Garrick's Long Lost Alteration of Hamlet

Abstract

One incident in the life of David Garrick—Shakespeare's Priest—has subsequently evoked the harshest kind of criticism even from his professed admirers, namely, his alteration of Hamlet. James Boaden, who prefaced an edition of the actor's letters in 1831 with a biographical sketch, wrote: If there be any one act of his management which we should wish to blot out from these pages it is his rash violation of the whole scheme of Shakespeare's Hamlet … All the contrivances of Shakespeare by which he added absence from the scene to the melancholy irresolution of the character were rendered abortive. It became as much a monodrame as Timon; and the passive Hamlet was kept on the rack of perpetual exertion. His very speeches were trimmed up with startling exclamations and furious resolves: even Yoric himself was thrown out of the play to render the wit and pathos of Sterne inapplicable and unintelligible. It was an actor's mutilation of all parts but his own.

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