The last Saturday in April was a picture-perfect day on the east coast of the United States. I flew to Washington in order to meet Sir Derek Jacobi during the festivities celebrating his reception of the Sir John Gielgud Award for Excellence in the Dramatic Arts. Like many others, I have seen and admired Sir Derek's television performances and have enjoyed several live performances. ....I was properly prepared to experience parts of a weekend designed by the Shakespeare Guild and the Folger Library to celebrate the superb showmanship of Sir Derek. The president of the Shakespeare Guild, John Andrews, had invited 'The Shakespeare Newsletter' to spend Saturday morning and evening with Sir Derek, at events preceding the gala celebration of Monday evening, when Jacobi was awarded the 1997 Gielgud Award (he is the second recipient of the award).

When John Andrews suggested that I join him with Jacobi and a small group for a private tour of Ford's Theatre on Saturday morning, I jumped at the opportunity for access. As I was driven downtown, I read an article on Jacobi in 'The Washington Times (April 25, 1997) which provided the best coverage of the Jacobi weekend, including the information that Sir Derek admits to being "very beguiled by the Earl Of Oxford theory....I am highly suspicious of that gentleman from Stratford on Avon. I'm pretty convinced our playwright wasn't that fellow." It seemed likely that someone would ask for more from Sir Derek on this point, but in fact his position was ignored by all the questioners I heard, including me. The reason is not far to seek. Derek Jacobi is such a warm, welcoming, and intelligent man that it was easy to forget this lapse in his reasoning powers!

Sir Derek had asked for a tour of Ford's Theatre because he and Kenneth Branagh have been exploring the possibility of filming a script about the Booth brothers. A helpful member of the National Park Service staff brought me to the stage, where the tour was in progress. At the Petersen House across the street, where Lincoln died after John Wilkes Booth shot him during a performance at the theatre, Sir Derek was moved by the death-room to quote from 'As You Like It', "a great reckoning in a little room." A photograph was taken in the back garden of the Petersen House, where the guide presented Jacobi with some momentos of his visit. Immediately after the tour, Sir Derek gave several interviews in the offices of Ford's Theatre, and 'The Shakespeare Newsletter' was there to record his answers to a wide range of questions.

Sir Derek said the text was the starting-point for portraying any role, finding what in himself corresponds to what the text suggests about the personality of a character like Hamlet. Working it out on his own then leads to the teamwork of rehearsals where the director and other actors contribute to the portrayal. Playing before an audience creates a palpable electricity, and fear, not found in the relative security of the rehearsal hall. Inspiration, which doesn't happen very often, comes only after one becomes acclimated to the tension of live performance, usually after forty performances. The sense of calm within the electricity accompanies the realization that the text becomes so much a part of him that he cannot be sure about what will happen in the next two hours.

Film and television, which lack an audience, are very self-congratulatory. However, performing the second scene of "Hamlet" for the Branagh film, which involved 600 extras and was filmed from start to finish without interruption, provided something of the excitement of working before a live audience. With 'I, Claudius', which was filmed sequentially from beginning to end, one challenge came in portraying the old Claudius in flash forwards in the early episodes, since it was necessary to anticipate what he would be like much later in the series, long before the performance actually reached that point. When the BBC sent Robert Graves a copy of the episodes, he replied, "Claudius is pleased."

Jacobi feels that actors are born; the ability is in the genes, yet there was no theatre in his family background. He grew up in London and saw theatre constantly. It was, he said, what he always knew he wanted to do--his vocation in the literal sense of the word. He first performed the title role in 'Hamlet' as a schoolboy, in a production that went to the Edinburgh Festival, where it was warmly welcomed by the critics. He went to Cambridge to study history and to act; an almost photographic memory helped him to learn scripts. Later, Jacobi talked about his early failure to become a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company; only after 21 years as a professional in various companies did he make the 21-mile journey from Birmingham (and the Birmingham Rep) to Stratford. He DID get to perform at Chichester after Olivier saw him in Birmingham as 'Henry VIII', and that experience led to eight years with the new National Theatre at the Old Vic. When he joined the RSC in 1982, he advanced an already successful career with performances as Benedick, Prospero, Peer Gynt, Cyrano. He noted that, because he studied the role of Prospero while taping a television drama in which he played Hitler, there was a certain collocation of roles, and he portrayed Prospero as an unforgiving person from whom forgiveness is forced.

