David Tennant on Hamlet Shakespeare Uncovered

'If I ask you to name Shakespeare's most famous play of all,

'there's a fairly good chance you'll plump for Hamlet.'

'But quite why that should be remains a mystery.'

It connects with something very primal...

It exists in the public consciousness

as this icon of theatre and culture.

It's woven into the fabric of our lives.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

'In 2008, I was asked to play Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company.'

'For any actor, that's an offer of a lifetime.'

'But not without its challenges.'

This was something that I wanted to do and couldn't say no to,

but it was, and remained until the final performance,

utterly terrifying.

Another hit; what say you?

This sounds ludicrous and pretentious and pompous.

It's just a play, it's pretending to be someone

and saying some words...

Am I a coward?

..and yet, because there's something special about it,

it does things to you.

'Why it has this effect is something I still can't answer.'

It was written a long time ago.

It shouldn't be relevant and contemporary.

It shouldn't be.

To try and work out what makes this play so unique,

I'm going to meet with directors...

I think that's why people didn't notice.

..historians...

-It's incredibly rare.

-Only two in the world?

..and some other Hamlets.

We know that this particular role is also like a sharing of one's soul.

So what is it about this character that is still so compelling,

400 years after he was created?

The first trick for any actor coming to Hamlet is to avoid

being overwhelmed by the very notion of it.

One of the things when you come to Hamlet is ridding yourself

of the baggage that comes with it, and trying to just tell the story,

and we're in the RSC shop here,

where things have been appropriated and made into just about anything,

and this is the classy stuff.

Oh, look!

Alas, poor Yorick.

This is Hamlet, the flickbook.

That's it summed up in 30 seconds.

The manga Hamlet.

Hamlet seems to be addressed as a sort of androgynous superhero.

I mean, it's a choice.

'And, of course, there's a smorgasbord of different Hamlets.'

Kevin Kline.

Mel Gibson.

Some Scottish bloke.

Kenneth Branagh.

Derek Jacobi.

This play is so deeply ingrained in our popular culture.

What's difficult when you come to perform it is extracting yourself

from the cliche and the fact that every line seems to be a quotation.

It's just that everywhere I go

it's the same old thing.

All anyone wants me to say is

"To be, or not to be."

That is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

the slings and arrows...

Yes. It's either that or...

'Almost everyone can quote a line from Hamlet.'

Do the bit about "Alas, poor Yorick"!

Hamlet is clearly a character that everyone seems to know about.

But how did that happen? Why this play?

On the face of it, the story line isn't something that necessarily

chimes with the everyday experience of most people.

Monarchy, madness, murder and suicide,

yet however melodramatic the premise,

somehow the play keeps feeling relevant and being sought out

by successive generations.

Is that just down to the plot?

So what is Hamlet actually about?

Well, Hamlet is the story of the Prince of Denmark,

whose father, the King of Denmark, gets murdered,

and then comes back as a ghost to tell his son, the Prince,

that he must avenge his death.

The person who murdered the king is Hamlet's uncle,

who's now married Hamlet's mother.

Got that?

It is complicated,

but when we first meet Hamlet it is clear.

He is grief stricken.

'His mother's marriage to his uncle has taken place with unseemly haste,

'hot on the heels of his father's death.'

Hamlet!

'Seemingly alone in finding that remotely distasteful,

'Hamlet is angry and isolated.'

'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Hamlet,

To give these mourning duties to your father:

But, you must know, your father lost a father;

That father lost, lost his.

But to persever

In obstinate condolement is a course

Of impious stubbornness.

At the beginning of the play, obviously,

he's dealing with the death of his father.

And he's also dealing with the fact that everyone around him

seems to have moved on absurdly quickly from this fact.

If you're going to do a play after somebody's just died,

then Hamlet's the play to do.

It's an amazing expression of grief.

My mother died just before I did it.

She knew I was going to do it,

and hoped to stay alive in order to see it, but she didn't,

and, of course, that had an effect

on the playing of it,

because it was my gift to her, really.

Losing a parent is hugely changing for you,

and grief is a sort of ghastly, immovable thing.

Certainly, when you are in the kind of sharp end of it,

it feels engulfing and intractable.

'This play is about a murdered father and his lonely, grieving son.'

'A grief that has resonated down the centuries.'

'So, who created this extraordinary character,

'and where did he come from?'

