Robert Gore-Langton

John Gielgud and Richard Burton’s fraught, botched, triumphant Hamlet

The booze-drenched rehearsals became the stuff of legend – and have now been turned into a play at the National

Richard Burton, who was sloshed from beginning to end, and Eileen Herlie as Gertrude in the 1964 Broadway production of Hamlet, directed by John Gielgud [Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock Photo]

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