ABSTRACT
Casting Hamlet is a supreme challenge to the stage, and it gets no easier. In part it is simply gladiatorial, a challenge for the ambitious young actor to seek and overcome. As a way of coding the difficulties of the problem, Shakespeare propose two archetypes of contemporary Hamlets, the Prince and the Rebel. The locus classicus of the rebel tradition came with Nicol Williamson's Tyneside student, in revolt at least in part against the genteel Southern Establishment. This was a notable Hamlet, staged at the Roundhouse in 1969 and filmed shortly after. The anti-Romantic Hamlet may stem from the actor's perception that the Romantic case will not do. At the National Theatre Hamlet which Richard Eyre directed in 1989, Jeremy Northam made even Osric an intelligent and supple courtier, one who understandably sees Hamlet as a threat to the realm which must at all costs be neutralized.
