0:00:00 > 0:00:02"A fool's paradise". "Too much of a good thing".
0:00:02 > 0:00:03"Vanished into thin air".
0:00:03 > 0:00:07Shakespeare invented phrases that we all use today -
0:00:07 > 0:00:10and, more than that, he captured the way we behave,
0:00:10 > 0:00:13the way we think of others, the way we think of ourselves -
0:00:13 > 0:00:16and not just here in Britain, but right across the world.
0:00:16 > 0:00:20Welcome to the 2016 Richard Dimbleby Lecture.
0:00:20 > 0:00:24No terrorist campaign has ever succeeded.
0:00:24 > 0:00:26Almost everything you touch uses the internet.
0:00:26 > 0:00:28I'm going to talk about death.
0:00:28 > 0:00:31We've always been fascinated by the secret services.
0:00:31 > 0:00:34This contraption has saved millions of lives.
0:00:34 > 0:00:36..prevailing culture of consumer power.
0:00:36 > 0:00:39A demographic dividend or a demographic time bomb.
0:00:39 > 0:00:41If we fail the earth, we fail humanity.
0:00:42 > 0:00:44APPLAUSE
0:00:54 > 0:00:56Thank you very much. It's great to see you all here.
0:00:56 > 0:00:58I hope you are going to have a wonderful evening
0:00:58 > 0:01:00and enjoy this lecture. We're here at the Shard -
0:01:00 > 0:01:03the tallest building in Western Europe,
0:01:03 > 0:01:04with a spectacular view
0:01:04 > 0:01:0740 miles across London and beyond.
0:01:07 > 0:01:11And from here you can actually see, on Bankside,
0:01:11 > 0:01:14the reconstruction of the Globe Theatre,
0:01:14 > 0:01:17where Shakespeare may himself have acted,
0:01:17 > 0:01:20and where his plays now draw thousands each year.
0:01:20 > 0:01:23And it's Shakespeare that we're here to celebrate tonight,
0:01:23 > 0:01:26on the 400th anniversary of his death.
0:01:26 > 0:01:27And we're going to hear from
0:01:27 > 0:01:31one of the great Shakespearean directors of our time.
0:01:31 > 0:01:35As a schoolboy, he went to Stratford-upon-Avon
0:01:35 > 0:01:37and saw As You Like It with his mother,
0:01:37 > 0:01:41and said to her on the way home, "That's what I want to do,"
0:01:41 > 0:01:42and do it he did.
0:01:42 > 0:01:46He became, in his words, "a Shakespeare nut".
0:01:46 > 0:01:49Gregory Doran first joined the Royal Shakespeare Company
0:01:49 > 0:01:53in 1987 as an actor - later he became a director,
0:01:53 > 0:01:57and finally, three years ago, the boss of the RSC -
0:01:57 > 0:01:59the artistic director.
0:01:59 > 0:02:03Now, this lecture, this annual lecture in honour of my father
0:02:03 > 0:02:06is given because he was a pioneering broadcaster -
0:02:06 > 0:02:08he died 50 years ago -
0:02:08 > 0:02:11and it's been given by all kinds of prominent people
0:02:11 > 0:02:13from many fields of human achievement.
0:02:13 > 0:02:17We've had lawyers, people from science, economics,
0:02:17 > 0:02:21politics, religion - and from the arts, like tonight.
0:02:21 > 0:02:27The title of tonight's lecture is, Is Shakespeare Chinese?
0:02:27 > 0:02:28- LAUGHTER - Not a...
0:02:28 > 0:02:31Not a question I intend to answer -
0:02:31 > 0:02:33I'll leave it to the artistic director
0:02:33 > 0:02:35of the Royal Shakespeare Company - Gregory Doran.
0:02:49 > 0:02:51"Open your ears".
0:02:52 > 0:02:56That's surely the most arresting first line of a Shakespeare play.
0:02:56 > 0:03:00Rumour, the chorus figure in Henry IV Part Two,
0:03:00 > 0:03:02tells the audience to listen up.
0:03:03 > 0:03:05"Open your ears!"
0:03:05 > 0:03:09Ladies and gentlemen, it won't have escaped your notice
0:03:09 > 0:03:14that this year, 2016, is the 400th anniversary of the death
0:03:14 > 0:03:17of William Shakespeare, and I am delighted and honoured
0:03:17 > 0:03:22to have been asked to give the Richard Dimbleby Lecture
0:03:22 > 0:03:24in this great jubilee year.
0:03:24 > 0:03:28How is it that his words still resonate
0:03:28 > 0:03:30and have the power to grab you,
0:03:30 > 0:03:36and that his philosophy still has meaning four centuries later?
0:03:36 > 0:03:39Ben Jonson addressed his fellow playwright
0:03:39 > 0:03:43as, "My gentle Shakespeare,"
0:03:43 > 0:03:48and I am aware that tonight's lecture is entirely subjective -
0:03:48 > 0:03:53it's MY Shakespeare, the man whose work I have been lucky enough
0:03:53 > 0:03:58to spend most of my career directing at Stratford-upon-Avon.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01I've just returned from China,
0:04:01 > 0:04:07where the RSC have been presenting both parts of Henry IV and Henry V.
0:04:07 > 0:04:10It's the first time the company have ever visited
0:04:10 > 0:04:14the People's Republic with plays from our main repertoire,
0:04:14 > 0:04:17and it's the first time that cycle of plays
0:04:17 > 0:04:20has ever been performed in China.
0:04:22 > 0:04:24We were anxious... LAUGHTER
0:04:24 > 0:04:26..about how they would go down.
0:04:26 > 0:04:29Would they be perceived as some...
0:04:29 > 0:04:33impenetrable firewall of English history?
0:04:33 > 0:04:37Wouldn't it have been less risky to take Romeo And Juliet
0:04:37 > 0:04:39or The Merchant Of Venice, instead?
0:04:39 > 0:04:42Those plays are well known in China -
0:04:42 > 0:04:43in fact, the trial scene from The Merchant
0:04:43 > 0:04:48is studied by schoolchildren across that vast country.
