While
it will be impossible to know how Richard Burbage (c. 1568-1619) interpreted
the part of Hamlet (or any of the other great Shakespearean roles that he created,
like Othello, Lear, Romeo, Henry V, Macbeth, Malvolio, or Richard III), it is
equally impossible not to hold in awe his participation in the creation of these
monumental roles. For unlike Gielgud, Olivier, Booth, Irving, or Betterton,
he had no precursors to recall while he worked on his performance for this monumentally
complex character. It is known that Hamlet was considered from its premiere
in either 1600 or 1601 as one of the greatest works of the English stage, and
it is inconceivable that Burbage as the creator of the role (and shareholder
in the Globe Theatre) did not have significant input into the part's creation.
Burbage was undeniably the greatest tragedian of his generation (as well as
a gifted painter and theatre manager), and his death was lamented by an anonymous
poet who composed for him A Funerall Elegye on the Death of the famous Actor
Richard Burbedg who died on Saturday in Lent the 13 of March 1618, an excerpt
of which reads:
He's gone and with him what
a world are dead.
Which he review'd, to be revived so,
No more young Hamlet, old Hieronimo
Kind Lear, the Grieved Moor, and more beside,
That lived in him; have now for ever died.
Shakespeare himself thought highly enough of Burbage to make him one of the beneficiaries in his will (along with John Hemynge and Henry Cundell) to receive a bequest of 26 shillings 8 pence apiece "to buy them rings" as a remembrance of their association with the Bard.