Mme. Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet.
M. Lucien Muhlfeld, in the Echo de Paris, says—
“Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet is a too learned, too bookish youth, urged to action by an impending calamity. He finds the weight of existence too great for his frail shoulders. To hear Hamlet’s meditations on death through Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s lips is to realize all the vanity of life. She is the greatest of all actresses in the great dramatic masterpiece.”
It is interesting to contrast Mme. Sarah Bernhardt’s own opinions on Hamlet with the views expressed in the foregoing criticisms. In conversation with the writer, she scouted the idea that the Prince of Denmark is a complex personality. “I think his character,” she said, “a perfectly simple one. He is brought face to face with a duty, and he determines to carry it out. All his philosophizing and temporary hesitation does not alter the basis of his character. His resolution swerves, but immediately returns to the channel he has marked out for it. I know this view is quite heterodox, but I maintain it.” With a touch of characteristic determination, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt added—“It is just as well to have a decided opinion of one’s own, and adhere to it.”
“Some critics have argued that Hamlet has a feminine side to his character, displayed in his alternate excitement and depression, his terrors and his touches of cruelty. Have you sought to develop this feature?”
“Not at all. That there may or may not be something of the woman about Hamlet, is a question which might give rise to a great deal of argument, but I think his character is essentially masculine, and I have endeavoured to represent it as such.”
Further inquiry elicited the fact that Mme. Sarah Bernhardt had studied the play entirely from French versions, her acquaintance with English not permitting her to grapple with the difficulties of Shakespeare’s text. Perhaps the clearness of French literary form may have revealed to her the hitherto unsuspected simplicity of Hamlet’s character. At any rate, she does not accept the theory that Hamlet was insane. He was merely suffering, she thinks, from the bitterness of a wounded spirit; or, in other words, from that very English complaint, spleen. He thought himself deceived by all around him, and he suspected every one, but he was perfectly sane. Besides, a mad Hamlet would be mere melodrama. As to his age, Mme. Sarah Bernhardt does not agree with the theory that he was at least thirty. Twenty-five would be nearer the mark. In the play he is still a student. His friends are his seniors, and they refer to him as “Young Hamlet.” Polonius and the King speak to him in the semi-indulgent terms such as would be used towards a young man under such circumstances. The Grave-digger, it is true, speaks of Yorick’s skull as having lain in the earth three-and-twenty years, but that is probably one of those slips from which the greatest authors are not free.
“Are you satisfied with the reception of the play?” I asked.
“Perfectly,” Mme. Sarah Bernhardt replied; “and if the verdict is endorsed in London, I shall look back on Hamlet as the greatest success of my career.”