I look on myself as a sort of hybrid, having grown up in the world of Shakespeare out in the cornfields of Ohio.
I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.
I started out in the theater, and my background is classical. I’d love to be in a film version of a Shakespeare play.
Shakespeare is global – of course he can be shared.
It’s an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.
Shakespeare is rhythmic; he is musical in the sense that he likes poetry, and he’s musical because he constantly refers to settings where there’s singing and dancing.
When you tell a film financier that you want to do a Shakespeare film, their face drops. Shakespeare films don’t have a very wonderful history at the box office.
The first time I ever acted was in ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in high school, and my first line was, ‘I didn’t know Shakespeare had a sister.’
I’m as thrilled watching Mark Rylance do Shakespeare as I am watching ‘The Book of Mormon.’
I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.
I’ve only written 30 songs or something. Dylan’s written over 500 songs. There’s no comparison. He’s the Shakespeare of rock ‘n’ roll and popular music.
Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen.
I cut school to read Shakespeare and to learn about that because, for the first time, I felt like I really discovered a passion – the passion of my life.
I have my sweetheart Yorkshire terrier, Tabasco, along with two cats, Romeo and Jasmine. Yes, I am both a Shakespeare and Disney addict.
White people use their literature to maintain culture. That’s why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels.
Shakespeare reveals human nature brilliantly: he shines a light on our instinctive desire to dominate each other.
Shakespeare, who is probably the greatest writer and poet of the English language, lived in a time that was politically very conservative and it’s reflected in his writings.
I didn’t particularly aim to be a Shakespeare actor, but I suppose I had a certain gift or it; I certainly got offered lots of it. I liked Complicite and Shared Experience and Kick Theatre, and all the small theatre companies that were getting going. I wanted to be like that, making original theatre.
I don’t fool myself. I can’t see myself doing Shakespeare.
I went to drama school for four years at Carnegie Mellon, conservatory training before television comedy. I was doing Shakespeare and Chekov plays. It’s about delivering on the promise of a $100,000 education and taking the shackles off and trying the hand at my craft. I’m thrilled with what I’ve seen so far.
I started out as a singer and a musician, and I was taught that your job is just to get out of the way of Brahms or Arthur Miller or Shakespeare and convey the brilliance that they created.
I’d love to do Shakespeare. I’ve been asked to do Malvolio but for one reason or another haven’t been able. On a school trip to the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford I saw the great Emrys James as Feste and it’s always been a role I’ve coveted.
Iago is one of the most liked characters in Shakespeare’s canon, and he’s the most evil, most extraordinarily manipulative person in history. He says the worst, most politically incorrect things, even for the time the play is set in – and yet audiences adore that character.
I think every New York actor’s dream is to do Shakespeare in the Park. Each show is so special and unique and diverse because of the elements that we’re performing in. Every live show is truly a one-of-a-kind.
I haven’t read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare – except ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in ninth grade. I’m not familiar with ‘Death of a Salesman.’ I haven’t read Tennessee Williams.
Shakespeare is like mother’s milk to me.
It is no exaggeration to say that the English Bible is, next to Shakespeare, the greatest work in English literature, and that it will have much more influence than even Shakespeare upon the written and spoken language of the English race.
When you’re on TV, you’re looking at a half-page of material, trying to memorize it really quickly. By the time it’s on TV, I’ve already forgotten what I said, but I can still recite my whole role from Shakespeare in the Park. It works a different set of muscles.
I do think that, for instance, we’ve been very lucky to have theatrical careers and be associated with Shakespeare which sometimes gives you a kind of bogus kudos.
The best decision I made at NYU was joining the Shakespeare ensemble. It literally led to everything I did after that. It gave me the kind of confidence I really needed.
It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw ‘The Outsiders’, I knew better. It was the first time I’d realized that real people write books.
Whether it is the cavemen in the caves thousands of years ago, Shakespeare plays, television, movies and books, stories and characters take us on a journey. All I do is tell those stories without scripts and without actors.
I surrendered to a world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare.
I’d love to tackle a classic Shakespeare play or take on Nora Helmer in ‘A Doll’s House.’ Musical theater, it’s the classics like Rodgers and Hammerstein and Cole Porter’s ‘Kiss Me Kate.’ I’m much more a Julie Andrews-type soprano than an Idina Menzel.
I never wanted to do Shakespeare; I never liked watching it, it’s always frightened me, and I’ve never been any good at it. But I really wanted to work with the director Tim Carroll and Mark Rylance.
You rarely pay the rent by doing Shakespeare or Ibsen.
Jacobean plays, before Shakespeare, were particularly visceral.
The anti-apartheid prisoners on the island, like so many in every age and nation, found that Shakespeare had a peculiar ability to gentle their condition. They used to gather clandestinely to read the plays; on one occasion, the book was passed around for each man to mark his favourite lines.
I’m an actor. I started as an actor. I started on Broadway doing ‘Hair’ and Shakespeare in the Park.
Shakespeare’s work is like a good song: you never really forget the main lines.
‘As You Like It’ was the first Shakespeare production I ever did.
Now a Protestant confronting a Catholic ghost is exactly Shakespeare’s way of grappling with what was not simply a general social problem but one lived out in his own life.
I never publicise in advance what I’m going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.
I don’t know how this company got the name National Shakespeare Company, because it was literally like retards employing retards.
It’s often assumed that British actors read Shakespeare and sonnets as we’re going to bed at night and we’re all very familiar with it.
I owe so much to Shakespeare. Nothing is more humbling and more exhilarating than taking ahold of those sacred words and riding them like a wave.
If you want to make idols accessible – which I think Shakespeare should be – then you have to bring a human touch, make it self-effacing and warm.
Sir Derek Jacobi has been an inspiration to so many actors and audiences throughout his brilliant career. To see him in Shakespeare is an event in itself.
I’m constantly intimidated by Shakespeare’s work. Trying to decipher what he’s saying and holding on to that thought – not just as an actor, but as a human being – is a rigour.
I think reading Shakespeare’s plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.
With due apologies to Shakespeare, some people are born writers, some people achieve it after a lot of hard work, some people have a writing career thrust upon them. I am in that last group.
It’s not that Shakespeare is frivolous, but you spend your time just getting people to dress up in other people’s costumes and pretending to be people that they’re not, and you think, after the years go by, well, what on earth was all that about?
I come from the world of theater, and I know Noel Coward’s writing well. He has such a specific voice, and was one of the wittiest writers who ever lived, and you think of him in the same category as someone like Shakespeare who’s just impossible to imitate.
Anything that brings people to see Shakespeare is fine by me. He’s the great humanist.
From the early days of the Raj, Shakespeare had been woven into the fabric of India’s education, and my father understood that in a culture rich with storytelling and fantastical tales, Shakespeare’s characters and storylines resonated in a powerful way.
You could argue we are a different audience today,but on the other hand what is it that makes Shakespeare great? It is that he understands the common denominator of man, his emotions and relationships.
