There Is Nothing Like a Dane!
The Lighter Side of Hamlet
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
There is Nothing Like a Dane is an affectionate compilation of mostly funny (but sometimes serious) bits and pieces about Hamlet - interwoven with Clive Francis's delectable caricatures of various members of the theatrical profession strutting their stuff.
The great hall of fame is duly visited, though its inhabitants are not always as dignified as they would like to seem. Here are glimpses in word and pictures of the likes of Donald Wolfit, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, Henry Irving, Jonathan Pryce, John Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Richard Burton and of course, Laurence Olivier. The tone is also elevated now and then by contributions from great writers such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding and P.G. Wodehouse. But the chief delight is in the unexpected: a stubbornly mustachioed Ophelia in Poona, India, an inadvertently horn-rimmed Hamlet on London's Waterloo Road - and would you believe Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper and even June Whitfield as the Prince of Denmark?
This is a book for actors and audiences - and Shakespeare buffs on their day off.
"A charming bit of fluff for Shakespeare enthusiasts."--Publishers Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hamlet"is, without a doubt, the most famous play ever written; certainly the most quoted and certainly the most talked about which is amazing when you consider that there are no jokes in it." So says actor and caricaturist Francis, and for those who prefer their Shakespeare with a bit of humor, he obliges with this anthology of poems, musings and reminiscences that make light of the dark Dane. Peter O'Toole called it"the worst play ever written." The"duke" in Huckleberry Finn mangles Hamlet's soliloquy as he recites it from memory ("To be or not to be; that is the bare bodkin/That makes calamity of so long life"). And director Tony Richardson recalls his casting of Nicol Williamson as the prince in 1969--lauded at first, Williamson became a erratic after awhile: he"walked off or interrupted the show several times...to the titillation of audiences," and began overacting recklessly. This is a charming bit of fluff for Shakespeare enthusiasts.