'There's a lot we don't know about Shakespeare's life,

'but there are a few things we can fairly safely assume.'

'He was born and raised in Stratford-Upon-Avon,

'where his father was mayor of the town,

'which means William will have been entitled to go

'to the local grammar school, King Edward's.'

Hic, haec, hoc.

STUDENTS: Hic, haec, hoc.

Good.

Hunc, hanc, hoc.

STUDENTS: Hunc, hanc, hoc.

'I'm sitting in on a lesson that the young William

'would almost definitely have endured.'

'Latin.'

They're clearly very proud of their connections.

The photo on the wall, just to intimidate the schoolboys of today.

Not much to aspire to(!)

Latin has been being taught in this very room

to schoolboys in Stratford for hundreds of years.

Shakespeare almost certainly learned Latin here. He learned rhetoric.

Many of the things that would have

contributed to his skills as a playwright.

There may be a playwright in this room now.

Its impossible to know from this distance

what influences formed Shakespeare's genius,

but there are some intriguing coincidences

that are hard to overlook.

Shakespeare married at 18,

and had three children by the time he was 24.

By the time William was 30,

around the time it is thought he wrote Hamlet,

his father was aging and ill.

And then Shakespeare suffered a terrible tragedy

when his 11-year-old son died.

He was called Hamnet.

It is impossible, I think, not to understand that the name Hamlet

was charged with the identity

of his 11-year-old dead son.

And part of the intensity of this play depends upon

the familiarity of Shakespeare and his world with the graveyard

and what it meant to bury your fondest hopes.

This theme of bereavement and loss takes a surprising turn

when Hamlet is handed some dramatic news.

The ghost of his dead father has been seen

walking the battlements of the castle.

-I think I saw him yesternight.

-Saw who?

My Lord, the King, your father.

The King, my father?

The appearance of the ghost becomes the engine of the play.

I'm visiting the replica of the Globe Theatre

on the South bank of the Thames, where, around 1601,

Shakespeare's actors first performed Hamlet.

Here, today, they are running the opening scenes.

So this is where we see Hamlet meeting the ghost of his dead father

for the first time.

Where wilt thou lead me?

Speak; I'll go no further.

Mark me.

I will.

I am thy father's spirit,

Doom'd for a certain time to walk the night,

And for the day confined to fast in fires,

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Be burnt and purged away.

List, list, O, list!

If ever thou didst thy dear father love.

O God!

Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder.

-Murder!

-Murder most foul.

Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift

As meditation or the thoughts of love,

May sweep to my revenge.

I find thee apt; but know, thou noble youth,

The serpent that did sting thy father's life

Now wears his crown.

O my prophetic soul!

My uncle?

The ghost has confirmed what Hamlet had feared - that his father has been killed by his uncle.

It falls to him to avenge this murder,

but is he capable of seeing it through?

Everyone knew in Shakespeare's time, as everyone knows now, still,

that a revenge play, a play in which someone, a son,

is called upon to avenge his father,

is a play in which a terrible fate will befall the avenger.

Hamlet is a dead man from act one.

He knows it and we know it.

'This call to arms has come from a ghost,

'a supernatural visitor from the other side.'

'What would this have meant to Shakespeare's audience?'

'I've come to meet historian Justin Champion,

'who is an expert in the world of 17th century religion.'

So, what would a ghost have meant to an Elizabethan audience?

Well, I think the first thing is that an Elizabethan audience

would not have been surprised to see a ghost.

Ghosts were everywhere.

So, to most of that audience, ghosts were things that existed?

Yeah, absolutely.

So there wouldn't have been the shock, you know,

if a ghost walks past us now, we'll be a little bit surprised.

Well, a little!

A little bit, a little bit surprised,

but for the Elizabethan, the Stuart audience,

ghosts are part of the world they live in.

The spirit world and the human world are very permeable,

so they wouldn't have been surprised at all.

They would have asked themselves what sort of ghost is it? Good or bad?

Right.

'Apparently, there were four options.'

This ghost could be the devil.

It could be sent by the devil or the devil in person.

Right.

The ghost could be a projection of imagination.

The person is somehow deluded or deranged.

The ghost could be the result of imposture

- locals maybe confecting an illusion of a ghost,

or the ghost could be a wandering soul

come back to avenge some act of injustice,

so there is a science of what a ghost meant and how it would behave.

