Adriaen van Utrecht (formerly attributed to Pieter de Ring, then to Pieter Adrienszoon van der Venne): Vanitas Still Life w. Bouquet and Skull (ca. 1642, private collection)
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Celebrated though Garrick's acting was, his productions nevertheless suffered substantial criticism due to what many saw as his all too great eagerness to "Frenchify" Shakespeare's works in order to please his friends and correspondents from across the Channel, and placate voices like that of Voltaire – not least by trimming the play down to three acts, extensively rewriting it, and expunging, in the process, the better part of Act V, including the entire Gravedigger scene, which Voltaire had found so particularly objectionable. But while shortly after the first performance of his altered version on December 18, 1772, he could still be found boasting about his "bold deed," not even a month later, on January 10, 1773, he woefully commented in a letter to politician Sir William Young that his meddling with Shakespeare's text was in fact "the most imprudent thing" he had ever done in his life. (The Letters of David Garrick, eds. David M. Little and George M. Kahrl, 3 vols., Harvard University Press Cambridge, MA, 1963.)
Mere days before the first performance of Garrick's revised version, none other than his friend and biographer Arthur Murphy had even written and privately circulated a parody entitled "Hamlet, with Alterations," which, building on the lore that the Bard himself had played the Ghost during his play's original productions, had Shakespeare's ghost haunting the Drury Lane playhouse and appearing to his self-styled "son" and heir David Garrick – in turn, characterised as an amalgamation of Hamlet and Claudius (!) – to chide him for tampering with his immortal lines.
On the other hand, Garrick's adaptation did include the full text of the "play within the play," which had not been performed in over a century – he only omitted the dumb show – and critical insight notwithstanding, his production also proved an enormous crowd pleaser: its last performance on May 30, 1776, sold out in a mere two hours. It has, however, never again been staged since, and the only surviving copy of its prompt book now rests in the archives of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.
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Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.