Age is no barrier to greatness
Country Life UK|August 18, 2021
The play’s the thing as Sir Ian McKellen gives his Hamlet and classic musicals are given enlightening new twists
Michael Billington
Age is no barrier to greatness

OSCAR WILDE once wrote that ‘there is no such thing as Shakespeare’s Hamlet’. His point was that the character, more than any other in world drama, depends on the actor’s individuality. You could hardly have better proof than Sir Ian McKellen’s performance in the current production at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. Sir Ian may be 82, but his Prince is full of physical energy, intellectual zest and vocal virtuosity.

His Hamlet has its oddities, many of which spring from Sean Mathias’s production. Given that Hamlet explicitly tells us he has ‘foregone all custom of exercises’, it seems bizarre that Sir Ian should interrupt his first soliloquy by leaping onto a gymnasium bike. And when he delivers ‘to be or not to be’ as he waits for a haircut, I was struck by how rarely one feels suicidal angst when visiting the barber’s.

These, however, are directorial eccentricities. The main thing about Sir Ian’s Hamlet is that you forget, after about two minutes, that you are watching a man in his eighties and that you realise the character’s hunger for revenge is outweighed by self-doubt. When it comes to the famous passage on ‘What a piece of work is man’, Sir Ian emphatically cries ‘And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?’ as if personally exiled from an idealised humanism. Sir Ian’s ability to stress the unexpected word is seen in a later soliloquy when, astonished at the sight of the Norwegian army marching to gain a little patch of ground, he wonders why they should risk life and limb ‘even for an eggshell’. The last word leaps out at one reminding one of Shakespeare’s capacity to find cosmic significance in the commonplace.

Esta historia es de la edición August 18, 2021 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición August 18, 2021 de Country Life UK.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE COUNTRY LIFE UKVer todo
Save our family farms
Country Life UK

Save our family farms

IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
A very good dog
Country Life UK

A very good dog

THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.

time-read
1 min  |
November 27, 2024
The great astral sneeze
Country Life UK

The great astral sneeze

Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
'What a good boy am I'
Country Life UK

'What a good boy am I'

We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Forever a chorister
Country Life UK

Forever a chorister

The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Best of British
Country Life UK

Best of British

In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Old habits die hard
Country Life UK

Old habits die hard

Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It takes the biscuit
Country Life UK

It takes the biscuit

Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
It's always darkest before the dawn
Country Life UK

It's always darkest before the dawn

After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat

time-read
4 minutos  |
November 27, 2024
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
Country Life UK

Tarrying in the mulberry shade

On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.

time-read
3 minutos  |
November 27, 2024