The ghost's visit propels Hamlet and the play forward,

so any actor playing the part has to decide what the ghost means to them.

There have been famous productions where the ghost is

a figment of Hamlet's own imagination, and I think that's

all a very interesting take on it, actually.

It's not what we did, so it's not...

For me, that was Dad there.

Adieu.

Adieu.

Hamlet.

Remember me!

'So, Hamlet is burdened with the task

'of avenging his father's death.'

'What makes this even worse

is the dark and dangerous world he lives in.'

Wow!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...

'The king has enlisted Hamlet's friends to spy on him.'

'The king's minister, meanwhile,

'devices his own scheme involving his own daughter.'

'Polonius believes Hamlet's distress is caused by his love-sickness

'for Ophelia, so he spies on them both.'

Where's your father?

At home, my Lord.

We are on edge throughout the play of Hamlet because of the sense

of people being constantly overheard.

We never quite know who is on which side.

There's layer upon layer of surveillance going on there.

This is a court full of intrigue, full of spies.

As Hamlet struggles to make sense of the chaos in his head

and all around him,

Shakespeare allows us to hear exactly

what his troubled protagonist is going through.

We, the audience, become his confidante.

He uses soliloquies to speak to us directly.

A soliloquy is when a character

speaks their inner thoughts out loud,

debates their inner arguments with themselves,

and hopefully finds some kind of way forward.

As an actor, when you come to play those soliloquies, you can make a choice.

You can either speak these speeches into the air

as if to yourself, to the world around you,

or you can acknowledge the fact that you are in a theatre

and that the audience are all around you,

and you can use them as another character in your play.

You can speak the speeches right at them.

'Right at the heart of the play, Hamlet has a devastating soliloquy

'that has become the most famous speech in the history of theatre,

'possibly even all of literature.'

'He asks, what is the point?'

To be, or not to be:

that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them?

Every individual confronts these questions privately,

and then to have a play that

confronts them publically,

and that confronts them

in a voice of such control, such thoughtfulness,

such power, that something is happening on the stage for us,

so it might not have to happen to us,

and that's extraordinarily powerful.

To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

Because Hamlet is alone on stage,

and because his most characteristic of speech is the question,

inevitably, we, in the audience, as we watch it,

or we as readers, as we read it, we get drawn in.

We ask those questions of ourselves

and try to come up with our own answers,

so the character of Hamlet becomes profoundly personal to us.

There's something about it that transcends its time and place.

On some level we can all identify with those moment of crisis,

and those moments where it really feels

that the only solution would be to escape.

I think that's why it is so resonant.

'It's powerful to ask those questions now.'

'In Shakespeare's time, it was revolutionary.'

This is not just a state of crisis,

this is a man thinking about killing himself.

Suicide, in the entirety of this period is absolutely forbidden.

Suicide is illegal - if you are convicted of suicide,

you will be taken out to the crossroads outside the village

or town and buried with a stake through your heart.

Suicide is absolutely traumatic for this culture.

That's what's so shocking about this scene is that here is a man,

in one sense, rationally weighing up the options.

This is clearly not somebody possessed by the devil.

This is somebody trying to think through for themselves, and I think,

for many in the audience, this would be very worrying.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscover'd country from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

'Hamlets soliloquies are so famous, so eloquent and so powerful

'that it can feel like quite a responsibility to actually

'deliver them.'

I suppose, for those moments, it's a bit like doing a one man show,

in that there's no other actors to bounce off.

I think, when those moments work, and it's just you with

these incredible words and extraordinary arguments,

I think it's very empowering.

It can also be kind of terrifying

because it's pretty safely net free

- there's nobody else to rely on

and there's nobody else to help you out if you forget a bit.

'Since playing Hamlet myself, I've been fascinated with how

'other actors have approached this most intimidating of roles.'

Someone did say to me early on, "Learn your lines!"

And I thought, "Of course

I'm going to learn my lines,"

but then, when you do sit down and look, there's quite a lot!

'Jude Law played Hamlet in London and on Broadway in 2009.'

There are lines like "To be, or not to be", which are so well-known

it's almost impossible to break the expectation of them coming.

Did you have a way of coping with that?

Would you embrace that full-on?

Would you try and sneak round the side of them?

Oh, dear. It's so revealing, this, isn't it? I think I tried all that.

