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Shakespeare & Beyond

After Sarah Bernhardt: Frances de la Tour's 1979 performance as Hamlet

Performing Hamlet cover imageJonathan Croall’s new book, Performing Hamlet, gives a decade-by-decade look (starting in the 1950s) at iconic performances of one of Shakespeare’s most well-known characters.

The book, published this summer by Bloomsbury in The Arden Shakespeare series, also contains the theater historian’s in-depth interviews with five distinguished actors who have played Hamlet in the 21st century: Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale, David Tennant, Maxine Peake, and Adrian Lester.

The excerpt below is about Frances de la Tour’s performance as Hamlet four decades ago, directed by Robert Walker at the Half Moon Theatre in London’s East End. See images from the production as well as interviews with the cast and creative team on the Stages of Half Moon website.


In 1979, in a promenade production at the Half Moon, Frances de la Tour became the first woman to play Hamlet on the English stage since Sarah Bernhardt, the idol of the French theatre, had famously taken on the role in 1899, playing a French adaptation in Paris, London and New York, and a single performance in Stratford.

The tradition went back to the late eighteenth century, with leading actresses demanding to play the role. Those who took on the part included Sarah Siddons in 1775, the first female Hamlet; the American actress Charlotte Cushman in 1861, who also played Romeo and other male roles; and in the 1880s Isabella Pateman. Bernhardt argued provocatively that the role was more suitable for a mature woman – she was 54 – than an immature man, since ‘The woman more readily looks the part, yet has the maturity of mind to grasp it.’ Critics were scathing, stating that her cocking her legs up on a couch, her ‘manly stride’ and ‘gruff howlings’, suggested an ‘angry elderly woman’ rather than a ‘young and emotional man’. In 2014 Maxine Peake carried on the tradition at the Manchester Royal Exchange.