Muse of Fire: A Shakespearean Road Movie

Four years ago, we decided to make a documentary, using our own money...

Credit card. ..and with our own resources..

This could be the death of us, this. You know that? Yeah.

..to discover why people are scared of Shakespeare.

We couldn't understand it. You're dealing with a language you don't use on the street.

I loved the poetry. They had to break it down, decipher it for us,

turn it upside-down and roll it back and we still didn't figure it out.

Because it's hard to read.

We are Dan and Giles.

And being children of the '80s

we grew up watching Star Wars,

Indiana Jones and Batman And Robin.

Those stories were the ones we loved.

But Shakespeare in the classroom was terrifying.

What chance did he have?

A load of old words in old books

that we just didn't understand

However, something in his words spoke to us in some way

and we persevered,

and both grew up and became actors.

That's how we met. We're friends.

So for us, as actors, playing Shakespeare

is the pinnacle of acting achievement, but still terrifying.

From school to stage, Shakespeare is both hero and villain.

This paradox is what fascinated us.

So we decided to grab our cameras, jump in our car and ask the world...

..from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to Hollywood.

What is it about Shakespeare that inspires such love...

Shakespeare is special.

..and hate? I'm bored to tears by it.

That's the thing with Shakespeare, you never get it right.

Four years and a hundred interviews later

this is the story of how we conquered our fear of Shakespeare.

This is how we roll. This is how the Muse of Fire rolls.

Er...not always sitting in a dressing gown.

First off, we needed to know what the people out there on the street -

our audience - had to say about Shakespeare,

the most famous playwright in history.

Do you know anything about Shakespeare? Anything?

It had to be described to you by the teacher to understand it

It was something that you had to write about.

If you don't write, you don't pass your exams.

Do you know anything about Shakespeare? No.

Seen Macbeth. Who are you taking to?

This is Nicole. Hi, Nicole.

Nicole, yeah. Does she like Shakespeare?

Nicole likes Shakespeare, yeah

Her favourite one is Romeo And Juliet, I think. I'm sure.

Othello? Othello. She likes Othello. Oh, that's a good one.

Some people loved it and some people didn't.

But everyone knew his name.

Now, being jobbing actors is tough,

but along the way, we've got to work with some great performers.

Young, old, new and legendary.

Maybe if we could get them to help us with our Shakespeare fears,

we could help others with theirs.

We needed help.

Dear Ian. SIR Ian.

Sir... Although he doesn't like "sir", does he?

Sir Ian?

I don't know.

Dear Ian. Dear Ian. OK.

'We drew up a list of people and places

'we wanted to get to, and got to work.

'Sent out letters and emails

'and contacted everyone we could in any way we could.'

Come this way.

'We needed them to talk to us on camera

'frankly and honestly about their relationship to Shakespeare.

'All we could do was wait and see what would happen.

'But whilst we waited, we grabbed our friends

'to see how THEY felt about all this.'

SHE LAUGHS

I don't know, don't ask me.

Shakespeare, you know, puts a rod of steel up your backside

I walked in on the first day and thought,

"I have no business to be here I don't know how to do this."

Feel the fear and do it anyway

HE EXHALES

I'm not afraid to say I don't understand it.

I've never been so sure that I was definitely out of my depth.

And then, the moment came.

Ian McKellen said yes! What?

Yeah!

We were off. If anyone could help us, it was Ian.

He'd played with incredible acclaim

every major Shakespeare role over the last 50 years.

People shouldn't dodge the fact that

to do a play that was written 400 years or more ago...

..is, um...is a difficult thing for everyone involved.

The actors and the people who have put the performance together

and the people who are coming to see it.

It's not as easy as watching an episode of Coronation Street

Some of those words will be difficult to understand

because they're not used any more.

Um...

Some of it will be difficult to understand because the syntax,

the grammar, the arrangement of the words

is, um...to our ear, old-fashioned, or a bit strange.

But the story is being told here, now, in front of your eyes,

in front of your ears and, er..

..it's a mixture between the intense reality

of being in the presence of the storytellers, of the actors

and at the same time, always knowing you're in the presence of actors.

And it's an act of imagination

on behalf of the audience and the storytelling actors to say,

"This story is unfolding for the first time

"in front of your eyes and ears "

If Ian still saw Shakespeare as a challenge,

then what could be done to get over that?

'That's what we were going to find out.

'It had taken months of writing calling and asking.'

Hi, it's Giles Terera.

'And not taking no for an answer.'

I was on hold for ten minutes and I'd rather call back another time.

But it was paying off.

Even people we never dreamed would find time for our project

seemed happy and willing to come on board.

Ewan McGregor was going to talk with us!

I've seen some really nice, good Shakespeare.

I've only ever treated it like another play.

I've never thought about it as being particularly better

or worse than any other kind of theatre

And so I don't hold it in any high or low esteem, really.

Um...of course, we can talk about playing it and that's...

It is a different ball game when you start trying to act it

You've got to approach it like any other play.

You've got to approach it as...a story -

in his case, usually really good stories with interesting characters.

I've wanted to act since I was nine, so I was...

It was in my...on the horizon, I suppose, of what I wanted to do.

But, er...

I didn't give it any thought when I was going through school

And we really had...very little experience of it at school,

other than reading it from books.

