William Shakespeare, the busiest playwright in July
There have been 66 known productions of Hamlet on Broadway since 1761, the last one in 2009 starring Jude Law; 48 Macbeths (Ethan Hawke in 2013), 36 Romeo and Juliets (Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad in 2013), 31 Twelfth Nights (the last one starring Mark Rylance as Olivia in 2013), 21 Othellos (James Earl Jones, in 1982), 20 King Lears (Glenda Jackson in 2019), 20 Julius Caesars (William Sadler in 2005, opposite Denzel Washington as Brutus), only 11 A Midsummer Night’s Dreams. True there have been no known Pericles, but it’s safe to say that William Shakespeare is Broadway’s most prolific, popular and enduring playwright.
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Hamlet
A program for Edwin Booth in Hamlet, 1866. Edwin Booth as Hamlet. He first performed the role at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1864, and last at the Broadway Theatre in 1891.
Booth as Hamlet
Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet. She performed the role in 1900 at the Garden Theatre.
E.H. Sothern as Hamlet and Julia Marlowe as Ophelia, sometime after 1904. A famous acting couple even before they were married (which they did in 1911) they performed together in some dozen productions of “Hamlet” over two decades. A possibly apocryphal story has it that during the first week of Sothern’s first production of “Hamlet” in New York, in 1900, he was stabbed in the foot by Laertes’ sword and was stricken with blood poisoning, thus forced to close the production.
John Barrymore as Hamlet in 1923
Lillian Gish as Ophelia in Hamlet, 1936
John Gielgud as Hamlet 1938
Sam Waterston as Hamlet, 1975
Jude Law as Hamlet, 2009
Richard Burton, 1964
Macbeth
E.H. Sothern in Macbeth,1911
Florence Reed as Lady Macbeth 1928
Maurice Evans in Macbeth, 1941
Flora Robson and Michael Redgrave in Macbeth, 1948
Ethan Hawke as Macbeth in 2013
Alan Cumming as Macbeth in 2013, a one-man version that takes place in an asylum
Glenda Jackson and Christopher Plummer, 1988
Romeo and Juliet
Katharine Cornell as Juliet and Basil Rathbone as Romeo in “Romeo and Juliet”. 1934
Romeo and Juliet 1899 Maude Adams as Juliet and William Faversham as Romeo
Eleanor Robson and Kyrle Bellew in Romeo and Juliet 1903
Eva Le Gallienne as Juliet 1933
Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in Romeo and Juliet in 1940. The actors became newlyweds shortly afterward.
Martin Sheen and Susan McArthur in Romeo and Juliet 1968
Twelfth Night
Ellen Terry as Viola in Twelfth Night , 1884
Twelfth Night, 1919, with E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe.
Helen Hayes as Viola in Twelfth Night 1940
Maurice Evans as Malvolio in Twelfth Night 1940
Judi Dench in Twelfth Night. Now, this is cheating a little because this photograph of her is as Viola in the RSC production in 1969. But Dame Judi made her Broadway debut in Twelfth Night in 1958, on her 24th birthday, as Maria, Olivia’s woman in waiting.
Paul Rudd in Twelfth Night 1998
Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night on Broadway
