"We'll hear a play" | Hamlet at the Barbican

After a 'pre-run' of three weeks, the play has officially 'opened.' This seems to me an odd way of doing things (how can it open now when it's already been playing for three weeks?), but never mind...

Telegraph review (Dominic Cavendish)

Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet in pictures

Telegraph - review of the reviews

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

Hamlet III.2.1-14 (Oxford School Shakespeare edition, ed. Roma Gill, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

N.B. Did you know that the bit about out-Heroding Herod refers to the medieval mystery plays? The Herod character was famous for his ranting and raving; there is one glorious stage direction (and these are very rare in the medieval plays) that runs along the lines of Now shall Herod descend into the street and rave among the people.