It didn't really... It was awful. And nobody...

It was just something I didn't really understand at that point

And at this point now, too, as well.

LAUGHTER

Me too! I think a lot of people are like that.

'We found Shakespeare tough at school,

'but if Ewan McGregor found it tough,

'how, we wondered, were the young people of today getting along

'with the most famous playwright in history?'

Hello! Three, two, one, and action!

I don't like Shakespeare. I do but some plays are a bit boring

Do you like or dislike Shakespeare? Shut up, Kate.

I like Shakespeare.

My introduction to Shakespeare

was in the fifth year at my secondary comprehensive school

And we were made to read, as part of the syllabus, Henry V.

You should not give kids Shakespeare straightaway.

What you should give them is drama.

And I am convinced that the ones who are really passionate about it

will end up finding Shakespeare themselves

because he's the greatest ever playwright.

Shakespeare serves to introduce you to, er...

living, breathing, live performing

on a high level of dramatic imagination.

I was teaching my daughter, actually.

She's playing Ariel in the school play.

And I said, "This is really difficult.

"Most pros don't understand it or don't bother with it."

But she said, "Tell me anyway.

And I told her and she picked it up in no time. And, um...

The only rule, I said, "You can t breathe until the end of the line."

Since 2001, every year, the Shakespeare Schools Festival

takes thousands of young people from across the country

and does mini versions of Shakespeare's plays.

Go muster men. We must be brief

Did they have as hard a time with the bard now

as we did back in our schooling or was it changing?

It's, like, old language, we don't understand it.

And then Miss will tell us, explain, if she can.

Well, I've heard of some of his plays

and I think that he must've had a lot of time on his hands.

You have to understand what you're saying a lot more.

If you don't understand what you're saying...

You don't know how to portray it. Exactly.

That's a wrap.

I went to see Romeo And Juliet at the Globe a couple of weeks ago

as part of their education project.

And that was like being in a football stadium.

And talk about shouting in the dark. They had no option.

This was the shouted version of Romeo And Juliet

because nothing else was going to get across the crowd.

But it was rather wonderful.

And with our wish list becoming a reality,

we discovered they were in good company.

I find words which are completely... incomprehensible.

Shakespeare's overwhelming. It's such a hard thing to deal with.

That familiar feeling of giving up at a Shakespeare play.

It's beyond me!

I didn't understand it.

I didn't understand why this was supposed to be so great.

I knew that this was something to be taken seriously.

Um...but I didn't quite know how to take it seriously.

I'm very frightened of it.

Although I know there's nothing to be frightened of.

I've just never had a lot of great success in it.

I think he's a very extravagant writer

And we live in a time where people are terrified of extravagance.

I got E for English at A-level

I didn't know how to answer a question about King Lear.

I mean, I couldn't, I...

Everyone was saying the same thing.

Your first experience can inform the way you feel about Shakespeare

for the rest of your life.

Ben Kingsley remembers well being 15,

standing at the back of the theatre

through Ian Holm's performance of Richard III.

As Ian clumped across the stage

I actually moved across the back of the auditorium

to keep the minimum distance between myself and him.

And as he went back again, I moved.

Nobody stopped me. I moved again.

I was walking, mirroring him, as a member of the audience.

Um...I then fainted. I passed out because of the heat

and, um...probably no breakfast

And I was revived by a lady in the foyer, who said,

"Would you like a glass of water?"

And I said, "Yes, please."

And I had my glass of water

and I went back and watched the rest of the play.

Our first experience wasn't in the theatre.

It was a dusty old film in a cold classroom

which just didn't speak to us.

Yo! Come and talk to us. What did you make of the performance

In high school,

we were taught Macbeth and this one, and I never could get it.

But I got it today.

Macbeth is, like, it's about betrayal and murder

And the guy just really wants to be powerful.

He wants the power, he wants to be king.

So that kind of thing just really moved me.

I mean, that's what I'VE always wanted

Playing it and seeing it, um..

are both special things.

I studied Shakespeare at school

Oh, you did? How was it?

It was pretty bad at school.

It's very much nicer when you come and see a live performance.

Then we saw an opportunity too good to miss.

When this Donmar theatre production played in London

under the direction of Michael Grandage,

tickets sold out in hours and we couldn't get in.

They had been invited to perform in Denmark,

Hamlet's birthplace, and we asked if we could go, too.

And they said yes!

This is what we've been waiting for, sort of. Isn't it, G?

Yeah. Very much so. Jude Law, Denmark...

Hamlet. ..Hamlet. Say no more.

We packed the car. Ta-da!

Made her pretty, and once again, we were on the road.

We're off to Helsingor.

Helsingor? Helsingor.

Helsingor. Helsingor.

Yeah. Helsingor. Hel-sinyor.

Signor? It's not Spanish.

Helsingor. Helsingor.

Helsingor. Because it came...

Helsingor. Because the English would be... We say Elsinore.

So it comes from... Elsinore. Don't worry about it.

Everyone has heard of Hamlet,

but we were heading to the very place it's set.

We could hardly believe we were on our way.

UPBEAT HARMONICA

Wh-aa-aa-aa-aa-aa!

We drivin' there, boy!

LAUGHTER

That's bad. Your car is pissing

# Hamlet, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, Hamlet. #

Shakespeare talks in this play about the golden roof of this castle

The green is patina'd bronze.