He has never turned down a role, although his first reaction to the offer of a specific part is that he can't do it---he needs to be told that he can, and then he will. He noted that he prefers acting to directing: getting an idea for how to play a certain scene, he hates to "give it away," imagining how he himself could do it.

He wishes he could play Hamlet again--he feels he still hasn't plumbed the depth of the character's mystery--but our youth-oriented culture militates against such a wish. Asked about the Zeffirelli film, Jacobi said that he thought it not bad at all, but Mel Gibson's portrayal was a bit bland, and he didn't sweat enough---of course, Zeffirelli made some "stunningly awful" cuts.

When SNL asked what Shakespearean roles Jacobi would still like to perform, he said that he would like to re-play both Prospero and Macbeth and "eventually have a go at Lear." He portrayed France in the Renaissance Theatre recording of the play when the actor originally cast, Gerard Depardieu, could not do it because of a scheduling conflict. Jacobi noted that there is a thread of such lucky accidents in his career---recently he was chosen for a film role that Malcolm McDowell had rejected. He said that playing Claudius forced him to look at Hamlet from another point of view--it would be worth researching the part in terms of the various perspectives of everybody else on stage, and he wished he had done so when playing the title role--if only, he wished again, he could have another go!

Asked about how he "cut" the text of 'Hamlet' when he directed Kenneth Branagh, he said that, knowing the text so well, he found it rather easy to cut in places where the play "dipped" in performance on stage; he quite deliberately reassigned speeches from Claudius and Polonius to Gertrude ("one of the great underwritten parts"). When he spoke about this production later in the day, Jacobi noted several more interesting details about his version, including his decision to have Hamlet and Fortinbras, who do not recognize each other, converse just before the final soliloquy, in the exchange that Shakespeare gives to one of Fortinbras' captains. Also, in the final scene, Horatio is shot by Fortinbras, who wants NO survivors of the old order; could this detail have inspired Branagh's over-the-top portrayal of Fortinbras' takeover in his film version? By the same token, Branagh obviously remembered that, in the Jacobi production, Hamlet addresses his most famous "soliloquy" to Ophelia. In his Forward to the Everyman edition of the play, Jacobi says: "Over the years since I first began playing Hamlet, I have become more and more convinced that "To be or not to be" is to be treated not as a soliloquy, but as a dramatic speech to Ophelia......The irony is that the speech is about the very things that happen to Ophelia---madness and suicide. She goes mad and commits suicide, virtually. Hamlet talks about both, but experiences neither. In effect, though, hearing this speech plants the seed in Ophelia's mind." Earlier in the same Forward, Jacobi observes that "Hamlet goes on a voyage of self-discovery. I don't believe that he's ever truly mad. There are three occasions in the play, maybe four, when he drives himself to the edge of madness, but he never actually topples over that edge. He is in control of his own destiny for a great deal of the play."

Saturday Evening at the Folger:

Later on Saturday, again as a guest of John Andrews and The Shakespeare Guild, I attended "An Evening With Sir Derek Jacobi" in the Elizabethan Theatre at the Folger Library. Sitting on stage with John Andrews and Mark Olshaker (the filmmaker who created 'Discovering Hamlet'), Jacobi commented on six brief clips from his work. When he saw the third excerpt, from his starring role in the BBC 'Richard II', he recalled that John Gielgud, who played Gaunt in the same production, gave him a signed copy of his script, inscribed "To a worthy successor in a wonderful part." Jacobi recalled a similar experience in another role: impressed with Michael Redgrave's performance as Hamlet, Forbes-Robertson gave his younger colleague an edition of 'Hamlet' that he had used; Redgrave gave the edition to Peter O'Toole, who came up on stage after one of Sir Derek's performances to present it to him. Jacobi has now given the edition to Kenneth Branagh.

