When I watch a production of Hamlet I find myself looking at the dialogue. I try to remember how Shakespeare wrote it and then compare it to how the actors are performing it. The dialogue in Hamlet is key and the success of a production depends on having it performed successfully. In the Mel Gibson production they add a lot to the dialogue especially in the beginning. The film begins at the funeral of King Hamlet rather than on the watch with Marcellus and Bernardo. The Mel Gibson version also takes a lot of dialogue out of Hamlet including the whole idea of Fortinbras. He is not in the 1990 production so that it is shorter. As for the 1964 version where Anthony Hopkins plays Claudius, the dialogue is almost exactly the way Shakespeare

wrote it. In the Laurence Olivier version the dialogue is very near the original. The production is artistically narrated rather than all being said aloud. I think this production was very interesting and provides more explanation of Hamlet as you hear some of his great speeches as his thoughts rather than speech. The 1948 and the 1964 production were very near the actual dialogue while the 1990 version with Gibson had several differences. All three were very good but the dialogue in the Laurence Olivier production was much better.

When making a movie out of a play the director has to worry about keeping it enjoyable for the audience, therefore he might want to make it shorter. The Gibson version is obvious of this as it starts with a scene Shakespeare never wrote. It started with the funeral of the dead king. They also added a marriage celebration scene. These two scenes help people who have not studied the text to understand what has happened in the play. To put these two scenes in they took out Act 1 Scene 1 from the original text. The Gibson version also took out much of the middle scenes but it still was enjoyable. The Laurence Olivier version used narration to make the scene seem like he was thinking and we could hear his thoughts. It allowed him to use his face to express a whole lot more since he was not talking as the speeches were read. The 1964 version kept pretty close to the scenes but changed a little. The ghost scenes did not actually show a ghost, not even when Hamlet met with it. They shined a light on the faces of the actors to make it seem like a ghost had shown up of camera. It was artistic, but I prefer to see the ghost. The scene changes in all three were good and did not change the play enough to be something

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