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Written by William Shakespeare - Audio play performed by John Gielgud, Marian Spencer, Celia Johnson, Andrew Cruickshank and full cast - Unabridged Dramatized Fiction with music by Berlioz, Franck, Massenet, Weber and others - 3 COMPACT DISCS - 3 hours, 26 minutes

Naxos Audiobooks (August 2006)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

Nicolas Soames explains the background behind the exceptional recording of Sir John Gielgud’s Hamlet:

Richard Bebb, the actor and collector, was a lifetime admirer of the work of Sir John Gielgud. Richard was an actor in his own right – with Richard Burton he was one of the leading voices on the legendary recording of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood, and he spent a lifetime in the theatre and on radio.

Sadly, he died earlier this year after a short illness – and only weeks after completing his latest Naxos AudioBooks recording of Chaucer – The Pardoner’s Tale and The Franklin’s Tale – spoken in the original Middle English. Richard was the world’s leading expert in this field, as his recordings of The General Prologue and The Knight’s Tale (to be released in September) show.

He was also one of the most respected collectors of historical recordings, particularly operatic and the spoken word. When we first met three years ago, Richard importuned me to release this 1948 recording of Hamlet, from his personal collection. It was, he said, very simply the finest ever, which is quite a claim considering the huge number of interpretations in existence. ‘Sir John Gielgud’s portrayal of Hamlet is the hallmark of all Hamlets,’ declared Richard in a tone which brooked no contradiction.

When I heard it, I understood his enthusiasm. Here, in newly mastered splendour (courtesy of Ward Marston), it is released, and the only regret is that Richard didn’t live to see it.

By the way, this Naxos AudioBooks set also contains the 1954 BBC talk, Hamlet – The Actor’s View, given by Gielgud: itself a remarkable historical document.

Richard Bebb writes:

‘When Gielgud speaks a line, you can hear Shakespeare thinking.’ Lee Strasburg, American Director.

He played the role for the first time at the end of the Old Vic season of 1929/30 and immediately created a sensation and the play was transferred to the Queen’s Theatre. At the age of 26, not only was he the youngest leading actor to play the part in the West End since Henry Irving (who was 37), but he was on all sides acclaimed as the rising star. James Agate (London’s leading dramatic critic) wrote: ‘I have no hesitation whatever in saying that it is the high water-mark of English Shakespearean acting of our time.’

Immediately afterwards, he recorded some of the soliloquies for the Linguaphone Company, and these reveal that, though they are spoken with great beauty and intelligence, they are light-years from the mastery of Shakespearean speech that he was later to achieve.

He directed the play with huge success at the New Theatre (now the Albery) in 1934, and Raymond Mortimer called it ‘The best production of Hamlet that I have ever seen or am ever likely to see.’ In 1937, he played it in New York, under the direction of Guthrie McClintic, and well surpassed the previous record for the run of the play achieved by John Barrymore.

In 1938, he revived the play for two weeks at the Lyceum Theatre as a prelude to performances at Elsinore in Denmark, and in October 1944 he played in George Rylands’ production in a repertory season of five plays at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. A tour of Burma for the troops finished in Cairo, where he gave his final stage performance in the theatre built specially for the world-premiere of Aida. In all, he had played the part over 500 times. You can readily see that for a period of sixteen years, his passion for getting the part ‘right’ dominated his professional life, as he experimented with all the myriad options that every scene offers to the actor.

In 1948, the BBC Third Programme broadcast an ‘entirety’ version (even ‘the dram of eale’ is there) directed by John Richmond and with a superb cast, including Leon Quartermaine as the Ghost and Marian Spencer as Gertrude from the Haymarket production. My future wife, Gwen Watford, and I heard it then and agreed that John Gielgud’s performance exactly mirrored what we had seen in the theatre – she had seen it three times and I six times.

Gielgud’s mind was not only mercurial but also beset by a passion for perfection. Though I only saw the last of his Hamlet’s, I am certain that what I saw was the best. Agate again thought so: ‘He has stopped all the gaps and... is now completely and authoritatively master of this tremendous part.’ Even more authoritative is the opinion of Robert Speaight (the professional creator of Becket in Murder in the Cathedral) whose autobiography The Property Basket contains this: ‘the mark of John Gielgud’s Hamlet was its completeness. He presented more aspects of the character as it is commonly understood than anyone else. He did not necessarily more you or excite you more, but he left nothing out. The elements of the part were mixed in very accurate proportion, so that what you took away with you was not a special pleading but a balanced statement. There was no essential point upon which you could say that he was wrong. He had the right weight of years and physique, the necessary neurosis, and the necessary charm. He had the technical ability to sustain the part without monotony right through to the end. He was not notably better in one scene than another. But his general comprehension of the part was extraordinarily satisfying- as consistent as his theatrical expression of it. He played it often over the next ten years, and many people will tell you that his first performances were the best. I never thought Gielgud so good as in George Rylands’ production at the Haymarket in 1944.’ This remarkable tribute from a later Old Vic Hamlet is typically more detailed and perceptive because it comes from a fine actor than from a mere theatrical critic!

