Emma Thompson's Shakespearean phase came during her seven-year marriage to actor/director Kenneth Branagh, when he cast her as Princess Katherine in his film of Henry V and as Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream and (in an appallingly self-indulgent and ineffective performance) as a hunchbacked Fool in King Lear. Her one great Shakespearean triumph was her dazzling and gorgeous Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, first under Judi Dench's direction at the Phoenix Theatre in London, and afterwards in her then-husband's film. Featuring only a serviceable performance by Branagh as Benedick and laughably inadequate ones by Michael Keaton as Dogberry and Keanu Reeves as Don John, Thompson is the radiant star of the film, providing an insightful and clever performance that never fails to charm. The New York Times said of her Beatrice "Ms. Thompson is enchanting. Looking gloriously tanned and windblown, wearing the kinds of gauzy slip-ons that today would be for apres-swim in Majorca, she moves through the film like an especially desirable, unstoppable life force. Her submission to Benedick is as moving as his submission to her."

Laurence Olivier wrote in in autobiography that he only took on King Lear during the Old Vic's 1946 season because his co-director Ralph Richardson had selected Cyrano de Bergerac for himself (a character Olivier deeply wanted to play) and he picked Lear because he knew it was Richardson's most coveted role and he was hoping to entice his partner to swap parts. Richardson declined the offer, so Olivier (buried under a mountain of makeup and false hair that many critics said obscured his speech) had his only unsuccessful performance of those legendary Old Vic seasons (he achieved much better results with his Emmy-winning television production in 1983). The one universally acclaimed aspect of the production was the portrayal of The Fool by a rising young star at the Old Vic named Alec Guinness (1914-2000), just returned from military service, who would be entrusted with leading roles like Richard II (which Guinness later dismissed as an inferior imitation of his mentor Gielgud) and Klestakov in The Inspector General when Olivier and Richardson were otherwise engaged with film work. His Fool dominated the production beside his over-parted fabled co-star in King Lear, who Guinness revealed in his diaries that he respected but personally disliked. The actor-manager would have the stage lights raised on him and dimmed on the other actors while he was onstage, but because Guinness stood so closely to him, he was able to literally steal Olivier's spotlight. Of his Fool, John Simon wrote "This is a thinking man's actor; those who saw his Fool in King Lear describe him as the most philosophical Fool of all" and Eric Known wrote in Punch that "Few actors succeed in getting through the incongruity to the enormous pathos behind, but Mr. Guinness does this brilliantly. His Fool is infinitely sad and infinitely humorous and for once Lear's affection for him can be understood." Perhaps the most glowing review was when the notoriously self-deprecating Guinness later admitted "I was very good in that - even I had to admit it."

Guinness' first Shakespearean role had been Osric in John Gielgud's historic production of Hamlet in 1934 at the New Theater and he remained part of Gielgud's stock company and contributed memorable performances as the Apothecary in Romeo & Juliet, Aumerele in Richard II and Lorenzo in The Merchant of Venice. He went to the Old Vic for the 1936/37 season to play minor supporting roles like Osric again (this time opposite Olivier's Hamlet), Boyet in Love Labor's Lost, Exetor in Henry V and Le Beau and William in As You Like It. He made an impression as Andrew Aegucheek in Twelfth Night (opposite Oliver's acclaimed Toby Belch) and when he returned to the Vic in 1939, his star had risen to the point where he was playing a highly-praised Hamlet (pictured).

The war intervened and after Guinness came back and reestablished his place in the profession at the Old Vic, he career took a different turn as a film star (notably in the comedies he made for Ealing Studios like Kind Hearts and Coronets and The Lavender Hill Mob, and later in David Lean's epics like Bridge on the River Kwai, for which Guinness won the Academy Award, before he was immortalized as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars) and his Shakespearean work was few and far between. His self-directed Hamlet at the New Theater in 1951 was a huge disappointment, marred by Guinness' indecisive staging and lackluster performance. He fared better as Richard III and the King of France in All's Well That Ends Well that served as the inaugural productions of the Shakespeare Playhouse at Stratford, Ontario in 1953, but then his Shakespearean well ran dry. He made only one final performance in a Shakespearean role, in a disastrous Macbeth (pictured) opposite Simone Signoret in London in 1966, and then closed the book on his association with the Bard.