0:04:48 > 0:04:52I will admit, there was a moment during the technical rehearsal
0:04:52 > 0:04:57in Beijing when I suddenly thought that perhaps, after all,
0:04:57 > 0:05:01we were crazy to be touring three of these plays
0:05:01 > 0:05:04that the Chinese had never seen before.
0:05:04 > 0:05:10We'd heard some troubling stories about Chinese audiences -
0:05:10 > 0:05:15that they don't act like audiences in Stratford-upon-Avon,
0:05:15 > 0:05:16that they spend their time chatting,
0:05:16 > 0:05:19and get up and leave after 40 minutes or so,
0:05:19 > 0:05:23or simply record the show on their iPhones,
0:05:23 > 0:05:27and, worse, that ushers stab audience members
0:05:27 > 0:05:31with green laser-beam torches, but to little effect.
0:05:31 > 0:05:33Would they follow the story?
0:05:33 > 0:05:37Would the surtitles be precise enough?
0:05:37 > 0:05:40On that first night in Beijing I held my breath.
0:05:41 > 0:05:44We were about to find out.
0:05:44 > 0:05:46But I'll come back to that.
0:05:47 > 0:05:52Shakespeare has been a passport through my life.
0:05:52 > 0:05:54There may be seven ages of man,
0:05:54 > 0:05:56but, for me, there are three ages
0:05:56 > 0:05:59in your life's journey with Shakespeare.
0:05:59 > 0:06:04At first, as a kid, you're grabbed by his stories -
0:06:04 > 0:06:07by tales of fairies and witches,
0:06:07 > 0:06:11of shipwrecks and murders, of battles.
0:06:12 > 0:06:13He is, if nothing else,
0:06:13 > 0:06:17one of the greatest of the world's storytellers.
0:06:17 > 0:06:23I first heard Shakespeare on an old 45 rpm record
0:06:23 > 0:06:28of Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream,
0:06:28 > 0:06:32which came with a Reader's Digest box set of Beethoven symphonies
0:06:32 > 0:06:34which my dad had ordered -
0:06:34 > 0:06:38I must have been about eight, I guess -
0:06:38 > 0:06:43and I was drawn into that magical fairy wood outside Athens.
0:06:43 > 0:06:48There was braying Bottom thumping around in the brass,
0:06:48 > 0:06:52and in the string glissandos you could picture the fairies
0:06:52 > 0:06:54scuttling through the forest
0:06:54 > 0:06:59like leaves blown across a lawn in an evening breeze.
0:06:59 > 0:07:04The music was interspersed with extracts from the play.
0:07:04 > 0:07:09When Puck - who sounded to me like Mickey Mouse -
0:07:09 > 0:07:11said he'd put a girdle round about the Earth...
0:07:11 > 0:07:13MIMICS MICKEY MOUSE: "in 40 minutes..."
0:07:13 > 0:07:14LAUGHTER
0:07:14 > 0:07:16I was amazed.
0:07:16 > 0:07:18My dad, a scientist,
0:07:18 > 0:07:20had told me that just before I was born,
0:07:20 > 0:07:24Sputnik had ignited the space race
0:07:24 > 0:07:28by orbiting the globe in an hour-and-a-half.
0:07:28 > 0:07:30Wow!
0:07:30 > 0:07:33Puck was twice as fast as Sputnik.
0:07:33 > 0:07:35LAUGHTER
0:07:35 > 0:07:38As you grow up, after the stories,
0:07:38 > 0:07:42it's perhaps Shakespeare's language which intoxicates you next -
0:07:42 > 0:07:46the second stage of what will be your growing obsession.
0:07:47 > 0:07:51Frank McCourt, the author of Angela's Ashes,
0:07:51 > 0:07:54tells how, as a child in Limerick in the 1930s,
0:07:54 > 0:07:57he was stricken down with typhoid fever
0:07:57 > 0:07:59and confined to hospital,
0:07:59 > 0:08:03where he only had a volume of Shakespeare to read.
0:08:03 > 0:08:09But reading it, he said, "Was like having jewels in your mouth," -
0:08:09 > 0:08:13and that is exactly how I felt.
0:08:13 > 0:08:15I've been doing Shakespeare plays,
0:08:15 > 0:08:19putting them on, being in them, since I was 13.
0:08:19 > 0:08:23I was lucky enough to go to a Jesuit college
0:08:23 > 0:08:25in Preston in Lancashire,
0:08:25 > 0:08:29which put on an annual Shakespeare play every autumn term.
0:08:29 > 0:08:32Now, it was a boys' school,
0:08:32 > 0:08:35and though my twin sister went to the convent school across the road
0:08:35 > 0:08:40in Winckley Square, girls were not invited to participate.
0:08:40 > 0:08:45So, at 16, I gave my Lady Macbeth...
0:08:45 > 0:08:47LAUGHTER
0:08:47 > 0:08:51..and I felt empowered by playing her.
0:08:51 > 0:08:56Every evening, I used to walk Ben, the family cairn terrier,
0:08:56 > 0:08:59down a path, along a little brook
0:08:59 > 0:09:04that led through the fields to the salt marshes of the Ribble Estuary.
0:09:04 > 0:09:08Bats would flit noiselessly above my head,
0:09:08 > 0:09:13and, as light thickened, I would rehearse her lines out loud.
0:09:14 > 0:09:18"Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts,
0:09:18 > 0:09:20"unsex me here".
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Thank God only the cows could hear.
0:09:25 > 0:09:27LAUGHTER
0:09:27 > 0:09:34But those words, so illicit, so daring, so disturbing,
0:09:34 > 0:09:37for a young man struggling with his sexuality,
0:09:37 > 0:09:41somehow whispered of empowerment.
0:09:42 > 0:09:46Then a touring production of the Scottish play came to our school.
0:09:47 > 0:09:50It wasn't very good.
0:09:50 > 0:09:53When Macbeth cried, "Is this a dagger which I see before me?"
0:09:53 > 0:09:57the witches lowered a plastic dagger on a fishing line
0:09:57 > 0:10:00in front of his face.
0:10:00 > 0:10:03And they replaced the porter scene with, "Knock, knock."