Good!

I think I tried them all, but then, you know,

I remember also just feeling like, "Just get on with it."

What did you make of "To be, or not to be?"

The specific meaning of it is quite hard to grasp, isn't it?

Yeah.

Quite what he's saying at any given moment.

I think that was the little hook I clung on to,

that he didn't know himself.

It was all question,

and each discovery leads to the next,

and to the next, and to the next,

and there's a sense that he's really trying to figure it out.

'It has been said that there are as many different Hamlets

'as there are actors to play him,

'and that scope for reinterpretation seems to be

'part of what makes this role so constantly fascinating.'

We know that this particular role is also like a sharing of one's soul,

so you're not just going to see your preferred actor,

but you're also going to see them perhaps bearing a side

of themselves, and revealing a side of themselves that's really intimate.

I think of all the parts I've played,

that one feels the most transparent.

When you go and see it,

you're seeing something of the actor.

Something very personal, private about the actor who's playing it.

Always, I think.

It's not a mask you can hide behind.

There is something extraordinary about stripping away

your acting persona, really.

Did you find it quite exposing, then?

Yeah. I think, in the end,

you are standing on the stage as David Tennant.

'None of which helps to make that most famous of speeches

'any easier to cope with.'

Quite often - I'm sure you've had this - people say it along with you.

Yeah.

That's fine.

I had one woman who was doing it just before I said it...

-..which was infuriating!

-Yes.

'One the most iconic and influential takes on Hamlet

'was in an RSC production of the 60s.'

Look at this handsome young devil!

Look how handsome!

'David Warner played Hamlet in 1965.'

'He was a moody, strident, student prince.'

'At that time, at the age of 24,

'he was thought to be the youngest actor

to have played the part professionally.'

Saying "To be, or not to be" for the first time out loud,

did you have any particular philosophy to it?

No, no. Things happened instinctively.

There's one thing that I have to say.

I didn't really understand Shakespeare's words.

Right.

-I had to get most of it explained to me.

-Right, yeah.

I mean, they used to say lines that I had no idea what it meant.

I don't know if that ever happened to you. I'm sure it did.

-Well, even by the end, you still weren't quite sure?

-Well, not quite sure!

I think actors should admit to that more readily.

'David's Hamlet was a huge box office hit,

'though it took a while for all the critics to catch up.'

Some of the reactions to your Hamlet,

which range from the effusive -

this is the most extraordinary performance you've ever seen -

to some quite snippy criticism.

I happen to have on me the bad reviews.

"I would sooner the town crier spoke Shakespeare's lines as to

hear David Warner."

That's pretty good, isn't it?

"Tiresome, perverse, indulgent."

Wow.

There was one person who, when they heard I was going to do it, said,

"This actor cannot do it."

Right. Thanks. That's helpful, isn't it(!)

"I've seen him, and I don't think he's going to be able to do it."

And that was before.

How did that feel?

-It wasn't very nice.

-No.

Many people come to Hamlet with preconceptions or

expectations of what the play should be, but in fact,

there is not even a definitive text of the play.

There are three different sources.

Copies of these are extremely valuable and precious.

I've never seen them all up close,

but at the British Library they have examples of each one.

Tim Pye, the curator, has agreed to open up the safe.

Here we have the precious cargo.

Yeah.

'There is a first version, the so-called bad quarto,

'believed to be cobbled together from an actor's memory.'

'The second, much longer version, possibly printed

'to replace the bad quarto

'and a third version in The First Folio,

'a collection of Shakespeare's plays published after his death.'

Do you want to open that one up to the title page?

I'm allowed to touch?

Yes, of course.

Extraordinary.

'On the table in front of me are about £10 million worth of books.'

So, this is the first quarto.

Often known as the bad quarto.

That's right. I think the bad quarto is a bit of a misnomer.

Why is that?

Because I think it has merits.

Yeah.

It is quite quick-paced for a Hamlet.

Yes.

-Because it's about half the length of the other two later versions.

-Yes.

It includes stage directions that aren't included elsewhere

that people still reference nowadays.

Right.

So I think "bad" is a little unfair.

Yeah.

There are two known copies.

-Only two?

-It's incredibly rare.

-Only two in the world?

-Yeah.

There's only two. I had no idea.

Judging the versions against each other,

there are many surprising differences.

