Orson Welles and Peter O'Toole on Hamlet

I may be the oldest Hatter that the Catholic view would support the ghosts incitement of Hamlet avenge it did then and did indeed did then revenge in the term in terms of the state you see not written in terms of personals is a response of a king who as responsibilities beyond anything else there's an eternity yes does it had your king he does come from purgatory but we don't know that how much this system what goes says it but Hamlet denies it later on but the ghost yes he said this may be a spirit from her yeah yes yeah damn me yes Williams and to damn me whatever they said in a way that possibly no no not because he's forgotten simply does it no is impressing off it yes you it may very well be yes I think it well maybe you sit why in the name of God do people do not explicit six bit as far as I did if I'm not like then I'm wrong about the hope that if Shakespeare lots of character to say anything it is said quite clearly and quite at one knows he's a villain but a nice manner an Aston Hanna whatever they made me it's known quite quite clearly stated to the audience and now if you choose to disbelieve what Hamlet says then fine but have it in fact that it may be a spirit from her spirit that I've seen with you a devil and the death of the papacy will please you shave it I think Hamlet is the man to believe in the flavor I am sure in fact in every one of Shakespeare's you must believe the gentleman said that's it what do you think about the ghost and you played the ghost listen as we're over you paid goes to how do you see the best played I felt was very strange experience playing the ghost after having played Hamlet so often so that I really became in a way the father of Hamlet more than a spectral cymbal you say I came as the wounded father the right of the more than bride rider then as a phantasm but whether that was right or wrong we don't marry the typical party yes I Shakespeare plated and that's why it he played it because it because it's the toughest partner play I played it that must have been a greater just one think so I was reading henslowe stylin yeah he must have been a great act it's nonsense that he was a bit player no one deed not I'm in grade ER because after almost sir henslowe who was the sort of inky Bowman died his diary is now extant time and the cast list there he played all Johnson's leading parapet face leading player and when he played the ghost it was because the ghost is the key to that parade I've often felt that the best actor in the company are declared and the up-and-comer are to the Hamlet's you know because he's a fun can make that that father you should sound to something that's a very funny thing because I find when I played and I don't want to talk about it really but I am most moved in the play with the ghost from me whose love was of that dignity is where Adam and Eve of all I made you a magically moving encounter and the whole idea again Elizabethan ideate Ivana 99 I mean yes disappoint iving time and which which is the way he dispatched his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern for and it is about the most wicked terrible thing to do yes who said them for purgatory to them to hell no striving to not shy whatever grotto folio you read but no striving time allowed to got to get off Polonius but I think that Hermits gone a bit demented by their well I think is yeah I made what this is like my augment by only nod towards fried in the entire production and the fed was a desert herstal when that the my fate cries out and makes each Petty artery in this body at how D is the Nemean Lions nerve at the dress rehearsal I said in a loud clear wing advice my fake cries out and makes each potty Artie and his heart is a Nemean Lions man yes but I think a chisel it is crazing exist with a king and he saw he just left it in his endeavour to carry out the guests behest he becomes deranged because he is naturally not a vindictive person for the person of great sweetness and loveliness of soul and he has to become embittered and revengeful and I think that do ranges isn't the word maybe a modern word sick terrible low-class trashy word that people use out sick poor no no no I sick in Lenten sick of me and I say like to say Plato be sick but none man not crazy not crazy um I don't really think he's mad at all I think everybody in the players mad he's on bath day that's right he's upset what is it remember to define to madness I think he's really mad this is lonely in the play I don't think any mad whenever said why what an ass survive and it gets a divinely same you feeling same you guys feel oh yes I say man what a mastermind that that that feeling that is go on being played if everybody didn't think they could play that's really a funny question I'm sorry I asked you I don't mean that at all women part-owner women oh honey wouldn't were yes women have played this a silent movie isn't there by a great Danish tragedian of course Sarah Bernard did it receive due to an Hat when she created put