Who Said it Better? That is The Question...

"To be, or not to be" performed by Ethan Hawke (2000)

"To be, or not to be" performed by Sir Laurence Olivier (1948)

Although these clips say the exact same words, they are very different. Because this soliloquy is so famous around the world, each actor tries to put their own spin on it to captivate the viewer. I picked these two movies because I wanted to observe the change in the way that the actors played the parts over time. The biggest and most obvious difference between these movies is the time, from 1948 to 2000.

In the modernized edition, the actor starts out walking slowly down an isle of movies at Blockbuster. Although it may seem minimal, the category of movies he is walking through, action, is very important. Also, the version performed by Ethan Hawke is a modernized version, so he cannot just sit on top of a rock like Sir Laurence Olivier does, he has to use the setting around him as a symbol for what is happening in the play. Walking down the action section toward a T.V. screen that plays a violent movie is foreshadowing how his actions will lead to violence.

In the scene performed by sir Laurence Olivier, Hamlet is deeply troubled and is considering suicide. His voice is too calm in the beginning, but is overly emotional by the end of the scene. This scene is much more consistent with the setting and the era that the play was written for, but the acting was not up to par. I thought that Ethan Hawke was much more convincing because he demonstrates the cycle of the welling up and suppression of his emotions much better than Olivier.

The similarities between these two scenes are, at a glance, obvious, but with a closer look, the differences became more interesting. The actors were really able to take this wherever they wanted because there is no right, original way to do Shakespeare. It is truly anybody's game.