0:10:03 > 0:10:04"Who's there?" "Tom."
0:10:04 > 0:10:06"Tom who?"
0:10:06 > 0:10:10"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow."
0:10:13 > 0:10:15But worst of all for me,
0:10:15 > 0:10:18feeling understandably proprietorial about Lady M,
0:10:18 > 0:10:20was when we got to her line,
0:10:20 > 0:10:24"Make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage
0:10:24 > 0:10:28"to remorse that no compunctious visitings of nature
0:10:28 > 0:10:31"shake my fell purpose,"
0:10:31 > 0:10:35the actress changed the word "compunctious"
0:10:35 > 0:10:38to "horrid".
0:10:38 > 0:10:43"Let no horrid visitings of nature..." It didn't even scan.
0:10:43 > 0:10:46LAUGHTER
0:10:46 > 0:10:51And though I had little idea what "compunctious" actually meant,
0:10:51 > 0:10:56my 16-year-old self could hear the word splutter
0:10:56 > 0:11:00with disdain for petty scruples.
0:11:00 > 0:11:03Shakespeare himself only uses the word once.
0:11:03 > 0:11:08In fact, he probably invented it, but it prickles and fizzes
0:11:08 > 0:11:13with plosive consonants - kuh, puh, chuh!
0:11:13 > 0:11:15Compunctious!
0:11:15 > 0:11:17Sound echoes sense,
0:11:17 > 0:11:20and "horrid" didn't do it, mate.
0:11:23 > 0:11:27At the talkback after the show,
0:11:27 > 0:11:33with all the righteous indignation of a huffy teenager, I protested.
0:11:35 > 0:11:39When I came to direct Harriet Walter as Lady Macbeth
0:11:39 > 0:11:41nearly a quarter of a century later,
0:11:41 > 0:11:46on the first night I gave her a photograph of myself in the role.
0:11:48 > 0:11:49It was, she declared,
0:11:49 > 0:11:53the weirdest first-night card she had ever had from her director.
0:11:57 > 0:12:00I joined the RSC as an actor in 1987.
0:12:00 > 0:12:04My first part in The Merchant Of Venice
0:12:04 > 0:12:06was Solanio, known as one of the Salads.
0:12:06 > 0:12:10They're a gossipy pair of parasites, buzzing around Antonio,
0:12:10 > 0:12:13the merchant of Venice himself.
0:12:13 > 0:12:18Antonio is obsessively in love with the young gold-digger, Bassanio.
0:12:18 > 0:12:22The Salads witness Antonio's unrequited love,
0:12:22 > 0:12:25and Solanio - my part -
0:12:25 > 0:12:29captures his pain with aching simplicity, saying,
0:12:29 > 0:12:34"I think he only loves the world for him."
0:12:35 > 0:12:39As it happened, I felt exactly the same.
0:12:39 > 0:12:42I had fallen in love too.
0:12:42 > 0:12:44With Shylock, as it happens.
0:12:45 > 0:12:49I realised I had reached a second age in that growing journey
0:12:49 > 0:12:54with Shakespeare, when you can't believe that he is saying
0:12:54 > 0:12:57what you are thinking.
0:12:57 > 0:13:01That, somehow, as you experience attraction or love,
0:13:01 > 0:13:06his words provide the key to your soul.
0:13:08 > 0:13:12Who has described the absurd giddiness of falling in love
0:13:12 > 0:13:15better than Rosalind in As You Like It,
0:13:15 > 0:13:17when she cries to Celia,
0:13:17 > 0:13:21"O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz,
0:13:21 > 0:13:27"that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love,
0:13:27 > 0:13:30"but it cannot be sounded.
0:13:30 > 0:13:35"My affection hath an unknown bottom like the Bay of Portugal."
0:13:37 > 0:13:40Is there a more violent descent into morbid jealousy
0:13:40 > 0:13:44than that which afflicts Leontes in The Winter's Tale?
0:13:45 > 0:13:47Evident in the line,
0:13:47 > 0:13:49"Inch-thick, knee-deep,
0:13:49 > 0:13:53"o'er head and ears a fork'd one."
0:13:53 > 0:13:57A line so fractured and contorted,
0:13:57 > 0:14:02it might seem to deny immediate understanding
0:14:02 > 0:14:06but immediately conveys his nettled, jealous state of mind.
0:14:08 > 0:14:12Perhaps no-one has described self-loathing better than
0:14:12 > 0:14:17the lanky, lovelorn Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream,
0:14:17 > 0:14:19when she drags herself through the wood
0:14:19 > 0:14:21and collapses saying,
0:14:21 > 0:14:27"And sleep that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye,
0:14:27 > 0:14:32"steel me a while from mine own company." Fantastic!
0:14:32 > 0:14:35As Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have said,
0:14:35 > 0:14:39"Fantastic, and all written with a feather!"
0:14:46 > 0:14:50But trying to persuade anyone of Shakespeare's genius
0:14:50 > 0:14:54by dangling quotations before them is, as Dr Johnson once said,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58"A bit like a man trying to sell you his house
0:14:58 > 0:15:02"by carrying a brick in his pocket as a specimen."
0:15:02 > 0:15:06I love words. Words, words, words.
0:15:06 > 0:15:09I love them, but Shakespeare invented them.
0:15:09 > 0:15:15The English language, we are told, grew by 10,000 new words
0:15:15 > 0:15:18during the century in which Shakespeare lived,
0:15:18 > 0:15:21and 600 to 2,000 of those
0:15:21 > 0:15:25were estimated to have been invented by him!
0:15:25 > 0:15:29Assassination, addiction,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32bedazzled, lacklustre,
0:15:32 > 0:15:36moonbeam, newfangled,
0:15:36 > 0:15:38scuffle and puking.
0:15:38 > 0:15:41How's that for a list?
0:15:41 > 0:15:46Language roiled and boiled in a crucible of invention.
0:15:46 > 0:15:49The King James Bible, published in 1611,
0:15:49 > 0:15:53uses a modest vocabulary of about 6,000 words.