There's one on the very first line.

"Who's there", which is quite a famous opening to a play.

Yeah.

Is "Stand: who is that?", in this bad quarto,

which is quite markedly different.

Yeah.

Although it is much shorter,

there are certain details that only feature in the first quarto.

"Enter Ofelia playing on a Lute, and her haire downe singing."

Playing on a lute? It's going to limit your casting options, as well!

'And perhaps the most interesting

'are the differences in that most famous of soliloquies.'

The thing that we probably recognise as being the biggest

difference is the most famous speech...

..in the English language.

Indeed, indeed.

"To be, or not to be: that is the question:", becomes

"To be, or not to be, I there's the point."

Yeah.

"To Die, to sleep, is that all?" That's quite a cut.

"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

"The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."

That's all gone.

It has all gone.

All gone.

It does sound like a poorly-remembered version

of the speech we know.

Yeah.

Half-phrases are in there, and the sense is in there.

Yeah, yeah.

But who's to say this isn't the original, of course?

Well, indeed, or do we just think that's poor compared to

the much more eloquent and elegant one we now know?

If this was the only surviving text of Hamlet,

would we denigrate it as much as we do?

Well, quite.

I quite like the fact that it's been edited in places to shorten it.

Oh, I think it can do without edit, definitely.

Yeah, yeah. Hamlet can sometimes be a bit long.

It can be a bit long. I've heard that.

Some productions can be a little dry. I wouldn't know about that.

No, I think, absolutely. This must have charged along, which is great.

Yeah.

'Whichever version you use, Hamlet's dilemmas remain the same.'

'Having doubted the point of life itself,

'Hamlet starts to doubt his mission.'

'Should he trust the ghost? Can he be sure Claudius is guilty?'

'He devises a plan to expose the king.'

This is one Lucianus, nephew to the king.

'He enlists a group of travelling players to enact a play

'mirroring the king's murder.'

'If Claudius flinches, he will have the proof he requires.'

How fares my Lord?

Give me some...

Give me some light!

'The king reacts.'

'Hamlet is vindicated.'

What, frighted with false fire!

Imagine what it must be like to realise

that your worst fears are right.

Because it's all been

almost dealable with

up until this point, but now I've got to do something.

Hamlet gets the perfect opportunity to exact his revenge

when he passes the king alone, praying.

But will he be able to seize the moment?

In our production, director Greg Doran had a notion

to draw out the tension.

I think it is a thriller.

I mean, once I had that in my head

that, psychologically,

it was a thriller,

then what you need to do is keep

making the audience believe that they've never seen it before

and don't know what's going to happen.

When, for instance, he happens, after the play,

to bump into his uncle Claudius praying,

and he's suddenly has the idea that he could,

while the man is praying, kill him,

having absolutely in his mind established his guilt.

Thriller-wise, you in the audience should be thinking,

"He's going to do it."

Now might I do it pat,

now he is praying;

And now I'll do't.

'We took the interval right there, in the middle of the line.'

Again, quiet a potentially bold decision to take the interval,

in fact, in the middle of a verse line.

The scholars were appalled.

What was the actual line? So you went...

"Now might I do it pat, now he's praying, and now I'll do it."

Interval.

Blackout, yeah.

How many of the audience do you think went, "My god, he killed his uncle"?

I don't know. I hope some did.

But did we start the second half..?

Did we re-run the beginning of the second half,

or did you start, "And so he goes to heaven"?

No. I started with a knife above his head.

The lights went up, like nothing had happened for 15 minutes,

"And so he goes to heaven, and so am I revenged."

-And, using the audience, talked myself out of it.

-Right.

-VOICEOVER:

-And so he goes to heaven;

And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd:

A villain kills my father; and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same villain send

To heaven.

O, this is hire and salary, not revenge.

Hamlet doesn't know what he is going to do,

so as Hamlet raises the knife above Claudius's head,

in that nanosecond, he believes he's going to kill him.

It doesn't last, and he doesn't because, again,

he's straightjacketed by his own morality and his own fears,

and his own humanity, you could say.

That makes me like him all the more,

but it makes him like himself all the less.

Hamlet asks some very serious questions

about the morality of revenge, the morality of killing.

We think of that as a very modern,

21st century thing,

but Shakespeare is there before us.

'Hamlet is a deeply reluctant revenge hero,'

'but in the very next scene he will slip dangerously out of character.'

