The next British film Hamlet came over thirty years later, but was well worth the wait. Equally brief was the 1916 production Pimple as Hamlet, a vehicle for the popular silent comedian that is unlikely to add much to Shakespeare scholarship. The Cricks and Martin company made a film called Hamlet in 1915, which is now thought lost - though if its reported length of 908 feet is correct, it would have been an extreme shortening of the play. Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, one of the Victorian era's great stage Hamlets, played the title role, despite being in his sixtieth year and close to retirement. Although at 5,800 feet (up to 90 minutes depending on projection speed) made it by far the longest and most complete British Shakespeare film up to that point, it nonetheless still required prior knowledge of the play for full comprehension. Like most silent Shakespeare films, it is compromised by the removal of most of the original text, leaving only brief excerpts in the intertitles. However, Hay Plumb's 1913 production for the Cecil Hepworth company survives in its entirety. The first British film Hamlet is believed to have been made by Will Barker in 1910, starring Charles Raymond, but this is now considered lost. So much a cornerstone of world literature that huge chunks will be immediately recognised even by people who have never consciously watched a production, it is open to endless reinterpretation, and has consequently seen a wider range of adaptations than any other Shakespeare play - both on stage (it is believed that the play has never been out of the repertory since its first performance) and screens large and small. Inspired by the true story of Danish prince Amled, it could have been staged as a straightforward revenge drama, but in the event Shakespeare adds so many layers that it becomes a dazzling work of philosophy, not least in terms of its self-awareness about the nature of theatre. Possibly Shakespeare's single best-known play, arguably his most complex and certainly his longest, Hamlet is thought to have been written in 1599-1600. The many film and television versions of Shakespeare's best-known tragedy
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