0:15:53 > 0:15:58Shakespeare's vocabulary, depending on how you count the variants,
0:15:58 > 0:16:05is usually estimated as between 26 and 29,000 words.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08Apparently, the growth in the language was partially ascribed
0:16:08 > 0:16:11to the playwrights searching for novelty.
0:16:11 > 0:16:15In 1599, the anarchic playwright John Marston,
0:16:15 > 0:16:18in a play called Antonio And Mellida,
0:16:18 > 0:16:21invents a new word - now get this -
0:16:21 > 0:16:25a new word on average every 14 lines.
0:16:25 > 0:16:27Fubbery! That's one of his.
0:16:27 > 0:16:32"Fubbery, fubbery!" a character says in his play, The Malcontent.
0:16:32 > 0:16:35Audacious eloquence.
0:16:35 > 0:16:39And Shakespeare too was a man of fire-new words.
0:16:39 > 0:16:42Indeed, like Feste, the fool, in Twelfth Night,
0:16:42 > 0:16:45he was a corrupter of words.
0:16:45 > 0:16:52Making nouns and adjectives press-gang themselves into verbs.
0:16:52 > 0:16:55"He words me, girls, he words me," says Cleopatra,
0:16:55 > 0:17:00aware that Octavius Caesar is trying to manipulate her to his will.
0:17:00 > 0:17:03Words are physical objects to Shakespeare.
0:17:03 > 0:17:08"You cram these words into my ears," says Alonso in The Tempest,
0:17:08 > 0:17:12as if words are portable, and have mass and weight.
0:17:12 > 0:17:15Words are weapons to Hamlet.
0:17:15 > 0:17:18He promises to challenge his mother saying,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21"I will speak daggers to her, but use none."
0:17:21 > 0:17:24And later, in the closet scene, she cries,
0:17:24 > 0:17:27"These words like daggers enter mine ears!"
0:17:29 > 0:17:32No wonder, then, that Rumour tells us to "Open our ears,"
0:17:32 > 0:17:35or that the Chorus at the start of Romeo And Juliet
0:17:35 > 0:17:38begs us "with patient ears attend",
0:17:38 > 0:17:42or that Elizabethans talked about going to hear a play.
0:17:42 > 0:17:45We talk of television viewers,
0:17:45 > 0:17:48but about theatre, audiences.
0:17:48 > 0:17:51From "audire", the Latin for "to hear".
0:17:51 > 0:17:55The spoken word is the medium of Shakespeare's theatre,
0:17:55 > 0:17:57for the words transport you,
0:17:57 > 0:17:59carry you "here and there jumping o'er time,"
0:17:59 > 0:18:04and for playwrights of his day, they had to be up to scratch.
0:18:04 > 0:18:08They had to keep the audience's attention with those words,
0:18:08 > 0:18:13and not unsurprisingly, they found novel ways to do that.
0:18:13 > 0:18:18Fascinating recent research at Liverpool University has shown
0:18:18 > 0:18:23that Shakespeare's words have an actual and demonstrable
0:18:23 > 0:18:26neurological effect on the brain.
0:18:26 > 0:18:30"Good tickle-brain," Falstaff calls Mistress Quickly.
0:18:30 > 0:18:32That's exactly what his words do.
0:18:32 > 0:18:37They tickle the brain and stimulate the neurons of our brains,
0:18:37 > 0:18:43prompting activation in the visual association cortex.
0:18:43 > 0:18:45Did you get that?
0:18:45 > 0:18:48The visual association cortex,
0:18:48 > 0:18:52or what Horatio in Hamlet calls, "The mind's eye."
0:18:54 > 0:18:57Shakespeare's words set off little electrical charges,
0:18:57 > 0:19:02light up our minds and create a theatre of the brain.
0:19:02 > 0:19:07So when Juliet says, "Parting is such sweet sorrow,"
0:19:07 > 0:19:10it surprises us. Or it should.
0:19:10 > 0:19:14The conjunction of "sweet" and "sorrow" startles us.
0:19:14 > 0:19:17The difficulty for us today, for actors today,
0:19:17 > 0:19:22is getting beyond the overfamiliarity with those phrases
0:19:22 > 0:19:25and recoining it afresh, as if that thought,
0:19:25 > 0:19:30that particular conjunction of words, had just occurred to Juliet.
0:19:32 > 0:19:34But how do you do that?
0:19:34 > 0:19:39How do you fresh-mint some of those famous lines?
0:19:39 > 0:19:43How do you "look with thine ears", as King Lear says.
0:19:43 > 0:19:48Well, the late lamented Roger Rees, when he played Hamlet,
0:19:48 > 0:19:51decided to try to surprise the audience one night
0:19:51 > 0:19:54with perhaps the most famous line in Shakespeare,
0:19:54 > 0:19:56"To be or not to be."
0:19:56 > 0:19:59He would rush forward to the front of the stage
0:19:59 > 0:20:02and deliver the line with an urgent immediacy,
0:20:02 > 0:20:05as if it had just emerged from the quick forge
0:20:05 > 0:20:07and working house of thought.
0:20:07 > 0:20:10The cue came and he hurtled onto the stage...
0:20:12 > 0:20:17..and promptly forgot the most famous line in Shakespeare.
0:20:17 > 0:20:22Not only that, he was prompted by a member of the audience.
0:20:26 > 0:20:30When I did a production of Hamlet with David Tennant a few years ago,
0:20:30 > 0:20:33we discovered a rather unconventional way
0:20:33 > 0:20:36of fresh-minting another of those famous lines
0:20:36 > 0:20:39whose fame transcends the play.
0:20:39 > 0:20:41As the gravedigger presents Hamlet
0:20:41 > 0:20:44with the skull of his father's old Jester, he declares,
0:20:44 > 0:20:47"Alas, poor Yorick!"
0:20:47 > 0:20:49I had heard that, in the 1980s,
0:20:49 > 0:20:54a man had actually bequeathed his own skull
0:20:54 > 0:20:59to be used in a production, an RSC production, of Hamlet.
0:21:01 > 0:21:03His name was Andre Tchaikowsky.
0:21:03 > 0:21:06He was a Polish composer living in Oxford.