I had already seen three other Hamlets but my first sight of John Gielgud in the role wiped the slate clean – for the first time I was in touch with Hamlet’s ‘racing’ mind. It was also the last time, as, even after at least thirty other Hamlets, I have never encountered anyone with the necessary lightning quickness of mind to think Hamlet’s thoughts. Much of this, I am convinced, was due to Gielgud’s own brain, and confirmation of this comes from a BBC talk he gave in 1954 called Hamlet: The – Actor’s View also included as a bonne bouche on this set of CDs. Talking of his first night in 1930 he said: ‘When I first played Hamlet I never expected to be successful... I had seen it seven, eight, ten times when I was young. I devoured everything about Irving and I thought that I shall just go on and give a lot of clichés and imitations of things that I think Hamlet ought to do. But in some strange way- I remember it very well- at the first performances, I had kind of feeling when I began to play it that there was only my own way to do it and I kind of found the part as I went along in a very strange and sincere way which I had really never done before in acting. And I think I found for the first time a way to communicate my own feeling to the audience because it was so very strong. And it wasn’t the feeling I had expected from seeing the play or from rehearsing it.’

Almost accidentally, and more from natural instinct than any kind of plan, he had found all of himself subsumed into the part. Of all the Shakespearean tragic roles, Hamlet needs all the idiosyncrasies of an actor’s personality to begin with before he is subjected to the amazing richness of experience he is about to undergo. However inadequate these early performances may have been, he had seized the greatest prize of all- and which never afterwards left him- that he had plucked out the heart of Hamlet’s mystery.

A major decision was to insist that at no stage is Hamlet actually mad, though there are occasional moments when he is close to losing control. By doing this, he was able to lighten the play with comedy and wit, particularly in the scenes with Polonius. When we first encounter him, he is not only grief stricken by the death of his father, he is acutely aware that his own accession to the throne has been blocked by his uncle’s usurpation and marriage to his mother. His emotional balance is clearly disturbed and he is already playing with the idea of suicide in the first of the soliloquies. From then on, you will clearly mark the development of the character because of the certainty and skill of Gielgud’s execution. It is also the fastest ‘entirety’ Hamlet ever recorded largely due to his mastery of the architecture of the big speeches and to the perfection of his diction. The ‘Closet’ scene with Gertrude combines an emotional depth and speed that allows you to hear changes of thought in mid-sentence.

At the Haymarket, from the first instant that you set eyes on John Gielgud seated on a cross-legged ‘Hamlet’ chair close to the front edge of the stage, (as he listened intensely to the Counsell meeting being conducted by Claudius behind him), you were acutely aware of his involvement in its detail and significance. You accepted that he was a royal prince, with all the breeding and bearing of one- both consciously and unconsciously. From many possible instants, witness the arrival of Horatio, Marcellus and Bernado to meet Hamlet- joy in seeing Horatio again, recognition for Marcellus and acknowledgement for Bernado. The constraints and minor embarrassments imposed on him by his position in life were etched in with a similar subtlety.

All in all, I have seen no other performance on the stage as rich in detail. He made you feel that you had encountered, and become intimate with, an immensely complicated human being of overwhelming charm.

You will remember that the original performance was broadcast live in 1948. This accounts for a hilarious interpolation by the eccentric Esme Percy in the Osric scene in Act 5. In the tiny gap between Hamlet’s dismissal of the messenger and his turning to speak to Horatio, Osric can be heard excitedly calling out ‘Oh! Oh! He’s enchanting!’ You know, I have an idea that Shakespeare would not have objected over-much.

Review by Christina Hardyment, The Times

There are many recordings of Shakespeare’s most famous play, but now you can enjoy the most legendary of all – the live 1948 broadcast of John Gielgud’s Hamlet. It remains utterly compelling, crystal clear, totally absorbing, with a classic quality that reflects the utter rightness of the interpretation.

There is a delightful unscripted moment in Act V when Esme Percy (playing Osric) can be faintly heard calling admiringly “Oh! Oh! He’s enchanting,” during a brief Gielgud pause.

The third CD can also be put into a computer, where it functions as a CD-ROM with MP3 files, allowing us to listen to a twenty-five minute talk about the play that Gielgud gave on the BBC Third Programme six years later. It provides fascinating insights into the way he approached the role (which he played more than five-hundred times): “I kind of found the part as I went along in a very strange and sincere way which I’d never done in acting. I found for the first time a way to communicate my feeling to the audience because it was so very strong.”

About the Author: William Shakespeare (1564-1616), was born at Stratford on Avon in April 1564, and baptised on the 26th. His father, John Shakespeare, was a fell-monger and a glover; perhaps also a butcher and certainly a dealer, at times, in corn and timber. In 1557 he married Mary Arden, daughter of a wealthy farmer; and was successive chamberlain, alderman and high-bailiff of Stratford. William was the third child; one of four sisters outlived him and one of three brothers, Edmund, became an actor, and died in 1607. William was probably educated at the free school at Stratford, where, besides English, he would learn something of Latin – ‘small Latin and less Greek’.

In 1578 John Shakespeare became very unprosperous and perhaps the boy, removed from school, was apprenticed to a butcher; perhaps he was for a time an attorney’s clerk. There is a bond given previous to marriage between William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway, dated 28 November 1582. Anne Hathaway was the daughter of a yeoman of Shottery, and was eight years older than the bridegroom. The marriage may have been pressed forward by Anne’s friends in order that a child – Shakespeare’s eldest daughter, Susanna (baptised on 26 May 1583) – might be born in lawful wedlock. Two years after the birth of Susanna twins were born, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died in his twelfth year; both daughters survived their father. Three or four years after his marriage Shakespeare quitted Stratford – after a prosecution for stealing deer from the park of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. A tradition relates that Shakespeare’s first employment in London was holding the horses of gentlemen outside the theatre. Except that we find his name joined with that of his father in an attempt made in 1592 to assign a small property to the mortgagee, we know nothing certain of Shakespeare’s life from the date of his twin children’s birth until 1592 when he was an actor and a rising playwright.

In 1593 appeared his first work, the narrative poem, Venus and Adonis, dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, the poet’s patron and friend. It is an elaborate piece of Renaissance paganism, setting forth ideals of sensuous beauty in the persons of the amorous goddess and of the young hunter, whose coldness meets and foils her passion. Lucrece followed in 1594, also dedicated to Southampton; in it the lawless passion of Tarquin is confronted by the ardent chastity of the Roman wife. Both the Venus and the Lucrece became, immediately popular. Shakespeare’s earliest dramatic works consisted probably in adapting for the stage, plays which had grown out of date. Many critics regard Titus Andronicus as one example. Another of these plays is the First Part of Henry VI. It is not certain at what date Shakespeare’s career as a dramatic author began; but 1589–90 cannot be far astray. The evidence by which the chronology of Shakespeare’s works is inferred is of various kinds, including entries of publication in the Stationer’s Registers, statements about the plays and poems or allusions to them or quotations from them by contemporary writers, facts connected with the history of dramatic companies which presented plays of Shakespeare, allusions in the plays of historical events, and quotations by Shakespeare from publications of the day. We also observe the growth of Shakespeare’s imaginative power, his intellectual reach, his moral depth, his spiritual wisdom. Love’s Labour’s Lost (1590) is perhaps his first original play. The Comedy of Errors (1591), a lively tangle of farcical incidents, is founded on the Menaechmi of Plautus. The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1592), a romantic love-comedy, exhibits a marked advance in the presentation of character. This group closes with A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1593-94). No other comedy of Shakespeare has so large a lyrical element. Meanwhile he was engaged on the English historical drama. In the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI (1592), he worked upon the basis of old plays written probably by Marlowe and Greene. In King Richard III (1593) he still writes in Marlowe’s manner, though the play is wholly his own, his chief source for his historical material being Holinshed’s Chronicle. The influence of Marlowe is no longer supreme in King Richard II (1594) which with King John (1595) in style has something in common. Shakespeare as a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company appeared on several occasions before Queen Elizabeth. Before long he became a theatrical shareholder, and had gathered sufficient wealth to purchase (1597) ’New Place,’ a large house in Stratford, where he cherished friendly relations with his neighbours. During at least part of 1598–1604 he lodged with Christopher Mountjoy, a French tire-maker at Monkwell Street, Cripplegate. Romeo and Juliet is founded in the main upon a poem, Romeus and Juliet (1562), by Arthur Brooke; it has a lyrical sweetness, swiftness and intensity such as we do not find elsewhere in the author’s writings. Near to it in chronological order stands The Merchant of Venice (1596), between the earliest comedies and those which lie around the year 1600. The advance in characterisation from that of Shakespeare’s previous comedies is remarkable. Shakespeare’s mastery of comedy aids him in the historical plays which followed – the First and Second Parts of Henry IV (1597–98) and King Henry V (1599). There is a tradition that Queen Elizabeth commanded Shakespeare to exhibit Falstaff in love, and that he hastily wrote The Merry Wives of Windsor (1598–99). In the Taming of the Shrew (1597), adapted and enlarged from an old play, Shakespeare’s genius shows itself chiefly in connection with the boisterous heroine, her high spirited tamer Petruchio, and the drunken tinker. The same animal spirits and vivacity appear – but now refined and exalted – in Much Ado about Nothing (15987ndash;99). About this time he rehandled Love’s Labours Lost. As You Like It (1599), dramatised from a prose tale by Lodge, and Twelfth Night (1600–01) are the last of the wholly joyous comedies of this period.

About 1600–01 Shakespeare’s mirth becomes touched with seriousness or infected with bitterness, and soon he ceases to write comedy. Some have supposed that this is connected with events shadowed forth in Shakespeare’s Sonnets mentioned in 1598 but not published until 1609. The poems form two groups – 1–26 addressed to a beautiful young man of high station, 127–154 either addressed to or referring to a married woman of dark complexion, highly accomplished, fascinating, but of irregular conduct. Shakespeare’s young friend seems to have fallen into the hands of the woman, to whom Shakespeare was himself attached by a passion which he felt to be degrading, yet which he could not overcome. The woman yielded to the younger admirer, who was, socially, Shakespeare’s superior. Hence an alienation between the friends, but at the close all wrongs were forgotten. After 1600 Shakespeare still writes comedy, but the gaiety of the earlier comedies is gone. All’s Well that Ends Well (160–02) is least happy in its mirthful scenes. Measure for Measure (1603) hardly deserves the name of comedy; it is a searching of the mystery of self-deceit in the heart of a man and the exhibition of an ideal of virginal chastity. Perhaps it is to this date (1603) that Troilus and Cressida belongs, in which certain passages are probably by another hand than Shakespeare’s. Before he ceased for a time to write comedy Shakespeare seems to have begun the next great series of tragedies. Julius Caesar (1601) and Hamlet (1602) are tragedies in which reflection as a motive-power, holds its own with emotion. Hamlet is perhaps founded on an older play, which produced a great impression about 1588–89. Shakespeare doubtless read the story, originally derived from, Saxo Grammaticus, in the English prose of the Hystorie of Hamlet translated from the French of Belleforest. And now tragedy succeeded tragedy, each of surpassing greatness. Othello (1604), a tale of jealousy, King Lear (1605) and Macbeth (1606) – a tragedy of criminal ambition. In Antony and Cleopatra (1607), Roman manhood is sapped by the sensual witchery of the East. From Plutarch also came the material for Coriolanus (1608). Timon of Athens is only in part by Shakespeare. The last plays he wrote are comedies; but they might be aptly called romances, for romantic beauty presides over them rather than mirth. Pericles, (1608), or rather Shakespeare’s part of that play, might be better named the romance of Marina, the lost daughter of Pericles. Cymbeline (1609) is also a tale of lost children at length recovered, and of a wife separated from her husband but finally reunited with him. The Tempest may have been written in 1610; it is believed that a German play by Jacob Ayrer and The Tempest must have had some common original. The Winter’s Tale (161–11) dramatises a novel by Robert Greene. Apart from the other historical English plays both in subject and in date stands King Henry III (1612–13). Shakespeare was apparently still on the stage in 1605, but had probably left it by 1610. He sold his shares in the Globe Theatre probably between 1611 and 1613, but while residing chiefly at Stratford seems to have desired a town residence, for in 1613 he bought a house near the Blackfriars Theatre. The latter part of his life was spent in ease, retirement and in conversation with friends. In 1607 his daughter Susanna married a physician of Stratford, John Hall. In 1616 his younger daughter, Judith married Thomas Quyney, a vintner of Stratford. Elizabeth Hall, his first-born grandchild, was twice married, but died without issue in 1670, the last descendent of the poet. In March 1616 Shakespeare fell seriously ill; according to tradition the illness was a fever contracted after a merry meeting with Drayton and Ben Jonson. On 23 April 1616, which is also supposed to be his birthday, he died. He was buried in the chancel of the parish church. His widow died on 6 August 1623.