So when it was put up, that was a golden roof.

And he talks about it.

Suddenly, that just has a completely different

vibration to it, those sort of lines.

Helsingor Castle was a breathtaking place.

But how would audiences react to watching Hamlet in his castle?

And could this production, spoken in English, reach a foreign audience?

Shakespeare's so infinite in its, um...ability

to be different, to be reinterpreted continually

And, you know, here we are in Helsingor doing Hamlet

for the...700th time, probably

that somebody's been here doing Hamlet.

'Stepping into the shoes

'of Shakespeare's most famous and iconic role,

'Hamlet is intense for any actor.

'But playing the Prince of Denmark IN Denmark with everyone watching,

'well, how do you deal with THAT?'

There's no way you can ever do a definitive Shakespearian role

And certainly a definitive Hamlet.

Because Hamlet, I think, shifts ..

..with the time it's being done the person playing him,

the audience that come, you know?

And, er...your responsibility is to that audience and that production,

not to 400 years of incredible actors who have played him before.

Um...but shrugging that and not letting that legacy

land heavily on your shoulders is quite hard.

Alas, poor Yorick.

I knew him, Horatio.

I have been to all the Hamlet performances. Have you?

More or less, for the last ten years.

You're here to see...?

Jude Law, of course.

Jude Law? Not Hamlet? No.

LAUGHTER

Even now, we have audiences who are coming to it for the first time.

And to them, the relevance amazes them,

but then again, you think, "Why should it?"

These have been written for audiences who were illiterate,

who had no radio, who had no TV nothing.

This was their only access, possibly, to their imagination

other than lying in a bed thinking.

Can anyone quote Shakespeare?

Can anyone remember any lines from the play?

Can anyone quote...? She can.

Frailty, thy name is woman.

True. Very good. That's from Hamlet.

Shakespeare actually nailed the Danish...

frame of mind really good in Hamlet.

We're not about rethinking something.

We're not about adding something.

I've got a new reading of this or I'm going to do it in hysteria.

It is what it is. In the end, you just have to say it.

It's so rich

in a way you've no chance to think that you can get everything...

..every night in the language.

But what you can get is a sense of...

um...journey...

emotionally, I think, through..

..through that scale of writing

We brought this play home.

My God, we're in his court. This is amazing!

And being able to declare to the sky, "Would the night come?"

Or pointing out stars and saying,

"You're like a star in the darkest night,"

and there's a star, is a beautiful thing.

The audience was clearly very excited, and we were excited, too.

But would they feel the same after 3.5 hours of Shakespeare

RAPTUROUS APPLAUSE

It was absolutely fantastic. Amazing.

It worked.

It was really good. Did you enjoy it? Yes.

OK, good.

Jude Law's Hamlet, with its emphasis firmly on clarity and simplicity,

had moved the Danish audience and moved us, too.

Everyone was floating out inspired by these words

written by Shakespeare 400 years ago.

Did you enjoy the show, folks?

It was amazing. And the environment.

"To thine own self be true.

"And it must follow, as the night the day,

"thou canst not then be false to any man."

It had been two years since we'd first started making this film.

Not that we'd ever had any,

but we were now DEFINITELY out of money and struggling to continue.

The reality of trying to pay the bills

and get work had finally caught up with us.

I've been doing, what is it,

16 days right through now, decorating a whole house.

I'm on my way to meet Peter Hall

for an audition for Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream,

and I'm late.

If anyone ever says that making this documentary was easy for us,

they can have a look at this.

This is my world.

I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done.

I go in, I meet Sir Peter, we talk about the film

for about...ten minutes,

maybe less than ten minutes,

and then we read the thing once and that's it.

Tiling, plumbing, three stitches in my thumb, bad back.

Obviously, the best thing to do for this film

would be to get a part in a high-profile Shakespeare.

Maybe I'll get a call back, maybe not.

This is it. This is how it is on the other side.

I didn't get the Midsummer Night's Dream thing.

Didn't you? No.

He said it was great.

And if he hadn't offered the part to...

Well, if he hadn't offered Oberon to someone else,

he'd have asked me to play Oberon.

With Judi Dench? Yeah. Playing Judi Dench's lover.

That gave us an idea.

That could be a winner for Ms Dench.

Or that little chocolate flower

That looks like a real cracker

'And it worked!'

I've just been corresponding with Judi and she asked me to call you

about fitting some time in for an interview.

Great(!) Basically, we are about half an hour away

from when we are meeting Judi Dench, and the car won't start.

Giles, there's still time.

Dear Dame Judy, sorry we're late. The car broke down.

Oh, well, maybe YOU should do it?

No, no, no. OK, all right. Fine

Do you drive, Giles? No. There we go.

Hallelujah!

ENGINE CHUGS

Doesn't sound very good, though does it?

It'll get us there, it'll get us there.

Hold tight, girl, hang together

Good, let's go.

This is the biggest pile of junk that I have ever been in.

You what? This has gone all the way to Denmark!

This is a pile of shit, this car.

Let's go, let's go!

That's so unfair.

Golden lads and girls all must

as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

There's a terrible fear about Shakespeare

that it's a language we don't understand.

It couldn't be easier. You know, what do you...?

I remember having to read in the class.

They said, "OK, you read six lines each. Six lines each."

I think it was the ghastly Merchant Of Venice. Sorry, Will !)

Six lines each. Regardless of who was saying them.

Regardless of who was saying them! So it made a complete nonsense

But if you say to a child...

..you've fallen in love with somebody,

or you know what the feeling of love is,

or have you ever envied somebody, something, a toy?

Have you ever got really angry about something?

That's what Shakespeare's about It's all about those things.

It's all about those things.

And he says it better than anybody else.

It's the prejudice in things, isn't it?

And somebody telling you it's hard.

And the fear that you're not going to understand it.

Not going to be able to understand.

Well, that's up to the actor.

But some of those lines, some lines in Shakespeare...

How did he...? You know, all that thing about sleep in Macbeth.

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.

(How did he think of that?)

The death of each day's life.

Sore labour's bath.

Balm of hurt minds.

Great nature's second feast.

Well...

..if you'd written that, you'd be up all night

looking at yourself in the mirror, wouldn't you?

Said like that, those lines could be about me,

my neighbour, any of us.

They seemed as natural as me speaking right now.

So, what was it that made it so hard for me to say them?

At the heart of Shakespeare's writing,

there's a rhythm to his words.

It's the pulse, the heartbeat that makes us all tick.

It's called iambic pentameter.

We were itching to try out some of the things we were discovering.

And the National Theatre agreed to help us out.

We put together a small company of actors.

We were all agreed where we should start.

The language, the verse, the iambic pentameter.

So, what did it mean?

For me, it just was scary.

I went, "No, no, no, no, I don't want to do it anyway," and just made excuses.

We were asked, just read it and get familiar with it.

And the rhymings on every other line in some of the pieces.

Just a bit...bit of a mess.

I remember actually asking the question,

"What's iambic pentameter?"

And she said, "Shakespeare. It's Shakespeare's thing."

LAUGHTER

Dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum.

Yeah! I remember... Oh, my God

I remember us sitting as a class going, "Duh-dum,"

and, like, tapping it out!

Di-dum-di-dum. Di-dum-di-dum-di dum. Ba-bum-ba-bum-ba-bum.

Di-dum-di-dum.

La-la-dah-hee-dah-ha! Di-dum-di-dum. Di-dum-di-dum.

Dum-da-da-da-da! Ti-tum-ti-tum

Ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum-ta-tum. Ba-dah-duh-duh-duh-duh.

La-ha-la-he-la-la-ho-la-he-la-ha la-hi-la-ha!

I don't know...really what iambic pentameter is.

Somebody has to tell me.

I've never had a formal lesson in iambic pentameter.

I don't understand it.

I really was completely lost.

And I felt like a fraud.

And everyone else seemed to be really making sense of it.

I think at the RSC, when I first went,

no director had a clue about it

But who DID have a clue was Cicely Berry.

The great thing about Shakespeare,

there's never really a full stop till the end of the play, actually.

And everything, nothing is really a statement, a fact.

It's always one thought which projects the next thought,

which makes the next thought happen.

So it's always acted and lifted through.

"Wilt thou be gone?

"It is not yet near day.

"It was the nightingale and not the lark

"that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.

"Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.

"Believe me, love, it was the nightingale."

The rhythm of the line

is an indication from Shakespeare

to the actor as to how they should say the line.

De-dum.

Stress stands on the dum.

Wilt THOU be GONE?

It isn't, "WILT thou be gone?"

Because that would be not de-DUM, but DUM-de.

WILT thou BE gone?

DUM-de DUM-de. WILT thou BE gone?

Well, that's a way of saying it

but it's probably just a bit more complicated

than Shakespeare wants it.

Just follow the rhythm of the line.

I'm always looking for that rhythm and trusting it.

Wilt thou be gone?

It is not yet near day.

It was the nightingale and not the lark

that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.

Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree.

Believe me, love.

It was the nightingale.

Something bit in and I started flying with it.

And I remember that feeling of the first rehearsal where it happened

of just...getting it, going, "Oh!"

It tastes really good in your mouth.

The words really...

It's like a taste, almost. You know, it just works.

The voice comes from the soul, from the heart, from who you are.

And I think that's your anchor as an actor,

out of which you can imagine yourself

to be someone else and you can develop.

So the thing that can make Shakespeare so difficult

is the same thing that can make it fly.

Steven Berkoff is someone who consistently wrestles

that beast and comes out on top

Shakespeare's 400-year-old language actually is not that complex.

But when you're in a lot of costumes with togas and bits,

it sounds so remote.

But if you come in in a suit

and a coat and you say, "What's the matter,

"you dissentious rogues,

"scratching the poor itch of your opinion?

"Make yourself scabs.

"What would you have, you curs?

"That like not peace nor war.

"The one affrights you, the other makes you proud."

What's complex about that?

Putting Shakespeare into costume works against you.

Shakespeare never did it.

He put all his actors in modern costume.

Why we go back to Elizabethan little things, I have no idea.

It doesn't work.

It may look pretty for a few minutes, but it gets in the way

And I think, as soon as someone comes on

with a bit of chutzpah, is modern,

they suddenly, "Oh! We can understand it. It makes sense.

Of course, there have been thousands and thousands of productions

of Shakespeare's 37 plays.

Some old, some modern, some good, some just plain awful.

