Murder most foul?
By Elizabeth Knowles
David Bevington’s Murder Most Foul: Hamlet Through the Ages gives an engrossing account of Hamlet through the centuries, with delightful glimpses of great theatrical moments, and actors, of the past. We learn of the tragic actor John Philip Kemble that his Hamlet took twenty minutes longer than anyone else’s because of the pauses he inserted for emphasis (Bevington tells us that the wit and writer Richard Brinsley Sheridan suggested filling up the intervals with music).