About the Book:

RARE BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

There is Nothing Like a Dane!: The Lighter Side of Hamlet is an affectionate compilation of mostly funny (but sometimes serious) bits and pieces about Hamlet — interwoven with delectable caricatures by Clive Francis of various members of the theatrical profession strutting their stuff.

The great hall of fame is duly visited, though its inhabitants are not always as dignified as they would like to seem. Here are glimpses in word and pictures of the likes of Donald Wolfit, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, Henry Irving, Jonathan Pryce, John Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Richard Burton and of course, Laurence Olivier. The tone is also elevated now and then by contributions from great writers such as Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding and P.G. Wodehouse. But the chief delight is in the unexpected: a stubbornly mustachioed Ophelia in Poona, India, an inadvertently horn-rimmed Hamlet on London’s Waterloo Road — and would you believe Tony Hancock, Tommy Cooper and even June Whitfield as the Prince of Denmark?

There is Nothing Like a Dane! is a book for actors and audiences — and Shakespeare buffs on their day off.

About the Author:

Clive Francis is a British stage, television and film actor. He has made over a hundred television appearances and performed in a large number of shows in London's West End. He is also a noted caricaturist and has had several solo exhibitions including three at the National Theatre. His caricatures have appeared on the covers for books written by actor Alec Guinness and a biography of John Gielgud, and has had several books of his caricatures published, including There Is Nothing Like a Dane (Hamlet) and There Is Nothing Like a Thane (Macbeth).