Although most of the notices for Peter Brooks' historic production of A Midsummer Night's Dream went to Peter Brook, the cast of the legendary staging set in a circus atmosphere included some actors that would go on to become international names like Patrick Stewart and Ben Kingsley. The actor who stood out amongst the ensemble was Alan Howard, who doubled as Oberon and Theseus, a dual casting that is common now but was unprecedented when Brooks' Midsummer debuted for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1970 and would go on to tour throughout the world until 1979. In addition to doubling two of the longest roles in Shakespearean comedy, Howard (along with John Kane as Puck) had to learn to perform such circus stunts as balancing on a trapeze while delivering the demanding poetry spoken by Oberon. Peter Roberts wrote in Plays and Players, "Alan Howard, whether as the Athenian Duke or his alter ego, the fairy lord, Oberon, stands at the center of this production. And he does so with an unassertive authority richly exploiting the ironical overtones in the closing scene and its return from Oberon to Theseus in a way that is particularly gratifying for those who thought him last year's most promising actor."

Howard would go on to become one of the most committed company actors in history while still enjoying remarkable personal successes as Hamlet (1970), Prince Hal and Henry V (1976), Coriolanus (1978), Richard II and Richard III (1980) and the Shakespeare pastiche The Hollow Crown (2005), as well as non-Shakespearean roles in plays like in Wild Oats, Good, and Pygmalion. But he is probably most familiar to the general public as the voice of the evil Sauron in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Paul Scofield (1922-2008) considered Timon of Athens one of his most fascinating roles when he played the part in John Schlesinger's 1965 production of the rarely produced tragedy at Stratford-upon-Avon, taking the assignment after John Gielgud turned it down. Gielgud regarded the play as "an indifferent version of Lear," which Scofield had played in a legendary production for the RSC in 1962. Some critics felt that Scofield's Timon had a passion and power that his Lear lacked, and his powerful performance caused many to reconsider what was previously regarded as an impenetrable and pessimistic play (actor Robert Speaight thought that "the excess of his misanthropy was a measure of his growth"), winning Scofield the Plays and Players London Theatre Critics Award. The London Times wrote "His way of handling verse often suggests a man struggling to lift a heavy weight, or being carried along by it momentum; and this part gives stupendous exercise to his technique." And Bernard Levin of the Daily Mail opined "Not since the famous Olivier-Brook Titus Andronicus has a long underrated play revealed such unexpected depths."

Richard Burton (1925-1984) is now regarded as one of the most technically gifted actors who ever lived that could rise to the heights of Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf, Becket and Equus but whose chronic alcoholism and quest for easy paychecks saw him abuse his talent in hammy performances in some of the worst movies ever made like Circle of Two, The Klansman and Exorcist II: The Heretic. But there was a time in the early 1950s before booze and the lure of Hollywood destroyed him that Burton was regarded as the heir to the mantle of Olivier and Gielgud. He first came to prominence at Stratford during Anthony Quayle's 1952 "history cycle season" in which he was highly praised as Prince Hal in Henry IV parts I and II, although his youthful Henry V was found wanting. The season got him a contract from 20th Century Fox in the U.S. where he gave Oscar-nominated performances in My Cousin Rachel and The Robe. Still the committed Shakespearean, he scampered back to England and the Old Vic for a breakthrough season where he enjoyed triumphs as Coriolanus, Caliban and Philip of Cognac in King John, although his Hamlet was disliked by Gielgud, who came to his dressing room afterwards and famously dropped the brick "Shall I come back when you're better...I mean ready?"

At the end of Burton's first Old Vic season, he came back to Hollywood for a string of terrible flops with titles like Prince of Players, Alexander the Great, and Rains of Ranchipur. He was desperate for some artistic redemption and returned to the Vic for the greatest theatrical triumph of his career, in his second assault on Henry V under the direction of Michael Benthall. This time, Burton's performance received universal raves with the most exacting of critics, Kenneth Tynan, writing "Mr. Burton's progress as an actor is such that already he is able to make good all lacks of strength a few short years ago...what was gratingly metallic has been transformed into a steely strength which becomes the martial ring and hard brilliance of the patriotic verse. There now appears a romantic sense of a high kingly mission and the clear cognizance of the capacity to fulfill it...the whole performance - a most satisfying one - is firmly under control of the imagination." Burton was the sensation of London and won the Evening Standard Award.