He will come straight.

I'll silence me in here.

Hamlet's behaviour has alarmed the king and his councillor, Polonius.

Hamlet is summoned to his mother's bedroom...

Mother?

..where Polonius is hiding, eavesdropping on their conversation.

Mother.

Withdraw, I hear him coming.

Hamlet arrives ready to confront his mother about her marriage,

but in a moment of madness will do something catastrophic.

Now, mother, what's the matter?

Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

Mother, you have my father much offended.

Have you forgot me?

No, by the rood, not so:

You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife;

And - would it were not so! - you are my mother.

Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.

Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge;

You go not till I set you up a glass

Where you may see the inmost part of you.

What wilt thou do? Thou wilt not murder me?

Help, help, help!

Help, help!

How now! A rat?

Dead, for a ducat!

Dead!

Impulsively, Hamlet lashes out,

believing he has finally caught the king,

but instead, he has murdered Polonius.

I think it happens in the heat of a very hot moment,

before he can really examine what he's doing.

From that moment, as he looks down at Polonius's corpse,

I think he realises there's no going back and nothing will ever be the same now,

and I've probably started on the path to my own destruction.

'But although everything has changed for Hamlet in that moment,

'the scene is not over.'

'Something has been brewing for a long time.'

'He still has to confront the person he feels has betrayed him most.'

'His mother.'

You modulate into a total disgust at what she's doing.

'In this scene, all Hamlet's unspoken resentment

'and fury at his mother comes tumbling out.'

'He is disgusted by her inconstancy, her stupidity and, worst of all,

'as he sees it, her promiscuity.'

You cannot call it love, for at your age

The heyday in the blood is tame, it's humble,

And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment

Would step from this to this?

O Hamlet, speak no more:

Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul;

And there I see such black and grained spots

As will not leave their tinct.

Nay, but to live

In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,

Stew'd in corruption, honeying and making love

Over the nasty sty -

Speak to me no more!

'A son confronting his own mother's sexuality is an uneasy enough

'prospect for a modern audience,

'but Hamlet has barely been out of performance in 400 years,

'so previous generations have clearly found their own way

'of coming to terms with such taboo material.'

Ah, Michael!

-David.

-Hello.

-How are you doing?

-Fine, fine.

Thank you for coming along.

'Theatre historian Michael Dobson has tracked the stage history

'of what has become known as the "closet scene".'

Well, closet in Shakespeare's time means a kind of private office

it's in your private apartments,

-it's near your bedroom, but it's not actually a bedroom.

-Right.

'One of the earliest representations we have of this scene

'shows Thomas Betterton playing Hamlet in the 17th century,'

'with two chairs placed a fair distance apart.'

Shall I be mother?

Yeah, you be Gertrude, you sit there, and Betterton has been

sitting down, talking to his mother, apparently from about this distance.

With tea and sandwiches, possibly?

-Well, yeah. It's all terribly respectful.

-It is.

'Only in later productions does the scene tend to move to the bedroom,

'with Sigmund Freud's influence suggesting that Hamlet

'might actually be in love with his mother.'

It doesn't get manically all about what they're doing on the bed

until J Barrymore in the States in the 1920's,

and he's read Freud and he says that, as far as he's concerned,

Hamlet is mother-fixated.

He decides to actually stage it that way,

decides that his Hamlet is explained by the relationship with his mother.

So, how much do we know about his staging in particular?

What did he do?

He kissed his mother on the lips.

That's the big sign that he gives that this is really

what it's all about and that it's not normal.

Right.

He's the first one who does that,

and that line is then taken up by Olivier.

I must be cruel, only to be kind:

The trouble I have is that being repulsed by your parents' sexuality

is not the same as being drawn to it.

Yeah.

It strikes me that there's an absolute childlike fury

and disgust at that, rather than any kind of romantic yearning.

I never wanted to snog my mother in that scene,

I just wanted to slap her.

But I think one of the reasons that this scene

sounds so particularly excessive and erotic and charged

is that Hamlet is so wonderfully off the point.

I mean, he's just killed somebody, and she says,

"Oh, my God, you've just killed somebody!",

and he says, "Never mind that. Let's talk about your sex life."

It's so out of balance that he is continually

going on about his mother's sex life,

when there is this corpse here that he's just killed,

that it makes it stand out so.

