Five & Eighty Hamlets

Hamlet is probably the most famous play in the world. Distinguished critic, J. C. Trewin, went to it for the first time in 1922 when he was fourteen, and, thereafter, professionally, as drama critic successively of the Observer, Punch, and the Illustrated London News, he saw it repeatedly through sixty years of theatrical history. In this most unusual book of theatrical criticism he discusses all the leading Hamlets, including John Barrymore, John Gielgud, Maurice Evans, Michael Redgrave, Laurence Olivier. He reflects on how the play has sounded through its many productions, how the critics reacted, what were the backstage arguments and the changing mores of theatrical life. Trewin's criticism is not only judicious. It is impassioned.