But for us, there was one that rocked our world.

A film that came out in our second year of drama school.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann's

supremely-modern take on Romeo And Juliet.

Romeo And Juliet. Romeo And Juliet. There we are.

Oh, look! That's it, there it is.

They've got four copies.

That film's amazing!

I mean, even this stuff, like the sort of Latino gun culture.

The colour and the excitement.. And all this sort of...

Romeo + Juliet. Yeah. It's just ..

Even that looks like a tattoo, doesn't it? A gang tattoo, almost.

It was just...it was just exciting, it was sexy.

It was exciting, it was raw.

The guy who was... Mercutio. Mercutio.

What's his name? I can't remember. His name was... That was it for me.

It was, like, "There's a black person in Shakespeare."

Yeah, that was it. Also, what was weird about that ..

Never seen a black person in Shakespeare before.

This is the one that is like.. That's the one that spoke to us

Hit the button. In fact, we wouldn't be here now, like, with this..

thinking about what's the next step

if we hadn't seen this film. Exactly.

We wouldn't have even started it, probably. No.

If we can get to the Wizard of Oz... Baz Luhrmann.

..and say, "Look, how do we...do this?"

Hm. "How do you make it speak to now

"and not be something that's like a history lesson?"

Hi. Dan speaking. It'll come as no surprise what we did next

We used every resource and every connection we could

to reach the Wizard of Oz.

My name's Dan. Hello.

Whilst we tried to make America work...

John, Muse, slate one, take one

'..John Leguizamo, who played Tybalt in Baz's Romeo + Juliet,'

and James Earl Jones,

one of America's greatest Shakespearean actors

and the voice of Darth Vader, were both in London.

When was the first time you encountered Shakespeare?

Uncle Bob. He was one of my favourite uncles-in-law

Uncle Bob. He was one of my favourite uncles-in-law

and he would visit in the summers.

And we'd be out in the fields and he would start reciting stuff.

"I came to BURY Caesar, not to praise him."

Where did he get all THAT stuff !

He was reciting Shakespeare, but like he loved it.

And he was giving it some vernacular,

he was sounding like an old-time black preacher

but with the love of that language.

And I sat back and I went to get my books, you know.

Most American actors cannot say that they're Shakespearean actors,

but Shakespeare belongs in the catalogue of...great works

that we should all work on.

I did study a little Shakespeare at school,

I didn't really do it in my acting classes cos it wasn't something I...

Not that I didn't like it, I liked it when I saw it,

I just didn't feel like it was my thing.

It was something that other people did, you know,

it wasn't something that I was working towards.

And then all of a sudden I did it in college

and I really dug doing the scene. I mean, it took me months

and months to work on it, it was so difficult.

I think British people somehow do it a lot better than we do,

they make it sound much more normal and natural,

but at the same time Americans. . Why? I don't know, cos you guys

maybe the way you guys annunciate or pronounce it

or maybe the fact that you guys do it so much in school,

you've already got a better handle on it than we do.

But I think when Americans DO do it well...we destroy it.

We do it so... Because we're trying to make it as conversational

and as contemporary as possible which, you know, is a struggle

The next morning, we had even more exciting news

So Baz Luhrmann and Leonardo DiCaprio are going to be in LA

So he said that we can go and speak to him.

Leo maybe is a possibility, but not definite. Brilliant.

Our plan whilst in the States

was to speak to both some of the highest authorities on Shakespeare

in America, as well as the man on the street.

And, at the end of the road, to meet with Mr Baz Luhrmann,

our Wizard from Oz out in LA.

Oh, my God! This is about the last moment of calm.

I know. It's impending. Can you feel it?

I can't even cope with it. Let's go. GILES LAUGHS

"We two alone shall sing like birds in the cage

"And take upon us the mystery of things

"As if we were God's spies."

The same year Shakespeare wrote that in King Lear,

the Puritans sailed from England and landed in Virginia and Boston.

400 years on, and we're flying into Boston ourselves

for our own adventures in the Brave New World.

PILOT: Welcome to Boston...

'Having landed in Boston, our plan was to first speak to Harold Bloom,

'America's foremost scholar of Shakespeare,

'currently residing in Yale. Then travel south

'to speak to the first black Poet Laureate of America, Ms Rita Dove.

'Then fly to LA and catch up with Baz.

'Time was against us, and as we set off on our first 16-hour drive

'we came across something

'and someone that took us by complete surprise.'

So we've driven down this road

and we saw this little thing saying, "Stourbridge Repertory."

Was it "Old Repertory"? No. Repertory Theatre. Stageloft.

What's your surname? This is ideal. My name's Ed Cornely. Cornely? Yes.

Half-Irish, half-French, but I'm really half-Italian.

'It was clear in no time that Ed was not only a theatre nut

'but a kindred Shakespeare evangelist,

'staging at least one Shakespeare play a year in his 40-seat theatre.'

THEY LAUGH

A reasonable and considerable portion of our population

that is scared, put off or mystified by Shakespeare.

There are many schools who still, fortunately, have Shakespeare

as part of the standard required curriculum,

but it usually isn't more than one or two plays.

And it's more common than not for them to not read the play at all.

The unfortunate part is they so rarely see it

that it's very hard for students to...to visualise,

because they've got to crack the code.

I try and do one Shakespearean play a year.

