If I said, this above all, to thine own self be true, if I said, conscience doth make cowards of us all, or if Richard Burton said,

Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, fore and resolve itself into a dune.

If Kenneth Branagh said, alas, poor Yorkorick. I knew, emirator, a fellow of the infinite jest of most...

If we all said all that, could you guess which play we're going to talk about for the next half hour?

From the Folger's Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Michael Whitmore, the Folcher's director.

Of course, we're quoting from Hamlet, Shakespeare's eminently quotable tragedy about a college student with mommy issues, dead daddy issues, baby girlfriend issues, a love of dead clowns, a hatred of actors who tear a passion to tatters, and some of the greatest

writing in the English language. Noted biographer and theater historian Jonathan Crowell

has written a new book titled Performing Hamlet,

Actors in the Modern Age, which looks at 43 of the highest profile Hamlet productions in

England over the last 50 years, exploring how Lawrence Olivier, Alec Guinness, Michael Redgrave,

Jonathan Slinger, Adrian Lester, and many, many others have portrayed one of Shakespeare's

most memorable characters. Mr. Crowell came into the studio recently to tell us what he learned.

We call this podcast, What a Piece of Work.

Jonathan Crowell is interviewed by Barbara Bogabe.

Jonathan, why don't we start the way many of the directors in your book seem to begin rehearsals for Hamlet,

which is with some background history.

So who was this figure of Hamlet that Shakespeare drew his inspiration from?

Well, the figure of Hamlet goes back a long way.

It's been in folklore in Scandinavia for many

centuries. And more recently, there was a book by somebody called Bell Forest, which had the

story of Hamlet, not quite in the same form as Shakespeare had it. So it goes back an awful long way.

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