The Old Vic did its best to exploit the popularity of Burton and its other rising star John Neville by casting them in a misguided production of Othello in which they alternated the roles of the Moor and Iago, but Burton had had enough. At the end of his second Old Vic season, he left the London stage never to return. He made occasional appearances on Broadway to good advantage in Time Remembered opposite Helen Hayes and the musical Camelot (for which he won a Tony Award) and made his last significant stab at Shakespeare in a live theater when he returned to Hamlet under Gielgud's direction. Staged amidst the chaos of "Liz and Dick" mania (Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - pictured arriving at the Toronto Airport amidst a crowd of reporters to begin out-of-town tryouts - were married for the first time while he was in rehearsals), the production was a decidedly mixed bag with Burton contributing a sometimes-powerful but often self-indulgent performance and the only universally admired actor was Hume Cronyn as a definitive Polonius. It nonetheless became the longest-running Hamlet in the history of Broadway, during which Taylor dubbed Burton "the Frank Sinatra of Shakespeare."

Burton virtually turned his back on theater after that, only taking part in an obscure production of Doctor Faustus at Oxford in 1966. After his reputation declined following five years of indifferent movies, he attempted a comeback in the film of Peter Shaffer's award-winning play Equus but the producers insisted Burton take over the part during its Broadway run as an audition (he won a special Tony Award for his efforts and gave a superb performance in the otherwise flawed film, receiving his final Oscar nomination). His film career disintegrated after that and he agreed to revive his Tony-winning role of King Arthur in a tour of Camelot at an astronomical salary but back problems forced him to withdraw and give up the role to his friend Richard Harris, who had played it in the 1967 film. Burton's last stage appearance was a transparently cynical production of Private Lives (pictured) with his ex-wife Elizabeth Taylor (who had enjoyed a Broadway triumph in The Little Foxes shortly before). It was a box office hit and a critical disaster.

Henry Irving had already established himself as the Hamlet of his generation when he invited Ellen Terry (1849-1928) to be his leading lady at the Lyceum Theatre and play Ophelia in a London revival of the staging, which Irving was then trying out in Birmingham."When he engaged me to play Ophelia in 1878," wrote Terry with characteristic modesty in her memoirs, "he asked me to go down to Birmingham to see the play, and that night I saw what I shall always consider the perfection of acting. It had been wonderful in 1874. In 1878 it was far more wonderful. It has been said that when he had the 'advantage' of my Ophelia, his Hamlet 'improved.' I don't think so. He was always quite independent of the people with whom he acted." Audiences disagreed, for though Irving's 1874 Hamlet ran an unprecedented 200 nights, critics were unanimous in the opinion that the addition of Terry to the cast transformed the production into the definitive staging of the play. John Knight wrote that she was "picturesque, tender, and womanly throughout." She continued playing Ophelia for ten years, beginning a love affair with London audiences that has never been approached by any other actress. George Bernard Shaw wrote "Ellen Terry is the most beautiful name in the world; it rings like a chime through the last quarter of the nineteenth century,"

In preparation for Ophelia, Terry "went to the madhouse to study wits astray. I was disheartened at first. There was no beauty, no nature, no pity in most of the lunatics. Strange as it may sound, they were too theatrical to teach me anything. Then, just as I was going away, I noticed a young girl gazing at the wall. I went between her and the wall to see her face. It was quite vacant, but the body expressed that she was waiting, waiting. Suddenly she threw up her hands and sped across the room like a swallow. I never forgot it. She was very thin, very pathetic, very young, and the movement was as poignant as it was beautiful." Terry was able to bring that poignancy to her historic Ophelia and virtually every other role she played.

When Ben Kingsley played Hamlet in London in 1976, he was said to be so nervous the night before his opening that a friend of his took him to the top of a tall building to look at all the millions of lights in the city to remind him that only one of them was the Round House Theatre. What the exercise failed to take into account was that the light was one of the city's brightest the following night, as Kingsley performance as Hamlet in modern dress was one of the finest ever conceived. Kingsley was a respected Shakespearean actor who first appeared at the RSC in 1967 (including playing Demetrius in Peter Brooks' historic A Midsummer Night's Dream and Mosca opposite Paul Scofield's Volpone), but it was his critically acclaimed Hamlet (first performed at the Other Place at Stratford, pitched naturalistically low to suit the small playing space) that put him on the theatrical map.