One reason that I own the theatre is that I love Shakespeare.

Thanks. My pleasure. Thanks so much.

Really appreciate it. Yeah. A little serendipity. Absolutely.

We were open and you were passing by.

That was like...beautiful, affirming, warming. Like heaven

Totally, like, almost tearful. I want to do more.

I don't know what that means, but you know what I mean, don't you?

Yeah, I do.

DAN LAUGHS Good night.

THEY LAUGH

Next morning, we continued our journey south

through Harvard to Yale.

'Meeting the Everyman Ed at his theatre in Stourbridge

'had made us wonder what the Ivy League students thought

'of our finest export.'

We did read, you know, Romeo And Juliet,

read a bit of Hamlet, you know that's about it.

So why the fascination?

I think it has something to do with...

I think Americans are always in search of their roots.

In so many ways, because, you know,

of course there were many, many cultures

and people and languages here before people from Europe came

But we are still taught and are still in love with the notion

that we sort of arrived,

and this is a new nation, a new country, a new land, it's still new.

And everyone here is always searching for their roots,

wherever they were from.

We were in New Haven to meet Yale professor Harold Bloom.

For the last 60 years,

he's been an outspoken commentator on Shakespeare.

In his book, Invention Of The Human, he contends that Shakespeare

was the first author who depicted character rather than caricature.

It was an insight that had helped both of us along our way.

Young man, sit and have your tea. OK.

Shakespeare has a hundred major characters

and a thousand minor characters

all of whom speak differently from one another,

which is almost unbelievable.

I mean, you can get to know them simply by the way they sound.

It's very difficult...

if you try to think of four or five writers beside Shakespeare,

very difficult to know to what extent

they can create consciousnesses that fight free of themselves.

But in the end what makes the difference

between him and any other writer, eastern or western, in human history

so far as I can see - and I've spent my life reading

is that there's nothing like it before him

and nothing like it since him.

What he shows us about human personality and character

and emotion has doubtless been there since the beginning of time.

But we wouldn't be able to see it if he hadn't noticed it for us

because nobody noticed it before him.

Are they your books, Giles? Yes I'll inscribe them, if I may.

Ah! I wasn't going to ask. Would you hand me the three books? Of course.

'As Harold signed our battered copies of his books,

'we realised how relatively close we were

'to the start of our explorations of Shakespeare.

'Bloom, 80 years old,

'his whole life given over to questioning

'and unlocking Shakespeare.

'We were humbled, honoured, inspired.'

"Before I knew thee, Hal, I knew nothing."

"And now to speak truly am I become little better

"than one of the wicked."

A couple of years ago we went. I know it was a comedy

and I can't tell you what the name of it was,

but we left during the intermission

because we couldn't get anything out of it cos of the way they talked.

That's interesting. We just couldn't understand it

You know, so we were, you know lost in it, so...

I think a lot of people feel like that, don't they?

If you've never been to one before

and don't know much about it and haven't read much, it can be..

It was probably very good, but I just didn't understand it

Shakespeare's not everyone's cup of tea, fair enough,

but was Nina right in blaming herself for not understanding it

or was it the performance itself?

Either way, she'd been brave enough to give it a go

and discover for herself.

And that's all any of us can do

But as actors, it's our responsibility

to make that one opportunity to reach a new audience perfect

I think for the masses today,

because they're so visually orientated

and not as...you know, wordsmiths.

They're not orally... They don't listen as well as they see.

I think that cinema helps Shakespeare be more comprehensible.

And, you know, you're not going to like it

if you don't see good performances.

And I think the cliche is these talking heads with the, you know...

There is a thing where Americans feel

that English people do it better.

And the English say, "No, that's not really true,

"the Americans are more like the Shakespearean language at the time."

The big problem in America

is they're still fighting the 19th-century myth of the actor.

You know, they think, "Oh, Shakespeare,

"we've all got to stand up straight and do it in a particular manner."

And they do end up acting with this bit of them.

If you look at Marlon Brando playing Mark Anthony,

he goes REALLY for the meaning of it.

He goes really for the fact that he's talking to a thousand people!

And then he finds within him,

cos he's a great actor at his best...never lost the meter.

American actor, so what?

It doesn't make any difference But he...he found it.

But he... You must start from what it means.

We're going to go on a...a sort of picturesque route,

according to the guy we spoke to at reception,

down to Charlottesville, where we're speaking to Rita Dove.

Rita Dove grew up

to become the first black Poet Laureate of America.

Her discovering Shakespeare at ten years old was part of that journey.

Shakespeare Say - "He drums the piano wood crowing,

"champion Jack in love and in debt,

"and a tan walking suit with a flag on the pocket,

"with a red eye for women, with a diamond-studded ear,

"with sand and a mouthful of mush.

"Poor me, poor me, I keep on drifting

"like a ship out on the sea.

"That afternoon, two students from the academe showed in the town

"Munich was misbehaving, whipping his ass to ice

"while his shoes soaked through

"His guides pointed at a clock in a blue-tiled house

"and tonight every song he sings

"is written by Shakespeare and his mother-in-law.

"I love you, baby, but it don't mean a goddamn thing."

I would hear my mother, like, slicing the roast beef for dinner

and saying, "Is that the dagger I see before me?"

You know, and I thought she'd made it up

but she was always...the little bits of Shakespeare.

