The Globe is a missing monument. There’s no existing example of a theater from Shakespeare’s time. You have Roman theaters, Greek theaters, all kinds of theaters, but none in which the plays of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Marlowe were performed. Scholars feel that it would be of immense value to have one.
Israel is too attached to America, too influenced by America. It should be connected to Europe. America is based on mythology – the free man, the individual, the open frontier. Europe is more conscious of history. Take Britain and Shakespeare. You shape your identity through history.
In 1996, Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ was removed from classrooms after a school board passed a ‘prohibition of alternative lifestyle instruction’ act. Apparently, a young female character disguised as a boy was a danger to the youth of Merrimack, New Hampshire.
I felt a little green, because Shakespeare writes the thought process within the text; it was tricky not to think of what to say and then say it, and instead just deliver the lines.
‘Macbeth’ sags in act four – the England scene with Malcolm and Macduff just doesn’t work theatrically. But with ‘Hamlet,’ although the play is so long, Shakespeare manages to sustain the arc.
I was taught Shakespeare brilliantly by an eccentric genius at Harrow named Jeremy Lemmon who made me want to be a writer.
You can’t do Shakespeare with a Southern accent, honey.
I think Shakespeare is everybody’s treasure.
Shakespeare is undoubtedly the greatest dramatist the world has known, and 95 countries translate his work into their languages.
I’ve always wanted to give ‘Hamlet’ a shot. It’s the big one, you know. I haven’t done Shakespeare professionally, so I think it would be terrifying.
Don’t make generalisations about any group of children. For years I have felt angry with those who argue that Shakespeare and the rest of the classic canon are irrelevant to inner-city kids.
I think that Shakespeare himself raided fairy tales and chronicle writers, and he always looked to people who worked in the mythic genres, whether it was folk tales or popular novels.
I went to drama school. I’m classically trained; I studied Shakespeare, blah blah blah. But I always preferred to do Oscar Wilde, or Shakespeare’s comedies over his dramas.
The Elizabethan mind wanted and demanded that one word could mean 50 things. What Shakespeare offers us is not ambiguity; it’s choices.
The reason the contracts are so long is because actors are very spontaneous; we may want to do Shakespeare one day and be Porky Pig the next!
Even if you aren’t a believer, there are incredible stories in the ‘good book’ that I guarantee you will keep you glued to the page. The Bible is no less a part of our cultural heritage than Shakespeare is – and by the way, Shakespeare’s plays are absolutely loaded with Biblical references.
I had great English teachers in high school who first piqued my interest in Shakespeare. Each year, we read a different play – ‘Othello,’ ‘Julius Caesar,’ ‘Macbeth,’ ‘Hamlet’ – and I was the nerd in class who would memorize soliloquies just for the fun of it.
I’ve stopped acting, but I don’t think I’ve finished using my voice. I could, and probably will, record the whole of Shakespeare’s sonnets. They live at the side of my bed and are my constant companions.
As I get older I find myself thinking it all begins with Shakespeare.
Thank God we don’t know a lot about Shakespeare or Moses or Homer or Lautreamont. These are the best guys we got, and their art is powerful because they’re mysterious.
Tom Hanks, who starred in ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ turns out to be related to a number of the historic characters that feature in ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ including William the Conqueror and Shakespeare.
Plays are frequently infected with ideas that came from actors or even sound engineers. Some Shakespeare scholars wonder whether some of the Bard’s lines came from onstage improvisations by actors.
In Shakespeare’s world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?
I’d like to do more Shakespeare. I’d like to do Iago in Othello. I look so benign. It would be interesting to see that black evil come out of my soul.
I’m John Clare now. I was Byron and Shakespeare formerly.
James Agate, a great critic of the day, advised me that the way to learn your job properly was to learn Shakespeare, so I went to Stratford. It really sorts out the men from the boys.
I love live theater. I get my rocks off by doing stand-up, and I am the only actor. But to show up eight times a week and not have that time for myself; to do someone else’s lines? When I work for Wendy Wasserstein or Terrence McNally, Neil Simon or even Shakespeare, I do not have the right to change the lines.
Classical plays require more imagination and more general training to be able to do. That’s why I like playing Shakespeare better than anything else.
Shakespeare is a wonderful language to speak, but it’s also a world to get your mind into thematically.
I’ve always loved Victorian melodrama. And I’ve always liked larger-than-life theater, providing it’s truthful and honest. I like what the theater can provide in energy and bombast – I enjoy it when it’s large, and by that I don’t mean in size, I mean in emotions. Shakespeare did that.
Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare – it’s all one body of work.
In modern life, we hide behind ourselves. In Shakespeare, there’s nowhere left to hide. It’s life, larger than life, and every actor has to raise their game to get there.
I had been in a Shakespeare company for three years and done a lot of Shakespeare. That was fun. That was interesting.
I grew up doing regional Shakespeare, and when Hamlet sees the ghost of his father, there’s something about that that you don’t really do in film anymore.
At the roots, people are still people. That’s why Shakespeare is so popular no matter what the language.
This was Shakespeare’s form; who walked in every path of human life, felt every passion; and to all mankind doth now, will ever, that experience yield which his own genius only could acquire.
You know who my gods are, who I believe in fervently? Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson – she’s probably the top – Mozart, Shakespeare, Keats. These are wonderful gods who have gotten me through the narrow straits of life.
In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
I’d like to do a piece of Shakespeare. Any upcoming Shakespeare film. Just a bit to say I did a classic.
Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? – What? – Is there not sad stuff? What? – What?
And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too – not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.
In Jaipur, I did almost everything from regional theatre to Shakespeare’s plays. But when I shifted to Mumbai, I joined Anupam Kher’s academy, Actor Prepares,to hone my acting skills.
Anyone can play anyone in Shakespeare. I don’t think there are limits.
Writing ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars’ was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away.
I don’t admire Freud as much as some people do. Imagine Shakespeare being aware of the Oedipal complex when he wrote Hamlet. It would have been a disaster.
Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’ was inspired by Cinthio’s ‘A Moorish Captain’; his ‘Hamlet’ came from Saxo Grammaticus’s ‘Amleth.’
My mom started working at the California Shakespeare Theater in Oakland when I was two years old, so I’ve always grown up around theater.
It blows my mind that you get Shakespeare where the ‘low’ comedy characters have got Northern or Welsh accents.
No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.
You learn from mistakes, but Shakespeare is one big non mistake isn’t he? He just got everything right really.
Many people know that Shakespeare’s dramatic ‘canon’ was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.
Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.
What if Shakespeare had had a test audience for Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet?
When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.