0:21:06 > 0:21:09The undertaker, when it came to it,
0:21:09 > 0:21:15had balked at the idea of removing the head from one of his customers
0:21:15 > 0:21:19as this was not regarded as, well, normal practice,
0:21:19 > 0:21:22and quite possibly it was illegal.
0:21:22 > 0:21:23So, believe it or not,
0:21:23 > 0:21:27permission had to be granted by the Home Office.
0:21:27 > 0:21:31Eventually the local hospital had removed the head,
0:21:31 > 0:21:33and had done the job
0:21:33 > 0:21:37that presumably the cold clay of the grave did for Yorick.
0:21:37 > 0:21:40Whatever the process, one day,
0:21:40 > 0:21:43the skull arrived in the prop department at Stratford
0:21:43 > 0:21:46in a Delsey tissue box.
0:21:46 > 0:21:47And when it was opened,
0:21:47 > 0:21:50Crusty, the prop shop dog, went crazy.
0:21:52 > 0:21:55LAUGHTER
0:21:55 > 0:21:58The skull still stank.
0:21:59 > 0:22:04"Pah," as Hamlet says, "the gorge rises at it!"
0:22:04 > 0:22:07So it was put in an onion bag up on the roof
0:22:07 > 0:22:08until the weather,
0:22:08 > 0:22:10and perhaps the birds,
0:22:10 > 0:22:12had done the rest.
0:22:12 > 0:22:14Then it was stored in a box on a shelf,
0:22:14 > 0:22:17and that's where it had stayed.
0:22:17 > 0:22:23No-one had chosen to cast poor Andre as Yorick.
0:22:23 > 0:22:28So on our first day of rehearsals, as usual,
0:22:28 > 0:22:31I welcomed the actors, announced what parts they'd be playing,
0:22:31 > 0:22:32and then I said,
0:22:32 > 0:22:35"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce you
0:22:35 > 0:22:37"to the final member of our company,"
0:22:37 > 0:22:40and I pulled on some purple rubber gloves...
0:22:41 > 0:22:43..opened that cardboard box,
0:22:43 > 0:22:46and lifting out the skull, I said,
0:22:46 > 0:22:48"This is Andre.
0:22:48 > 0:22:50"He will be playing Yorick"
0:22:52 > 0:22:57A silence fell on the room.
0:22:57 > 0:23:02I offered to hand the skull to any of the team who wanted to touch it.
0:23:02 > 0:23:04Some recoiled,
0:23:04 > 0:23:08some were drawn towards it in grim fascination.
0:23:08 > 0:23:12Cicely Berry, the legendary RSC voice guru,
0:23:12 > 0:23:15still working with the company aged 90...
0:23:15 > 0:23:17Cis was present,
0:23:17 > 0:23:19and declined the skull with a smile,
0:23:19 > 0:23:23saying she was close enough to that state herself, already!
0:23:26 > 0:23:31Many were disturbed by such a vivid memento mori.
0:23:31 > 0:23:35Whatever the reaction, that line, "Alas, poor Yorick,"
0:23:35 > 0:23:39never languished into cliche in our production.
0:23:39 > 0:23:44The skull never became just another stage prop.
0:23:44 > 0:23:46When David Tennant peered at the skull,
0:23:46 > 0:23:50stared into those hollow eye sockets,
0:23:50 > 0:23:54he saw his own mortality staring straight back at him.
0:23:54 > 0:23:56And so did we.
0:23:56 > 0:23:58Shakespeare came face to face
0:23:58 > 0:24:03with this scoffing, grinning antic at the age of 52.
0:24:03 > 0:24:06We don't actually know how he died.
0:24:06 > 0:24:11The vicar of Holy Trinity Church, John Ward, in Stratford-upon-Avon,
0:24:11 > 0:24:15some 40 years later, left the only account we have.
0:24:15 > 0:24:16He writes in his diary,
0:24:16 > 0:24:19"Shakespeare had a merry meeting with his friends
0:24:19 > 0:24:21"Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton,
0:24:21 > 0:24:23"drank too much,
0:24:23 > 0:24:25"and died of a fever there contracted."
0:24:25 > 0:24:26That's it.
0:24:26 > 0:24:29Shakespeare's funerary monument in Holy Trinity
0:24:29 > 0:24:32tells us he died on 23rd April,
0:24:32 > 0:24:35which is normally accepted as the day he was born.
0:24:35 > 0:24:37So, it would seem,
0:24:37 > 0:24:41Bill and Ben went out with Mike on his 52nd birthday,
0:24:41 > 0:24:42overdid it,
0:24:42 > 0:24:44and he shuffled off his mortal coil.
0:24:46 > 0:24:51But why are we celebrating this fatal birthday binge?
0:24:51 > 0:24:57Why are we even still doing his plays 400 years later?
0:24:57 > 0:25:03Let me go back to our first night of Henry IV Part One in China.
0:25:03 > 0:25:05It was a packed house -
0:25:05 > 0:25:08a good balance of men and women,
0:25:08 > 0:25:10of all age groups,
0:25:10 > 0:25:12lots of young people.
0:25:12 > 0:25:15They were quiet in the first scene.
0:25:15 > 0:25:17Hotspur broke the ice first.
0:25:17 > 0:25:22He's the hot-headed action man of the play.
0:25:22 > 0:25:25Forbidden by the king even to mention the name
0:25:25 > 0:25:26of the rebel Mortimer,
0:25:26 > 0:25:29he swears he will teach a starling
0:25:29 > 0:25:31to say nothing but Mortimer
0:25:31 > 0:25:35and give it to the king to squawk it at him day and night.
0:25:35 > 0:25:36Laughter!
0:25:36 > 0:25:39Recognition of the absurdity,
0:25:39 > 0:25:44of the imaginative brain of that motormouth Harry Hotspur.
0:25:44 > 0:25:50But then Sir John Falstaff waddled on to the Chinese stage
0:25:50 > 0:25:54for the very first time ever.
0:25:54 > 0:25:57One of Shakespeare's greatest creations,
0:25:57 > 0:26:01that primal urge, that life force,
0:26:01 > 0:26:04that gross embodiment of appetite and desire,
0:26:04 > 0:26:09the irresistible "hill of flesh", Jack Falstaff.
0:26:09 > 0:26:10Laughter.
0:26:10 > 0:26:13At the Gadshill plot, where Falstaff and his henchmen
0:26:13 > 0:26:15decide to play highwaymen
0:26:15 > 0:26:18and rob travellers on the London road,
0:26:18 > 0:26:21and to be hijacked in turn by the dissolute Prince Hal
0:26:21 > 0:26:23and his mate Poins.
0:26:23 > 0:26:25And then in the Tavern Scene
0:26:25 > 0:26:28as Falstaff exaggerates his bravery to the prince,
0:26:28 > 0:26:31pretending that he fought off assailants
0:26:31 > 0:26:33in ever-increasing numbers.
0:26:33 > 0:26:37Great waves of laughter from our Chinese audience!
0:26:37 > 0:26:41It was as if Falstaff had always been there.
0:26:41 > 0:26:45As if the Chinese psyche had always had him there.
0:26:45 > 0:26:50As if he was one of the most ancient of Chinese folk characters.
0:26:50 > 0:26:53At the end of the Battle of Shrewsbury,
0:26:53 > 0:26:56when Prince Hal kills Hotspur in a duel,
0:26:56 > 0:26:59Falstaff tries to take the credit for killing him -
0:26:59 > 0:27:01to Prince Hal's face!
0:27:01 > 0:27:04The disreputable rogue declares,
0:27:04 > 0:27:08"Lord, Lord how the world is given to lying."
0:27:08 > 0:27:13And the audience got the laugh even before the punchline had landed.
0:27:13 > 0:27:16Well, of course.
0:27:16 > 0:27:20- The world- is- given to lying, wherever you are in it.
0:27:20 > 0:27:25"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."
0:27:25 > 0:27:29I had always been suspicious
0:27:29 > 0:27:32of the sort of universalising dogma about Shakespeare -
0:27:32 > 0:27:35the assertion, or perhaps the Great British propaganda,
0:27:35 > 0:27:38that he is indisputably, unquestionably,
0:27:38 > 0:27:40the world's greatest writer,
0:27:40 > 0:27:45and to suggest otherwise is some sort of dangerous heresy.
0:27:45 > 0:27:50But that first night in Beijing was evidence,
0:27:50 > 0:27:53living proof of Shakespeare's genius
0:27:53 > 0:27:57unfolding before my very ears and eyes.
0:27:57 > 0:28:03In truth, it would seem Shakespeare has become fashionable in China.
0:28:03 > 0:28:06Premier Wen Jiabao had started his visit to the UK in 2011
0:28:06 > 0:28:09by visiting Stratford-upon-Avon.
0:28:09 > 0:28:12Last autumn, President Xi Jinping
0:28:12 > 0:28:14had been presented with a copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets
0:28:14 > 0:28:16by the Queen.
0:28:16 > 0:28:19Brush up your "Shashibiya"
0:28:19 > 0:28:21and it's an index of just how outward-looking
0:28:21 > 0:28:23and open-minded you are -
0:28:23 > 0:28:28proof of your cultural awareness, a lifestyle credential.
0:28:28 > 0:28:31We just did not know if that would translate
0:28:31 > 0:28:34into actually enjoying watching his plays in performance
0:28:34 > 0:28:36and in English!
0:28:36 > 0:28:40The South African actor Sello Maake Ka-Ncube
0:28:40 > 0:28:42had once challenged me about Shakespeare.
0:28:42 > 0:28:46We were doing a production of his early tragedy Titus Andronicus
0:28:46 > 0:28:48at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg,
0:28:48 > 0:28:50just at the ending of apartheid.
0:28:50 > 0:28:53Sello was playing Aaron the Moor,
0:28:53 > 0:28:56Shakespeare's other great black character.
0:28:57 > 0:28:59"Greg," he said to me,
0:28:59 > 0:29:02"you told me Shakespeare was English!"
0:29:02 > 0:29:07"Yeah", I muttered. "Yeah, I think that's indisputable."
0:29:09 > 0:29:11"Uh-uh!" said Sello,
0:29:11 > 0:29:13"Shakespeare is Zulu!"
0:29:13 > 0:29:15On that first night,
0:29:15 > 0:29:18our first night in Beijing proved that Shakespeare is also...
0:29:18 > 0:29:20Chinese.
0:29:20 > 0:29:24People sometimes ask me if Shakespeare is still relevant.
0:29:26 > 0:29:28To me, he's like a magnet
0:29:28 > 0:29:30that attracts all the iron filings
0:29:30 > 0:29:33of everything that's going on in the world.
0:29:33 > 0:29:36- You don't have to- make- him relevant.
0:29:36 > 0:29:38By looking at the world as it is,
0:29:38 > 0:29:39he just is.
0:29:41 > 0:29:44But perhaps this is where we come to the third age
0:29:44 > 0:29:48in any progression though an appreciation of Shakespeare -
0:29:48 > 0:29:53a sense of his contemporary resonance in our world today.
0:29:53 > 0:29:56What you might call Shakespeare's ability
0:29:56 > 0:29:59to sound the depths of our experience.
0:30:01 > 0:30:06Shakespeare lived through a time of disillusionment and uncertainty.
0:30:06 > 0:30:10I often feel that he speaks so directly to us today,
0:30:10 > 0:30:14because his times echo ours.
0:30:15 > 0:30:18Here's an example.
0:30:18 > 0:30:24I did a production of King John at Stratford in 2001.
0:30:24 > 0:30:26One Tuesday matinee in September,
0:30:26 > 0:30:30shortly after the play began at 13:30,
0:30:30 > 0:30:34a plane crashed into a skyscraper in New York.
0:30:36 > 0:30:40Some of the company gathered round a small TV, in the crew room.
0:30:40 > 0:30:4517 minutes later, a second plane hit a second tower.
0:30:45 > 0:30:49The company didn't know what to do,
0:30:49 > 0:30:52whether to stop the show or continue.