I'd heard of Shakespeare, but I didn't know anything.

I didn't know...

I didn't know enough to be afraid or to think that I couldn't do it,

so I just opened it up. It had some beautiful old illustrations.

And I started reading.

And things that I didn't understand, I stopped.

I didn't understand the Rape Of Lucrece, for instance.

I just said... I was looking for the rape and couldn't find it, you know.

But then I started reading the plays and they were amazing.

And I didn't quite...get everything, but I got enough.

So even though one may not understand,

or the audience may not understand "Canst thou..." or whatever,

you get it, you get the whole flow of things.

You've just got to keep going and you get it.

OK. I think we're good. 'Our time in the South was over

'Next stop LA, and Baaaaaaz Luhrmann!'

LA now.

Haven't slept for 24 hours... but at least we're here.

We'd booked ourselves into the budget hotel of the stars

it's where Brad Pitt lived when he was trying to break into Hollywood.

And in the room next door was where Janis Joplin died.

Happy? Slightly concerned my credit card was declined.

What colour is it?

PIPES GROAN Turn that off. Turn it off!

Let's go.

We definitely weren't in Kansas any more.

I just saw a 60-year-old Spider Man running.

Random.

Only in Hollywood.

Superman...on the street.

Only in Hollywood.

It was a traditional script of a Shakespeare play, Romeo And Juliet,

matched with the highly modern directorial style

of visionary Baz Luhrmann,

that had inspired us all those years ago.

His film was set right here in Los Angeles,

'so what did the people here make of Shakespeare?'

Do you know anything about Shakespeare?

Oh, heck no! We're Americans!

Do you know anything about Shakespeare?

He knows how to write about love.

Never met him, but I like his stuff. OK.

"To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind

"to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or..."

Does HE have a star? We could make him one.

This is a first here on Hollywood Boulevard. The star of Shakespeare.

Can you spell it? "We have shuffled off this mortal coil.. "

"Shakespear." I love it!

Is there an E? There is, yeah, but we can excuse that.

Look at that. That's beautiful That's made my whole trip, that has.

Shakespeare's now got his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

"Fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons. Be all my sins remembered"

ALL CHEER

Honey, you want some toast? Huh Love some.

Hollywood Boulevard delivered on its promise.

We'd had fun, met a load of great and wonderful people.

It was our Yellow Brick Road

and we were perfectly cued up for our Wizard from Oz.

It was Baz time!

We were on our way to meet the man whose film had changed our lives.

Without his film we might never have become actors who love Shakespeare -

we'd certainly never have started this epic journey.

This is it, G. This is the one

Yeah. We're coming here to speak to Baz Luhrmann.

And no way would we be sitting in the reception

of the Chateau Marmont, one of LA's grandest hotels.

It had taken three-and-a-half years to get here.

And although we were a little scared, we'd made it!

So what lay behind that curtain How did it work?

How did he do that magic that had affected so many of us

Just how did this man take a 400-year-old play

and bring it to a new generation,

now seen by over 50 million people around the world?

When I was a very small boy, I went to a Catholic primary school

and we had what was called the library.

The library was a cupboard like this

and it had eight books or something on it - tiny.

I went over and one of the books was a small, black, soft-cover book.

I...I opened it and it had the title The Merchant Of Venice.

And Sister...Duchant said, "That's one of our most important writers."

"This is the greatest material ever written."

So I opened it up and I read the first phrase of it.

And she walked away and I just quietly closed it

and put it back on the shelf and said,

"I will never understand that in all my days."

Sure, he was gifted, as sure as that he was a human being.

And the more that the language is revealed

and the more fantastic it is..

It's not that he's so ordinary but that you feel you know him

So how do you get from that to making a film of Romeo And Juliet?

This idea in my mind of if Shakespeare was making a movie

what would his choices be?

What kind of cinematic language would he come up with?

Everything in the film, Romeo Juliet, whether you agree or not,

came specifically from a choice Shakespeare made

on the Elizabethan stage.

I mean, people often talk about ..

Shakespeare was rock'n'roll music or pop music.

Yes, well, Shakespeare used popular music in his plays.

Every choice in the film

was driven by, one, the single thing that Shakespeare set out to do

and that was to connect that story with the audience at hand.

And I wanted to do it

by being inspired by Shakespeare's theatrical choices.

So that was the guiding light.

"What about all that broad comedy up front?

You mean, "Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?"

Shakespeare used broad, stand-up comedy to wake the audience up

get their attention, then he undercuts it,

tends to undercut it with drama

And he's so deft, switching between comedy and tragedy.

And to me that's the greatest lesson,

because life is both great tragedy

and walks the razor's edge of great comedy and vice versa

which is why those great tragedarians like Brando...

HE MUMBLES ..they're almost ridiculous.

We all send them up because...

because...it's about that... Because it's life.

And life is a hair's breadth away from being hysterical,

something that's tragic and vice versa.

So for you, what's the key to making Shakespeare alive and accessible?

You know, I wanted it American

I wanted the setting...we wanted the setting contemporary.

And then it becomes about language.

What's the quick, clear, simple way of saying...

where you see guns, read swords

Or where you see swords or rapiers, read guns.

And then you get a little idea "Boom! Swords!" - OK, I've got it.

