SASSOON | Vigils, 1934, John Gielgud's copy

SASSOON, SIEGFRIED

Vigils. [Bristol: Douglas Cleverdon], 1934

4to, SIR JOHN GIELGUD'S COPY, number 97 [of 272 copies] signed by the author, WITH PRESENTATION LETTER FROM GLEN BYAM SHAW ("I hope you will like this little book... In my humble opinion your performance of Hamlet shows you to be one of the world's great actors") (4 Holmbush Road, London, 14 November 1934), ownership signature on front free endpaper, engraved frontispiece by Stephen Gooden and engraved text, original niger morocco, top edge gilt, binding stained, lacks separate record of editions leaf, minor loss to extremities of free endpapers

A gift from the actor and theatre director Glen Byam Shaw recording Gielgud's appearance in 1934 as the Hamlet of his generation.

In November 1934 Gielgud directed and performed Hamlet at the New Theatre, London. The production was a box-office and critical success. W.A. Darlington wrote in the Daily Telegraph that "in every syllable that he speaks, there is evidence of an understanding mind at work so that the lines come fresh to the minds of the audience as if the part had never been acted before..." and Charles Morgan in The New York Times stated "I have never before heard the rhythm and verse and the naturalness of speech so gently combined. ... If I see a better performance of this play than this before I die, it will be a miracle."

Morley in his biography of Gielgud states that junior members of the cast would gather in the wings during the performance "to watch what they seemed intuitively already to know was to be the Hamlet of their time" (see Sheridan Morley, John Gielgud: The Authorized Biography, 2002, p. 113). One of those cast members was Byam Shaw who played the role of Laertes.

In the mid 1920s Byam Shaw and Siegfried Sassoon began a long personal relationship. Byam Shaw was Sassoon's best man, one of George Sassoon's godfathers and one of Sassoon's executors.

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