To Daniel MacGhie Cory
Rome. January 24, 1935
Certainly you should see this new Hamlet. When I saw the portrait—there is no name to it—I said to myself: “This is Hamlet himself. Where did they get the picture?” Then after a moment I wondered if it could be you: the face is very like yours: only the hair looked too natural for a wig. Then I read reasonably and learned the facts. I am quite ready to believe that he is better than Forbes Robertson, who was simply inoffensive, not an actor of any native power. He is also likely to be better than Irving, who was fundamentally absurd, although with a certain suggestion of poetry à la Merideth: affected, pre-Raphaelite and Bohemian. John Gielgud seems to be natural, young, pensive, and deep: but there is one thing he probably is not, namely, princely. Shakespeare’s Hamlet is princely: in those days it was a quality people had before their eyes, and understood inwardly; but now we all live intellectually in Bloomsbury.
From The Letters of George Santayana: Book Five, 1933-1936. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003.
Location of manuscript: Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY.