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Arts feature

John Gielgud and Richard Burton’s fraught, botched, triumphant Hamlet

Robert Gore-Langton on John Gielgud and Richard Burton’s fraught, botched, triumphant Hamlet

29 April 2023

9:00 AM

29 April 2023

9:00 AM

In 1963 two Hamlets went into production: one directed by Laurence Olivier, the other by John Gielgud. The situation had been engineered by Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole. The story goes that while shooting the film Becket, Burton and O’Toole had decided they should each play the Prince under either Olivier or Gielgud and they tossed a coin over who would get which director.

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