with book in hand, apparently in confrontation with anunseen person (Polonius, one assumes). Depictions of Hamlet as the man
with a book soon provided as recognizable a subject as Hamlet's
"start," the Play Scene, or the Closet Scene, and during the next
century and a half, portraits of a succession of actors holding a book
were to follow, among those depicted being Henry Johnson, Edmund Kean,
[keanlge.jpg]
Edmund Kean
Barry Sullivan, Charles Kean, Charles Kemble, Henry Irving, Jean
Mounet-Sully, Edwin Booth, Sarah Bernhardt, and Johnston Forbes
Robertson.
Some New Subjects and Media for Hamlet Images: Early Portraits
Another matter of importance here is that all the works just mentioned
depict identifiable actors in the Hamlet roles that they were
