Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 September 2019
In Humphrey Jennings’s wartime documentary, A Diary for Timothy (shot between September 1944 and January 1945, eventually released in 1946), Hamlet makes a surprising appearance. Written by E. M. Forster and narrated by Michael Redgrave, the film is addressed to an infant, Timothy James Jenkins, who was born on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of World War II. It depicts the world – more precisely, end-of-the-war Britain – into which little Timothy was born. Towards the middle of the film, after a loud bang of a preventatively exploded landmine, the film’s narrator invites the viewers to visit London: ‘and suppose you went up to London; London in November looks a nice, quiet place, but you’d find things are chancy here, too, and the bad’s so mixed with the good, you never know what’s coming … ’. As an illustration of chancy life in London, we can take a quick glimpse at the façade of the Haymarket Theatre and quickly find ourselves in the midst of Act 5, Scene 1, of a stage production of Shakespeare’s tragedy, as the Gravedigger’s words swim in, ‘ … that day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras’. Hamlet, played by John Gielgud, enquires, ‘[h]ow long is that since?’; the response, of course, is, ‘[c]annot you tell that? Every fool can tell that.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.