'However you decide to play the closet scene,

'by the end of it, Hamlet is at the mercy of the man he loathes.'

After Hamlet has killed Polonius, things are changed for ever.

The king, now knowing his life is in danger,

is determined to get rid of Hamlet and sends him away overseas.

Events are spiralling out of control.

From here on in, the play shifts a gear.

'Hamlet is banished to England and although he eventually

'manages to escape his captors and return to Denmark,

'in his absence, Ophelia, his one-time love

'and the daughter of Polonius, has lost her mind and drowned herself.'

'Unaware of this, on his way back to Elsinore,

'Hamlet happens upon a freshly dug grave,

'little knowing it is meant for Ophelia.

Here, in one of the play's most recognisable moments,

Hamlet comes face-to-face with mortality.

His clutch.

How long will a man lie the earth ere he rot?

Faith, if he be not rotten before he die

some eight year, nine year.

Here's a skull now; lain in the earth some three and twenty years.

Whose was it?

This same skull, sir, was Yorick's skull, the king's jester.

Let me see.

'Hamlet beside Yorick's grave

'is perhaps the most enduring image the play throws up.'

'The danger is that familiarity will rob the scene of its impact.'

'In staging the play,

'we were blessed with a powerful reminder of Yorick's humanity.'

We're on our way now to the RSC's props repository,

to look at something that was a very important part of our production.

Hello, I'm David.

Hi, Catherine.

-Hi, Catherine. How are you doing?

-I'm OK, thank you.

Good.

Brilliant.

This is our Yorick.

He was a Polish composer and pianist called Andre Tchaikowsky,

and when he died in the early 80s, he bequeathed his head

to be used in a production of Hamlet by the RSC.

He wanted to play Yorick.

So, here he is. This is Andre.

He was introduced to us by our director, Greg,

on the first day of rehearsals, as the final member of the company.

There was a variety of reactions, I think,

to having a real human head in the production.

Some people found it difficult.

I must say, personally, I was rather excited by it.

It's one of the cliches of the play, now, an actor holding a skull,

and the trouble with the cliche is it loses meaning,

but if you are presented with an actual person's skull,

a real bit of human,

then Hamlet's speech about Yorick and about staring into the skull

of a man he knew well becomes all the more potent

when you're aware that you're holding somebody's head,

quite literally, in your hands.

There he is.

Andre was there.

I feel very pleased to have helped him fulfil his ambition.

Those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.

Where be your gibes now?

Your gambols? Your songs?

Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?

Not one now, to mock your own grinning?

Quite chop-fallen?

-Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing.

-What's that, my lord?

-Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' the earth?

-Even so.

Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay.

My best friend's mum has just died, and it's the first time

someone of my age has lost a parent.

The idea of what life is and how someone being there

and then they're just flesh,

or they're just remains, just bones,

and if that's what someone is reduced to,

what were they to begin with? What is a life?

Those things become more...

..more mysterious, more potent as you get older.

They are questions you go through your whole life looking at, aren't they?

The play pauses to hold a mirror up to mortality,

but before long, Hamlet is back at court, confronting his own destiny.

Will he be a revenging hero?

Can he kill a king?

In London, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,

students are rehearsing the play's final scene.

Move more, and it'll look faster,

but it'll actually be slower for you.

On returning to the court, Hamlet gets involved a contest

between himself and Laertes, the son of Polonius - the man he killed.

Great. That's when I want you to start moving.

This contest will involve the entire court.

It is the climax of the play,

and yet Hamlet, told at the beginning of the play

to take revenge for his father's death, has planned none of this.

It was the king's idea.

Instead of finally deciding that he is going to do what

he has said all along that he's going to do,

he gets involved in a wager

that his uncle, of all people,

has put on his skills at fencing,

and there's no plan that Hamlet has articulated

that's going to lead from this sword fight in the court

to vengeance on his uncle.

It seems to happen randomly.

'So, ironically, this contest is not Hamlet's plan,

'but the King's plot to kill him.'

'Claudius has enlisted Laertes,

'eager to avenge the death of Polonius.'

'A blunted sword will be exchanged for a sharp one.'

You may choose a sword unblunted, and in a pass of practise

Requite him for your father.

I will do it.

'Laertes also plans to put poison on the point of his sword

'to make sure Hamlet will die.'

