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"This is the story of a man who couldn't make up his mind."

That voice-over at the beginning of Olivier's Hamlet makes no sense in relation to the story (and the movie) that follows. In fact, even though that's Olivier doing the voice-over, he doesn't play it that way.

I had a great English Lit. professor who taught Shakespeare. She also took issue with this line (not written by Shakespeare) and wondered what it was doing there. She did say that this was a common interpretation of Hamlet, but she disagreed with it strenuously. She said that when actors try to play it as if Hamlet was really indecisive, it weakens some of the major story elements.

True, Hamlet passed up a couple of opportunities to kill Claudius when he could have, which may make him seem to be waffling, but there is a darned good reason for that. The prof (and for the life of me, I can't remember her name!) said that the real key to Hamlet's hesitancy is found in Act I, scene 1, when the ghost appears. When Hamlet asks, "Are you a spirit of health, or a goblin damned?" this is not just a casual question. There was a common belief at the time that the Devil, or some other evil spirit might appear to someone and try to lead them to commit some unspeakable act (such as killing a king) that would damn their souls to Hell. Hamlet needed to verify that this was, indeed, the ghost of his father and not some "goblin damned." So he acted like he had lost his reason as a cover while he played detective, attempting to determine the facts for himself rather than just taking the ghost's word for it.

And this was the way Lawrence Olivier actually played it, despite the voice-over.

Don Firth

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