After his Academy Award-winning performance in Gandhi (1982), Kingsley's career took a different turn as a major movie star and his theatre performances became increasingly rare, although he did appear in a one-man show about Edmund Kean on Broadway in 1983 and as the title role in Othello (pictured) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 1985 to a positive, if guarded, critical reception (Benedict Nightingale wrote in the New York Times that "His is a fine and distinguished Othello, but maybe too fine and distinguished to be altogether excellent"). Kingsley followed up Gandhi with an amusing performance as Frank Ford in an otherwise labored telecast of The Merry Wives of Windsor for the BBC's Complete Works of William Shakespeare project and has appeared in only one other Shakespearean role on film since, miscast as Feste in the overly-somber 1996 Twelfth Night.

Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852-1917) produced the most elaborate Shakespearean productions of the late nineteenth century, and though he was shunned by the critics when he took on leading man roles like Hamlet, Hotspur, and Macbeth, the public adored him and clamored to see him in almost anything he did as long as he produced the spectacle for which he was renowned. He was a character actor without peer, and was acclaimed in roles like Svengali in Trilby, Falstaff, King John, and especially as Nick Bottom in his legendary production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1900. Beerbohm Tree greeted the new century with his most lavish and famous production, with scenery that included massive columns in Theseus's palace, an enchanted forest with seemingly acres of flowers and real trees stretching to the back of the stage, and a legion of extra fairies played by children. Beerbohm Tree took center stage in his most famous Shakespearean role as Bottom, and was so popular with his devoted audience that the production ran 153 performances. He revived it for years afterwards, most famously in 1911 when live rabbits appeared following trails of bran around the stage.

Tree was an important theatrical force up until his early death from an accident at 64, creating the role of Henry Higgins in Shaw's Pygmalion in 1914 and producing the most financially successful theatre production of the first quarter of the twentieth century, Chu Chin Chow, a "Musical Tale of the East" in 1916 which ran for an amazing 2,238 performances at a time when 200 performances was considered a long run, holding the record until The Mousetrap opened in 1955. He was also a trailblazer in motion pictures, becoming the first notable actor to appear in silent movies as early as 1899, when he filmed scenes from King John, and continued filming until the year prior to his death, when he filmed Macbeth (pictured). Beerbohm Tree acknowledged his debt to to public for his success by founding the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1904 and was rewarded with a knighthood in 1909. He was not completely without fault - though he was married to his leading lady Maud Holt from 1883 until his death, he fathered several illegitimate children with May Pinney, including Peter Reed, the father of actor Oliver Reed, and film director Carol Reed, who directed another great Bottom, Ralph Richardson, in a cinema masterpiece, The Fallen Idol.

Ian Holm (1931-2020) suffered an overwhelming case of stage fright in 1976 while performing in The Iceman Cometh and was forced to retire from the theatre and instead concentrate on his successful film career. But he braved a comeback in 1995 in Harold Pinter's Moonlight, and went on to an even greater success in 1997 when he returned to the stage with his performance of King Lear in Richard Eyre's staging at the Royal National Theatre, winning a Laurence Olivier Theatre Award, a London Critics Circle Theatre Award, as well as another Evening Standard Theatre Award, and when the production was televised he received an Emmy nomination. Benedict Nightingale reported in the New York Times, "Now Mr. Holm has definitively emerged from his time capsule to take the most demanding role of all. Rip van Winkle has awoken on the mountain top. Lazarus is playing Lear. The potentially great actor who departed 21 years ago is back with us -- and at age 65, he touches greatness.... With Mr. Holm's Lear, the emotional stakes always seem sky-high and, as a result, Mr. Eyre's revival fills the National's little Cottesloe auditorium with pain and pity."

A controversial piece of staging had Holm completely disrobing during the storm scene. The actor said "I think it's important that Lear is seen as naked. Not as a piece of gratuitous symbolism, but because the stage direction quite clearly describes Lear as 'tearing off his clothes.' There has always been the judicious loincloth in the past. But metaphorically as well as realistically, the man starts by removing his crown at the beginning of the play, and slowly divests throughout until he is naked with Poor Tom in the storm. I think it's a very important aspect of the play."

