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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh! Alrighty, I'm doing my research for my Hamlet comic; reading up, watching productions -- I've put a request into the library for some sort of documentary with Trevor Nunn talking all about the play (neat!). Anyway, I found this book called Hamlet: In My Mind's Eye, about how the text can be interpreted differently with different readings, stagings, blah blah etc.

Well, I'm reading about Act I, Scene III (Laertes taking his leave), and the author mentions a production (from 1969) in which Laertes gives Ophelia his remonstrative morals speech while they 're both in bed together, because apparently Tony Ricardson, the director though, 'Hmm... how can I make Hamlet more fucked up? ...More incest!' Now, I find this an extremely interesting idea, so I look up the production on IMDb, and what do I find? Well, not only was Laertes played by Michael Pennington (who played Holmes in a TV movie, The Return of Sherlock Holmes in the late 80's), but it has Nicol Williamson as Hamlet! And Gordon Jackson as Horatio! And Anthony Hopkins as Claudius!! (by the way -- Williamson played Holmes in The Seven-per-cent Solution, and I fell in love with Gordon Jackson as the head butler Hudson in Upstairs, Downstairs).

Dammit, I need to see this movie. And dammit also, I wish our library was better stocked with books of literary analysis -- when I did my paper on Hamlet in Canterbury, you wouldn't believe all of the Shakespeare stuff they had. Oh, for a copy of Acting Hamlet! Or even better, Shaw on Shakespeare!! He wrote many reviews as well as analyses, of course, being that that was his job for quite a while.

"Mr. Forbes Robertson, his lightness of heart all gone, wandered into another play at the words, 'Sleep? No more!' which he delivered as, 'Sleep no more'. Fortunately, before he could add, 'Macbeth does murder sleep', he relapsed into Hamlet and saved the situation."

Agh, I am regetting not buying that book I saw in that wonderful second hand book shop, it was a coffeee table type of things, pictures of different actors and productions of Shakespeare (or was it just Hamlet? I don't remember now!). The pictures from the Branaugh production made me wish I could have seen it (not just because Claudius looks like a Southern gentleman!). I wish I had a time-traveling machine just so I could go back to the 60's and see David Warner as Hamlet with the RSC!!

Oh no! I just searched some more on IMDb and found a production from 1964 with Christopher Plummer as Hamlet and Michael Caine as Horatio!! Wah!

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