After watching clips from his performances as Cyrano, Hitler and the emperor Claudius, Jacobi observed that Hitler was an actor whose rages were often staged. Indeed, Sir Derek noted that politicians, teachers, priests--anyone with an audience--had better be good actors. Taking questions from the audience at the Folger, Jacobi volunteered his opinion about Kenneth Branagh's boldness in directing himself in his own performances by noting that Branagh is a master at seeing himself and making objective judgments about himself, an ability Jacobi readily admitted he lacks. He said that he envies Branagh his youth and his abundant talent, and that he regards Branagh as a "beacon" to other actors.

The Weekend Continues:

Later during his long weekend in Washington, Sir Derek returned to the Folger for the award ceremony, when he was lauded by many colleagues, including Branagh, who praised Jacobi's "wit, originality, and honesty: quite frankly he makes us proud to be in the same profession." Branagh also noted "an ongoing sweetness of character that makes him the most popular of actors' actors." Dame Diana Rigg presented the award. In accepting the Golden Quill, Sir Derek began to reminisce about his portrayal of Richard II for the BBC and then, in the words of 'The Washington Post', "suddenly he was reciting--in character--a succession of the king's speeches from Act 4, when he loses the crown. For a full 10 minutes, Jacobi riveted the startled crowd, his performance a slow, heart-rending tour de force of magisterial anger, humiliation and failure. A standing ovation followed immediately." What an unscheduled treat the crowd at the Folger had!

Later still, there was a White House reception and a luncheon at the National Press Club, televised on C-Span.

Reflecting on Sir Derek Jacobi's contribution to our understanding of Shakespeare, I am struck by the range of his talent and by the sheer hard work he evidently employs to succeed in a variety of roles. He seems to possess an intuitive grasp of the "key" to different characters, no doubt the result of long and careful study of the roles. Before he played Claudius in Branagh's film, Jacobi took the part in a radio production and wrote about the experience: "For all the times I've worked on 'Hamlet' as actor or director, I have never seen myself as a Claudius. Whereas on stage I would use other means to convince myself and an audience that I am Claudius, in a recording there is only the voice, and I'm not sure if I possess the right Claudian voice. It all depends on the picture you have of him. He's often played as a physically large, almost Falstaffian figure but I prefer to see him as a suave diplomat, even something of a playboy, who genuinely loves Gertrude and who wants everybody to have a good time." Surely this picture anticipates his own performance in Branagh's film and helps to explain why he has said that, of all the Claudiuses he has experienced, Patrick Stewart (who played the king opposite Jacobi in the BBC production) was the most satisfying.

One hopes that Derek Jacobi will find the time to write at greater length about his many experiences with 'Hamlet', which he describes as "probably the clearest and most accessible of all of Shakespeare's plays, largely because it's such a wonderful story, with wonderful dramatic sweep rhythmically throughout the evening." Meanwhile, we quote with approval J.C.Trewin's appraisal in his "Five and Eighty Hamlets": "The period's most regarded Hamlet, on tour and at the old Vic, was Derek Jacobi.....Logical, graceful, possibly the most touching Hamlet since John Neville, but fortified always by his fiery spirit, he re-charged my faith in the courtier's, soldier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword. To listen to him was like reading the play in a fresh format."

Despite my admiration for many other Hamlet, including Stacy Keach, Richard Burton, and Kenneth Branagh, I remain an ardent fan of Jacobi's BBC performance. I share Sir Derek's wish that he could essay the role again, and this time in an uncut version.