And so now we're using existing psychological signs and symbols

or stuff in popular culture to help the audience quickly decode

and get to the heart of the matter.

There's a very simple adjudicator in all of this...

and that is the audience.

Does it or does it not affect and move?

And that's covered in Hamlet, you know?

And to me it's the beginning and the end of it.

And one of these things will live on

and wind-bagging will be gone with the wind!

LAUGHTER Write that down!

Well, I guess I should say it. Cut!

LAUGHTER

All right, thanks, guys. Thank you.

Good on you. You know what? Good on you for doing this.

It ain't easy to stick with something, to believe in something.

It's not easy, it's hard and it's exhausting.

You do just come away and you go, "Well, actually, we CAN do anything."

"We can actually do anything we want."

You climb up the hill

and you get to the top and you've got to do something else after

If you could do one thing tomorrow, anything, what would it be?

Start a theatre company...

..or make a film.

I'm just going to tuck the old belly in. Just there sneaking out.

Let's just tuck that in there. HE LAUGHS

'America had well and truly exceeded our expectations.'

We had spoken to so many amazing people and learnt so much.

It couldn't end here, surely.

We landed back in London,

and founding artistic director of the Globe Theatre and actor

Mark Rylance invited us to be part of a performance

that could put to the test everything we'd learned.

Pop-up Shakespeare.

CHEERING

The idea of Pop-Up Shakespeare

is this, really, that there are a number of actors

in this square beneath us

who have all prepared a couple of speeches,

bits from Shakespeare, maybe some scenes,

and they go up to unsuspecting members of the public

and they ambush them.

I heard myself proclaimed. He can't hear you.

And that's... that's basically the idea.

I heard myself proclaimed. Have you? You're lucky.

And by the happy hollow of the tree, escaped the hunt.

You're lucky, I don't want to be proclaimed.

..may I hope from thee. That no revenue hast...

A most unusual vigilance does not attend my taking.

It's Shakespeare. Yeah, I know

It doesn't have to be feared. It doesn't have to be feared.

And if we can teach everybody somehow that it's something

that really you don't have to.. you don't have to be frightened of,

that it's something to kind of glory in.

For now sits Expectation in the air.

And hides a sword from hilts unto point.

Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice.

And could of men distinguish, her election.

She hath sealed thee for herself.

And with this horrible object from low farms.

Poor pelting villagers, sheepcotes, and mills.

Sometime with lunatic bans,

sometime with prayers, enforce their charity!

I'm in absolute awe of Shakespeare.

I haven't known anybody who, at the end of their career, said,

"Well, what a waste of time all that Shakespeare was."

Let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp.

Do we connect? Are we moved with the thing we've seen?

With presented nakedness out-face.

The winds and persecutions of the sky.

The second property of your excellent sherry

is the warming of the blood,

which before cold and settled left the liver pale and white.

I got my arse kicked by the critics and by Shakespeare and myself.

It's a pool... you jump in the deep end.

Good verse beautifully used

can affect the metabolism of the listener.

To be or not to be...

Just don't be scared of it, you know. This is a gift.

This is some of the greatest writing ever.

Be iconoclastic, Shakespeare won't mind. He's going to survive.

Shakespeare isn't some distant god, he was a guy.

Do not think I flatter. For what advancement may I hope from thee.

When I am dying, it will be...

I'll think, "Oh, I'll really miss that, how beautiful it is."

Follow the words, they're like the most perfect map, you know

It empowers you somehow. Speak it out loud, shout it.

Make it your own, for your generation.

It doesn't disappoint in its kind of genius stakes.

It just shows you everything that we are.

It's not all about making money or being a star,

it's about expressing yourself

He knows the human heart so well, whether it be male or female.

He speaks to every man and every woman at every age in every time.

I will wear her in my heart's core.

Ay, in my heart of heart, as I do thee.

And I thee. Thank you. Thank you.

Poor pelting villagers, sheepcotes, and mills.

Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers. Enforce their charity.

All good things must come to an end, my friend.

All good things definitely must come to an end.

It's been a long, long, long road.

Speak to me. 'Someone asked us once what we were doing all this for

'all this time and effort and struggle.

'But it was never really about us.' ALL: Muse of Fire!

'It was about the people we met The people who were generous enough

'to share a little bit of their time with us and tell us their stories.

'People we met in castles in Denmark. Small towns in America

'The streets of London.

'And how one young man born in a little town in England

'400 years ago...'

That's Shakespeare's house. '..made all those stories possible.'

If they do nothing, 'tis a venial slip.

But if I give my wife a handkerchief...

Two loves have I, of comfort and despair.

Which like two spirits do suggest me still...

'He must have been an incredible person, William Shakespeare,

'to tell those stories with such honesty and truth.

'Stories of jealousy, ambition, love and weakness...

'..fathers, mothers and friendship.

'So meeting Shakespeare might be a little bit scary...

'But so is life...and there's only one way to do both.

'Take a deep breath... And go for it.' APPLAUSE

Anything that happens to you

happens to all of Shakespeare's characters.

They've lived it before us.

It's there for you.

And there's a line that Macbeth says to Lady Macbeth,

he says, "And if we fail?"

And she says...

"We fail.

"But screw your courage to the sticking place and we'll not fail."

How lucky we are, aren't we?

He was an Englishman.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd