left the building. After a brief contemplation of the car park by The Other Place, he returned to his bemused audience and reassured them that the relationship was continuing. Maher sees this as Zeitgeist, with its focus on communication and improving human relationships.
Indeed, Hamlet may see this approach as psychologically indispensable. David Warner needed supporters, and found his closest friends in the theatre audience. (He was then, aged twenty-four, a teenage heart-throb.) David Rintoul found the audience 'Hamlet's best friend'. Derek Jacobi, a rather older Hamlet, felt that 'Am I a coward?' was a rhetorical question. He did not expect the audience to shout back at him. (Unless it had been put up to it--a case of heckler and coach.) Kevin Kline addressed the question in the imaginary audience of courtiers that would soon surround the platform stage.
Of course, the soliloquies are different, and so are stages. Kingsley, in the intimacy of The Other Place, wanted a 'membrane' between him and the audience. 'To be or not to be' is evidently the most private of meditations (though Jacobi delivered it, bizarrely, to Ophelia). Jacobi, on tour in the provinces, had to give up the final 'How all occasions do inform against me', because people had to catch public transport home. Once back in London he restored the soliloquy. The sheer shifts and irregularities of the stage come out, again and again. The author has conducted her interviews with exemplary tact, and opened up a lode of theatrical ore. Modern Hamlets is theatre history at its best, full of insights into the workings of the stage and understanding of larger social movements.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
