Critical approaches to Hamlet amuse their rulers with their inventive language. Osric and Polonius seem to especially respect this suggestion. Claudius' speech is full of rhetorical figures, as is Hamlet's and, at times, Ophelia's, while Horatio, the guards, and the gravediggers use simpler methods of speech. Claudius demonstrates an authoritative control over the language of a King, referring to himself in the first person plural, and using anaphora mixed with metaphor that hearkens back to Greek political speeches. Hamlet seems the most educated in rhetoric of all the characters, using anaphora, as the king does, but also asyndeton and highly developed metaphors, while at
Hamlet on screen Hawke is the youngest of the big-screen Hamlets, at 27 when production began. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the central character, Prince Hamlet, was perceived as effeminate; so it is fitting that the earliest screen success as "Hamlet" was Sarah Bernhardt in a five-minute film of the fencing scene, in 1900. The film was a crude talkie in that music and words were recorded on phonograph records, to be played along with the film. Silent versions of the play were directed by Georges Méliès in 1907 ("Hamlet"), Luca Comerio in 1908, William George Barker in 1910, August