Peter O'Toole (1932-2013) was one of the most promising actors on the English stage in 1960, having achieved notoriety through his appearances at the Bristol Old Vic in plays like Man and Superman, Waiting for Godot, and an especially noteworthy performance as Hamlet, when he was invited by Peter Hall to appear at the Stratford Memorial Theatre in The Merchant of Venice, Troilus and Cressida, and The Taming of the Shrew. O'Toole's first great triumph in that memorable season was Shylock, which he played nontraditionally as a more youthful courtier and won raves from the critics for his brilliance and originality. But his greatest success was in a role he seemed born to play, the rollicking, larger-than-life Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Teamed with Peggy Ashcroft as Katarina, O'Toole was a hit in the role and Hall's production of the play was acclaimed as definitive. "In Peter O'Toole," wrote Martin Shulman in The Evening Standard, "we have the most aggressive, virile, dominating Petruchio in years. Any woman who stood in his way would be instantly blown apart by a puff or a sneeze. It is a marvelously comic performance which will put heart unto even the most browbeaten husband in the audience."

O'Toole seemed poised to take his place as the preeminent classical actor in Britain, and signed a contract with Stratford (now renamed the Royal Shakespeare Company) to play Henry II in Jean Anouilh's play Becket. But an offer from David Lean to play T. E. Lawrence changed the course of O'Toole's career (and created a rift with the RSC, when he pulled out of Becket, which never fully healed). O'Toole continued to appear on stage, having notable successes in Ride a Cock Horse, Uncle Vanya, and reprises of his early successes in Waiting for Godot and Man and Superman, but his attempts at Shakespeare were not well received. He made a return to Hamlet under prestigious circumstances as the premiere production of the Royal National Theatre but his performance was a shadow of his success at the Bristol Old Vic, largely because of O'Toole's lack of chemistry with the production's director Laurence Olivier (who was seldom at his peak in that capacity). But the disappointment of O'Toole's Hamlet was nothing compared to the fiasco of his next Shakespearean appearance as Macbeth at the Old Vic in 1980. Given free reign by the theatre to produce the play as he wished, O'Toole engaged film director Bryan Forbes (who has almost no theatre experience) to stage the production and put O'Toole's own frequently disorganized and mutually contradictory concepts about Macbeth into play. O'Toole was mindful enough about the play's reputation for bad luck to never call it by name (referring to it as Harry Lauder, after the legendary Music Hall performer), but the resulting catastrophe outdid anything that had been previously inflicted on it (although the production's infamy ultimately caused it to be a sellout). Michael Billington wrote in The Guardian that O'Toole spoke with "a monotonous tenor bark as if addressing an audience of Eskimos" and Jack Tinker opined in The Daily Mail "It is surely the most hilarious miscalculation to totter out of Duncan's death chamber covered from head to toe in bright red gore, clutching two dripping swords, and eventually gasp out the purely superfluous information: 'I have done the deed.'"

Fortunately, O'Toole was able to redeem his theatrical reputation with powerful performances in Shavian roles that he had appeared in successfully earlier in his career, such as John Tanner in Man and Superman, King Magnus in The Apple Cart, and Henry Higgins in his belated Broadway debut in Pygmalion. But when O'Toole finally braved a theatre role that he had not played already, as the drunken Soho journalist in Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell (pictured), he had one of the greatest successes of his career and won the Laurence Olivier Award for his virtuoso performance. But he never again returned to Shakespeare.

Simon Russell Beale is a phenomenally versatile actor, best known for his performances in Chekhov and Shakespeare while still being unpretentious enough to play King Arthur in Monty Python's Spamalot. Russell Beale's best work has been with director Sam Mendes, for whom he has played Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, Ariel in The Tempest, Richard III, and Iago. When Mendes left his post as artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, his final productions were a repertory of Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night that was a phenomenon in both its London run and later in New York, primarily because of Russell Beale's performances as Vanya and Malvolio. Russell Beale had made a career of surprising audiences with interesting performances (famously for his controversial, award-winning Hamlet), and his double act in the repertory won the actor his third Evening Standard Award. Ben Brantley wrote in the New York Times, "Mr. Russell Beale, at least, leaves no blank unfilled as the overweening steward who aspires to the hand of his employer, the Countess Olivia. With his ramrod spine, convex stomach and fastidiously slicked hair, this Malvolio gives off a studied priggishness that has clearly been hard won. It's in his walk, however, that you can best follow Malvolio's rise and fall: from officious stiff-leggedness to an uneasy sprint to the leg-flaunting sashay that suggests an aging showgirl for the scene of his humiliation before Olivia. There is, finally, the purposeful angry walk, stripped of all affectation, with which Malvolio makes his final exit, suggesting that the citizens of Illyria may still have something to fear from this disgruntled employee."