Recently, I’ve been watching as many film versions of Hamlet as I can. Last up was Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, notable for being the first unabridged film adaptation of the play, and the last film to be shot entirely in 70mm format.
Also notable, but too often overlooked? The facial hair.
Every instance of facial hair in Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is a character of its own. These beards and mustaches do a lot of strutting and fretting. They must have had a whole team of stylists just to maintain them.
Let’s examine some key beards.
Hamlet’s is a sharp, chiseled arrangement. His soul patch comes to a dagger-point. Even when Hamlet hesitates to carry out his bloody deed, his beard remains focused. It’s a beard built for revenge.
Brian Blessed is in the role of the ghost. His beard is white and full, and it glows. This is a beard that’s been to purgatory and back. It’s a ghost in its own right: a ghost beard.
His brother Claudius, played by Derek Jacobi, has a different kind of beard altogether. It’s about as neat as a beard can get. This beard wasn’t trimmed, it was carved from the stone of Jacobi’s face. This is a beard that’s trying hard to look good. Like Claudius, it has something to hide.
In one scene, Hamlet urges Queen Gertrude to act as judge in an impromptu beard-off. Here he is, showing her pictures of her two husbands.
The picture of the king reveals a beard in its prime, full and vigorous. That beard is Denmark.
Claudius’s beard appears thin and uncertain by comparison. This beard didn’t know there was going to be a beard-off.
In another scene, Polonius gives his son Laertes advice on the maintenance of his mustache.
There are other beards worth considering, but I’ll mention just two more. Billy Crystal, in the role of the gravedigger, sports an unkempt but jocular beard, as befits a man who says funny things while digging skulls out of the ground. After Yorick died, no one thought to hire another jester, so the gravedigger makes the jokes now. He doesn’t have time to shave.
Then there’s Robin Williams, as Osric. He appears toward the end, and mops the floor with everyone else’s beard. Minor part, major beard.
Tags: movies
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Good work!
I was thinking along the same lines a month ago, b/c teaching Hamlet.
But didn’t consider minor characters–just one Hamlet to the next. It seems standard–have to have some facial hair, to be Hamlet.
I like Branagh’s goatee better than Mel Gibson’s full beard, for example.
See also Hamlet 2.
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Agreed. But what are we to make of Laurence Olivier’s beardless Hamlet? Surely it means something.
I’ll add Hamlet 2 to the agenda. Thank you, Joe!
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F-ing hilarious! Just fell in love with you. (Intellectually, not romantically. But you have made me wish I’d married someone even half as amusing.)
Jedediah Berry is the author of The Manual of Detection and this is his archive.
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