William Poel letter to Reginald Pole, 1925

              Mr. William Poel on Barrymore's "Hamlet" in London, 1925. I have seen Barrymore in Hamlet twice. The version he acts should not be called Shakespeare's Hamlet but scenes from Hamlet. The novelty in the performance and what drew the audience was the fact that he talked his part all the way through, and got the other actors to do the same. This is what I have all my life been asking my actors to do instead of declaiming or rather informing their parts. But Barrymore is absolutely incapable of expressing emotion, and Hamlet is all emotion. There are only three soliloquies in the play that can be talked. Then his Macready pause, a mannerism for which M. was famous, in Barrymore's hands became tiresome from repitition and exaggeration. I did not care for the setting, and the action often was in contradiction to the text. Still because of the natural speeh Barrymore was more interesting than Forbes Rob.