'Hamlet knows none of this,

'and although he has misgivings about how the fight will turn out,

'he now seems determined to surrender to his fate.'

If your mind dislike of anything, obey it:

I will forestall their repair hither, and say you are not fit.

Not a whit.

We defy augury.

There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.

If it be now,

'tis not to come.

If it be not to come, it will be now.

If it be not now,

yet it will come.

He is a very, very different character. His mood is different.

There's a wonderful serenity and resignation about him

at that point.

"If it be not now, it is to come."

"if it be not to come, it is now."

"The readiness is all. Let be."

That great, almost oriental idea of let it be, what will be will be.

There is a real inner peace that he's reached, there.

'And so the contest begins.'

Come on, sir.

Judgment!

A hit, a very palpable hit.

Hamlet starts well. He wins the first point.

Stay; Give him the cup.

'He avoids a poisoned drink offered by Claudius

'in case Laertes should fail.'

I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile.

But the queen, apparently unaware of the plot, drinks.

It is the poison'd cup.

'Impatient to kill Hamlet, Laertes lashes out.'

Have at you now!

'In the confusion, swords get exchanged

'and Laertes is wounded with his own poisoned tip.'

How does the queen?

She swoons to see them bleed.

No, no, the drink, the drink.

O my dear Hamlet.

The drink, the drink!

'With poison in his blood, Hamlet cannot escape his own death

'but, at last, he ensures the king will die, too.'

Here,

thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane,

Drink off this potion.

Is thy union here?

Follow my mother.

'Hamlet has finally succeeded in avenging his father's death,

'although more by accident than design.'

'He has had little control over any of this.'

Now, Hamlet has to face his own death

in the arms of his only true friend, Horatio.

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

O, I die, Horatio;

The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit:

The rest is silence.

That final speech, the sense of Hamlet looking into the afterlife,

for someone who has fretted whether there is one or not,

it was certainly in my mind that "The rest is silence"

was a sense of relief, that, actually,

there's nothing else to worry about.

I'm staring into the afterlife now, and it's just a void.

Thank goodness for that.

I mean, the big question for me, and I still don't know the answer.

"The rest is silence."

Is that the rest of life, or is that the rest,

the rest in himself is silence?

And he doesn't have to speak any more.

Yeah, well.

You know? There's a beautiful sense of calm.

I always felt very calm in that moment, and quite happy.

It's funny.

My memory, talking about it, is much more about how I was feeling,

and talking about it, I keep thinking I've got to talk

about the part, but actually I'm trying to think where I was at.

Yes, but the two end up being very meshed, don't they?

Yeah, I think they do.

'For others, the fact that Hamlet bids Horatio

'to tell what has happened,

'to tell his story, means there will be life after the silence.'

What is so powerful about the end of Hamlet - it's a deeply powerful ending -

is the moment when he transfers his story to Horatio,

He says, "In this harsh world,

"draw thy breath in pain

"to tell my story."

So he will not have lived in vain.

We are also being told to tell the story, to perform the play again.

It does not end in nothing.

It does not end in "The rest is silence."

It ends, in fact, in the injunction to replay the play.

If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart

Absent thee from felicity awhile,

And in this harsh world, draw thy breath in pain,

To tell my story.

'But am I any nearer to understanding

'why every successive age has identified with Hamlet?'

Of course, there's no answer to this,

but do you have any sense of what it is about it that's so unique?

It tackles the fundamental themes

of perhaps what we all ask.

Why are we here? What is the point of us being here?

All these huge things which, I think, just dealing with

being a living, breathing human being, we have to ask ourselves,

at some point, or feel, at some point, are in this play.

I remember having conversations in the summer,

after we'd finished the run, with people,

and we'd be talking about something

completely nothing to do with the play,

and I'd go, "It's like Hamlet when he says this."

Everything would refer back to Hamlet for about six months.

It seemed like it explained everything,

or the answer to everything was there.

'In the end, there just is no other character like him.'

I remember, in the last day of filming,

thinking I'm so proud to have done that,

I'm so pleased that that's something I got to do,

and now I will never go there again, and there was a huge relief to that,

because it was like having a weight lifted off your shoulders.

And then, you know, three years on,

I do find myself, I catch myself

slightly fantasising about doing it again,

and going back there and seeing what that would feel like,

but that way madness quite literally lies.

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