forward Marva series the time of Shakespeare and Hamlet at the time of Queen Christina who missed miss gabov who was was drawn to in teeth drama music the original Spence go raving Dyke I think he's rather sweet indeed whether this is anything to do with a player I don't know it's always throws an interesting light on dasya failure to see him why why in the end why didn't blow it all said and done why didn't Hamlet kill cornice and there would have been no play if exactly there were five acts to go and that Shakespeare inherited a revenge melodrama that's why he into which he he placed some of the greatest living stuff that man has ever made language language and everything else spirit fire everything marvelous but there were five acts to go and oh god this couldn't be killed until the last act not quite so I think right away we talked about that on another divinity that hedges KS and all that also I think that there is in him basically in Hamlet Amaro retractation from murder precisely right no this is not - I don't agree rid of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with the widow with a smile we know that by the time he's gone over the edge if we agree that he's gone over I don't by then I think he had what about balloon what billion accident in public Oh must've thought he asked yes you're right and he does was it have been a few he thinks that could have been anybody but and thinks felonious is because it'd been Horatio but he was obsessed with the king that he saw he just left you getting it you just he know the King isn't days to spend the keys on the frontier yes I'm saying you know my offense is writing you don't well why can't anything now he's just left in a prayer I don't know but he just feels he's gone to ruin buddies farms you just left him at does your Hamlet does I don't think another Hamlet need I think he thinks it's the key well shining is perfect Remora text body is not capable of it son reform another no best role in it in a revenge dread is the texture panel you use the press ah yeah and then you kill the King in the closet we we having left the King we we the time is out of joint Oh curse in spite that ever I was born a seventh right that to me is the thing he doesn't want to have to play this role no yes he is drafted if I were role that it doesn't seem just a what comes him again that's it but Drake says he doesn't want to know he's a reluctant to marry cisely but not that he has some particular hatred of murder he does murder we see in murder but I think that comes out of the subsequent hysteria denars you I don't it's a different kind of thinking you know this man the Mamas gentlemen's I'm sure strong who's the best hammer to little scene if there's a thing again guys yes and he's did a very extraordinary thing he came on in to be or not to be presto yes yes is it in the eyes of yes but in Germany such a problem you see and it went on like that and although I disagreed with it entirely it was quite arresting you say I mean you can you can be thrilled by a thing and totally say no I don't but it doesn't prevent you from coming interest in itself have you got views about the diction of Hamlet as a whole apart from the the person playing it is obviously very with everybody else you think it ought to be ought to be spoken poetically oh I do I think that there should be I think it should not be done declamatory in a Victorian way with ponderous classicism certainly I don't feel that but I think that it should have a certain actors v heavy feet in it I think that there should be it should be very flexible but that you liked you must take a certain musical rhythm I don't mean listen to your own voice I don't mean any like that or sing it but I don't think you can treat it just as prose externus do you know the simple clauses passages which are which could differentiate it's a lovely to play on their own that verse yes I sell myself the simplest reading that I've ever heard of it the most beautiful and the simplest the least rhetorical reading that I've ever heard is the record of Forbes Roberts yeah which is much more modern than any Hamlet I haven't seen Peters yes it's not beginning with the Old Vic of Larry and Gielgud it seemed to me people moved back away back into into full-blown wonderful heroic acting because it was dying in the English theatre but it's no use saying that the that in living memory the older actors were more our car were more rhetorical market just the opposite you know even steel good water who killed wood was extremely but it wasn't very poetic reading yes rather as though he were dictating Shakespeare he seems to me you have you got that beautiful see all the terrifying thing is if you try and explain Hamlet I think yes you do yes a great thing that yogurt had was the sense that he was a poet and that he didn't know that he could completely encompass the beauty of what he was dealing with but they were quite wrong about that if you've begun your Hamlet young you can play it for the rest of your life because when I was a youngster I saw both for Robinson and Benson they were in their 60s and past it and they were too old but as they had done it early they still could play it in within 20 minutes you accepted it you forgot that they were too old to look at but you can't make your debut in Hamlet at 50 now last when you can play it rated yahoodi' he's right played young you can play it forever I read an account of veteran's Hamlet he was 17 I'm better to be played it first was nineteen some exactly fifteen years after Shakespeare's death yeah so he could go on take yes and one of the your city and he must have been playing it within a tradition sure this is the point I was handed on there sure the old federal detainer harder this is what you do here no this is all this on the songs and jaws of the skull of the second wife virtually obvious obvious additionally I was Hamlet in some fiction I mean not only by the comics but by Oxford yes death but um I've got a thing at home which that I think someone must do it would find it by a mr. Sawyer it's called Hamlet a travesty and the ghost sings a song called with my jawbone tombstone skull shroud and skeleton and the queen of the song called the failure was a sad and it ends with a great boxing match between 1840 about 1840 Julius yes Sadler's Wells first dog handler in the 19th century which went on for seven like 45 years and on the dog hand I do we oh is that the well-known dog Liam it Hamlet always had a dog yeah when she talked to a trained dog it was part of the opened the firework the pyrotechnics of the production really trained on it as well if you if you took this habit of yours this this this Hamlet's that looks externally from from outside at the pool how the cool heaven again this affects the way in which in which lines that would have guessed that how does a cooled Hamlet speaker what a there's misled my it's over in a cool way over the road that was later mine it's a kind of terrible it's the way a cool Romeo says is it in so than I did find this time that wasn't very cool it's on top of it man instead of inside Mariette isn't it on top of that reading was very involved if you if it primarily about three people three sons of fathers Laertes thought in brass and Hamlet all a home their fathers are murdered and all revenge their fathers in different ways that's very good never faulted rass question which at the end everyone recovers miraculously a mountebank at all but with Elizabethan and it's all very clearly stated and clearly reasoning the passions I mean to me all Shakespeare's plays are essays in the passions the highest of which in the most noblest the one at which governed and made man different from the beasts was reason sloth was a passion grief was a passion anger jealousy revenge only thing I think is a in a way a tragedy of grief I'm also slow slow Salcedo and a contemptible passion to the Elizabethans a truly contemptible rotten breath I thought I made a discovery I mean until they took to their literature wasn't that the sentimentalized thing we know now Greek was indeed a killing slow I mean it was to do with the humors the drying of the brain isn't despair maybe a better word grief was the word used in face I think through despair is the right well the little it's almost more - whoo-hoo the dialogue of comfort against tribulation and here shall I note you to kindness is what 50 94 I shall note you two kinds of folk for their interpolation and heaviness one sort that will seek no comfort this business of everybody are there they will seek no comfort nor yet none received but are in their tribulation bit loss or sickness so testy so few meet and so far out of patience and it built up no man to speak to them and these are in a manner with impatience as furious as though they were in half a frenzy and they with a customer such fashion behavior fall in their too full and whole and this kind of heaviness in tribulation is even a mischievous high branch of the mortal sin of ayah now Laertes falls into that category he's full of the mortal sin of ayah our boy yes he goes stark raving potty to avenge his father will do anything Hamlet is the other one but there are many other annotations but this is it simple Elizabethan models for a philosophy of the pattern fault in brass is governed always live reason if you'll have you ever have you ever missed a little done a reading of the part against that kind of background of sort no I can't say that I have I think that I have found it a study of passionate disillusionment the personal tragedy I'd not ignored its background but I think I've approached it shall I say rather imaginative live and intellectually I don't believe in having a reason for everything I think the dumb should descend sometimes it dies sometimes it does well I've seen an actor up to now until this interview speakers I would like to hear actors speak to identify a great tragic role in Shakespeare with Elizabethan times I can't tell you what pleasure it was to me to hear that from Peter O'Toole because people always talk about what Hamlet is is that we were a universal man for us that we were a figure in the 19th century novel but here a serious act to talk about the character in terms of the times in which it was written it's quite a new experience oh yes in this lecture it's quite valid yes yes yes of course it's valid but I never had the happy experience of hearing it in the two productions that you've done um well they weren't very good I could only talk about the next one yeah how does it how how did they how do they differ from each other did you take a did you take a different line yes but you know III I can't really count my productions of Hamlet this is a production starting tomorrow yes you would undoubtedly make him an Elizabethan figure no stuff no no because we aren't living in Elizabeth's and crimes in agreeing with Peter what I mean is I think it's wonderful to to approach the problem and to interpret to find that is a key but of course you don't do it as Elizabethan man if you want the audience who don't have that so don't bring that kind of thinking into the theater and said what is it remitted to me the first point about Hamlet is that he's a genius not that he's a prince not that he's a man he's simply the the great figure in dramatic literature who is a man of genius there he's the Renaissance man yes he is that he is the Renaissance man yes the drumming issue Duran is everything the Renaissance man and the man of genius and I was going to ask before we went on which one we were going to say about Renaissance or in a sense because we're on BBC but what we stick to in renascence which you like I know I don't know that's a riddle why not well that's a new one come from anyway that fella from that period of course he is of that period and of course that's the key to it but he is also a man of genius vanam saying on this program after he played it in a while he was playing it at stratford-upon-avon that one of the most unexpected things to him I hope I'm remembering properly was that it was exhausting the reason he hadn't expected not because the part was long but because he thought Hamlet's thoughts moved such enormous speed that the soliloquies and indi all of our speeches that he had to make seemed to him Bannon to move at a greater mental speed than what his own mind and he felt he felt that Shakespeare had written the part before a man who saw that is not so much of an admission is it you know that the chancre was the greatest Englishman who ever lived so any just anybody who speaks English must feel he thinks a little faster than than oneself you know certainly did yes but but but but but notably that look the point is surely this is the point of blank verse the ladies who speak our mind freely or the blank verse will halt for it Hamlet says this yes you don't have to think you think after the line yes not before it or not during the line is the thought this is the point that I am big container type salutely very very well perhaps individual this discussion is going to wallow in agreement you see and it will all be totally different equipment ladies yeah I want to see him yeah I wish to call here say Bob you said I wouldn't lamping the ghost mistake well I'll play I'd like to try that I'll fight again well I'm done I've done I've done the biggest and naughtiest trick of all but it's terribly effective I think I invented it just to play the ghost of the King as brothers I think not really good am I wrong has it been this but when you are playing Hamlet and you see the ghost you terrified what are you um you say angels and without daily quacky what you are either then kind of deep through reverential angel quite right I haven't seen it but that's yes it has done Beth that's it there's a again I'm afraid the place stands or Falls by this very points I think personally it is inadequate to explain the play but I don't think would be inadequate Elizabethan audience the attitude to the ghost there were three attitudes was the papist attitude which was that spirits were sent from purgatory and they have paired three times without saying anything one had to observe their expressions they were pale or red or in sorrow or in anger or want but on the fourth occasion this is papist duction of the 17th century on the fourth occasion they would and they would announce what in fact they had returned to earth form but they had any question very particularly now Horatio in his speeches follows the papist muttering perfectly

Channel: Text und Bühne

Views: 482,200

Keywords: theatre, textundbuehne, bbc, theater, film, Peter O'Toole, huw weldon, ernest Milton, shakespeare, discussion, hamlet, Orson Welles, Orson Welles and Peter O'Toole discuss Hamlet

Id: smMa38CZCSU

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 11 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Cavalir]

Unfortunately the very end of the discussion is missing, which is a shame. They were on an especially interesting topic.

[u/rmmcclay]

It's excellent. Poor Milton though, from another generation.