0:30:52 > 0:30:54Just before the interval,
0:30:54 > 0:30:58the South Tower of the World Trade Center imploded,
0:30:58 > 0:31:03like an Apollo space rocket launch, but in terrible reverse.
0:31:04 > 0:31:07Shortly after the North Tower collapsed,
0:31:07 > 0:31:10one of the characters in the play said,
0:31:10 > 0:31:12"Now...
0:31:12 > 0:31:16"vast confusion waits,
0:31:16 > 0:31:20"As doth a raven on a sick fallen beast."
0:31:20 > 0:31:25And that's what we all felt, that vast confusion,
0:31:25 > 0:31:30like some great black bird of prey, waited upon the world.
0:31:30 > 0:31:34Now, perhaps Shakespeare is able to show the very age
0:31:34 > 0:31:36and body of the time, its form and pressure,
0:31:36 > 0:31:41because his society nearly experienced its own 9/11 -
0:31:41 > 0:31:44the Gunpowder Plot, when a terrorist attack
0:31:44 > 0:31:50nearly succeeded in smashing the whole machinery of state,
0:31:50 > 0:31:53nearly blowing up the entire royal family,
0:31:53 > 0:31:56and all the Lords Temporal and Ecclesiastical
0:31:56 > 0:31:59who would have been present at the state opening of Parliament
0:31:59 > 0:32:02on 5/11 1605.
0:32:02 > 0:32:08The world must have seemed to have lost its moral absolutes,
0:32:08 > 0:32:13to have loosed its moorings and be adrift in a sea of uncertainty.
0:32:13 > 0:32:20And this prevailing sense of doom, of futility, of apprehension
0:32:20 > 0:32:22is present not just in Shakespeare,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25but in many of the plays of this period.
0:32:25 > 0:32:30And perhaps that is why we recognise our own reflection
0:32:30 > 0:32:32in the mirror of his work.
0:32:34 > 0:32:36In Richard III,
0:32:36 > 0:32:39there's a little scene which is often cut.
0:32:39 > 0:32:43But John Peter, the former chief critic of The Sunday Times,
0:32:43 > 0:32:45recalled this scene in particular,
0:32:45 > 0:32:48in a production of the play which opened at the National Theatre
0:32:48 > 0:32:50in his native Budapest,
0:32:50 > 0:32:53just months after the death of Stalin.
0:32:55 > 0:32:58It's a little speech by a little guy.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03Shakespeare often gives potent lines to minor characters.
0:33:03 > 0:33:07He's a scrivener, a secretary, who has been given the job
0:33:07 > 0:33:10of writing out Lord Hastings' indictment.
0:33:10 > 0:33:14He's shocked by the speed with which Hastings,
0:33:14 > 0:33:16the equivalent of the Prime Minister,
0:33:16 > 0:33:20has been brought down by Richard on trumped-up charges.
0:33:21 > 0:33:26"Within these five hours lived Lord Hastings,
0:33:26 > 0:33:30"Untainted, unexamined, free, at liberty."
0:33:32 > 0:33:37But the scrivener can see how evil spreads by degrees,
0:33:37 > 0:33:39as individuals recognise its pervasive power,
0:33:39 > 0:33:42but do not stand up to oppose it.
0:33:42 > 0:33:46"Here's a good world the while!" he says.
0:33:46 > 0:33:52"Why who's so gross, That seeth not this palpable device?
0:33:53 > 0:33:57"Yet who's so blind, but says he sees it not?"
0:33:58 > 0:34:05In Budapest, at that line, the full house rose to their feet
0:34:05 > 0:34:08and applauded and applauded.
0:34:08 > 0:34:10The story of the execution of Hastings
0:34:10 > 0:34:12was a familiar terror story.
0:34:13 > 0:34:17A few weeks later, the National had to close Richard III.
0:34:18 > 0:34:23The thunderous applause by every audience member every night
0:34:23 > 0:34:26was too much for the Communist government.
0:34:26 > 0:34:27They were right.
0:34:27 > 0:34:30John Peter told me that that production of Richard III
0:34:30 > 0:34:34was one of the most moving and powerful events
0:34:34 > 0:34:36that led, within months,
0:34:36 > 0:34:38to the Hungarian Revolution.
0:34:39 > 0:34:44But I remember a more personal occasion when Shakespeare spoke
0:34:44 > 0:34:47or seemed to provide the words that none of us could find.
0:34:48 > 0:34:52We were on tour with Macbeth in Japan.
0:34:52 > 0:34:56My partner Tony Sher and I went down to Hiroshima
0:34:56 > 0:34:58to the Peace Park built on the site
0:34:58 > 0:35:00where the A-bomb was dropped in 1945.
0:35:02 > 0:35:06In the museum, there was a melted watch
0:35:06 > 0:35:10which had stopped at 08:15, precisely the time the bomb,
0:35:10 > 0:35:14Little Boy, had detonated that August morning.
0:35:15 > 0:35:18A piece of granite from the front of a bank,
0:35:18 > 0:35:21with the brown outline of a man, his shadow,
0:35:21 > 0:35:26all that was left when his body evaporated in the explosion.
0:35:27 > 0:35:31A photograph of a young woman with the pattern of her kimono
0:35:31 > 0:35:35seared into her naked flesh by the nuclear flash.
0:35:36 > 0:35:41At the end there was a visitors' book -
0:35:41 > 0:35:42a visitors' book! -
0:35:42 > 0:35:44for you to comment.
0:35:47 > 0:35:50Tony and I couldn't find the words.
0:35:52 > 0:35:57And then a speech from the play we were touring occurred to us,
0:35:57 > 0:36:03a speech which we hadn't really registered until that moment.
0:36:03 > 0:36:06Macbeth has returned to the Weird Sisters,
0:36:06 > 0:36:09demanding, whatever cataclysm may ensue,
0:36:09 > 0:36:13that they tell him more of what the future has in store.
0:36:14 > 0:36:17"Though you untie the winds and let them fight
0:36:17 > 0:36:21"Against the churches; though the yeasty waves
0:36:21 > 0:36:25"Confound and swallow navigation up;
0:36:25 > 0:36:30"Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
0:36:30 > 0:36:33"Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
0:36:33 > 0:36:36"Though palaces and pyramids do slope
0:36:36 > 0:36:38"Their heads to their foundations..."
0:36:38 > 0:36:44Then he declares, "Even till destruction sicken;
0:36:44 > 0:36:46"Answer me to what I ask you."
0:36:47 > 0:36:51"Even till destruction sicken."
0:36:52 > 0:36:55As if Destruction was a greedy living entity,
0:36:55 > 0:37:00with a seemingly limitless capacity for catastrophe.
0:37:00 > 0:37:03Well, here in Hiroshima,
0:37:03 > 0:37:07Destruction herself had surely sickened,
0:37:07 > 0:37:10clutched her stomach and cried, "Enough."
0:37:11 > 0:37:14"Even till destruction sicken".
0:37:14 > 0:37:16And that's what we wrote
0:37:16 > 0:37:18in the Hiroshima Peace Park visitors' book.
0:37:20 > 0:37:23Of course, Shakespeare couldn't know how the words he wrote
0:37:23 > 0:37:26in a play 400 years ago might help to articulate
0:37:26 > 0:37:32our own comprehension of the world, when our own words failed to help,
0:37:32 > 0:37:37but his capacious imagination,
0:37:37 > 0:37:43what Thomas Hardy calls his "bright, baffling soul",
0:37:43 > 0:37:45with his compassion for our fragility,
0:37:45 > 0:37:47and his understanding of the powerful forces
0:37:47 > 0:37:49that motivate us all,
0:37:49 > 0:37:55and his 360 degree view of our frail natures,
0:37:55 > 0:38:00somehow all this allows him to say what oft was thought,
0:38:00 > 0:38:02but ne'er so well expressed.
0:38:04 > 0:38:08Well, I was describing how Shakespeare has been
0:38:08 > 0:38:11a passport through my own life,
0:38:11 > 0:38:14how as a kid, I was lucky enough to be given that passport
0:38:14 > 0:38:18and now, in Shakespeare's jubilee year,
0:38:18 > 0:38:22it is one of my priorities as Artistic Director of the RSC,
0:38:22 > 0:38:27to see that I can do all that I can for children at school today,
0:38:27 > 0:38:30and make sure they are given the same opportunity.
0:38:30 > 0:38:34As well as bringing our productions to new audiences in China
0:38:34 > 0:38:37and across the world, we extend the reach of Shakespeare
0:38:37 > 0:38:42into our own communities here in the UK,
0:38:42 > 0:38:46and it's one of the aspects of our work of which I am most proud.
0:38:46 > 0:38:52We now film every Shakespeare play we do, broadcast it live,
0:38:52 > 0:38:57and provide screenings for free into classrooms around the country.
0:38:58 > 0:39:02I can think of no better witness of the power of Shakespeare
0:39:02 > 0:39:04to transform lives,
0:39:04 > 0:39:08than the evidence presented to us by the head teacher
0:39:08 > 0:39:13of a school on the coast of Kent, King Ethelbert School in Margate.
0:39:14 > 0:39:18A few years ago, King Ethelbert School
0:39:18 > 0:39:22was the fifth worst-performing school in the country.
0:39:22 > 0:39:27Two years ago, the head teacher, Kate Grieg, decided to take part in
0:39:27 > 0:39:32our Education Department's long-term partnership programme with schools.
0:39:33 > 0:39:37Some of her parents said, "The RSC are posh people.
0:39:37 > 0:39:40"They're not going to come to Margate".
0:39:40 > 0:39:43Another said, "Shakespeare is for clever people.
0:39:43 > 0:39:48"He used a lot of long words and I felt left out at school".
0:39:49 > 0:39:54So Shakespeare had become a metaphor for the divide between them and us.
0:39:55 > 0:39:59But Kate felt that Shakespeare belongs to everyone.
0:40:00 > 0:40:02To cut a long story short,
0:40:02 > 0:40:06after two years of working with the RSC,
0:40:06 > 0:40:09teachers and pupils at King Ethelbert School
0:40:09 > 0:40:11are getting excited about Shakespeare.
0:40:11 > 0:40:15They got a bit of funding to bring the whole of Year 8
0:40:15 > 0:40:19to see The Merchant Of Venice at Stratford-upon-Avon.
0:40:19 > 0:40:23One of the mothers rang to say her son couldn't do the trip
0:40:23 > 0:40:25because he didn't have a passport.
0:40:27 > 0:40:32Kate persuaded her to let her son go, and he loved it.
0:40:32 > 0:40:34Not only that, he persuaded his mum
0:40:34 > 0:40:38to take him back to the theatre to see it again.
0:40:38 > 0:40:43Afterwards, the mum rang Kate and said, "Now I get it!"
0:40:43 > 0:40:46And now the whole school gets it.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49This summer, they're taking part in our Dream project,
0:40:49 > 0:40:53mounting their own production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
0:40:53 > 0:40:56in a community promenade production around Margate.
0:40:56 > 0:40:58But they're also taking part
0:40:58 > 0:41:01in our touring production of the play,
0:41:01 > 0:41:04across the nation, in which local schoolchildren
0:41:04 > 0:41:07play Titania's fairy train, and local amateurs join
0:41:07 > 0:41:12our professional cast to play Bottom and the rude mechanicals.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15But the benefits of opening up to Shakespeare
0:41:15 > 0:41:18at King Ethelbert School have been great,
0:41:18 > 0:41:24and most importantly, the shift in the level of aspiration
0:41:24 > 0:41:27of the whole school community has been massive.
0:41:27 > 0:41:30Now parents say to the head teacher,
0:41:30 > 0:41:34"It's my RIGHT to learn about Shakespeare",
0:41:34 > 0:41:39and, perhaps most illuminatingly, one said,
0:41:39 > 0:41:43"I'm going to vote, because I feel we're important now."
0:41:43 > 0:41:50Now, that is what I call cultural ownership.
0:41:50 > 0:41:53I was very lucky to have been offered the passport
0:41:53 > 0:41:56that the arts give to enrich your journey through life.
0:41:56 > 0:41:59In this jubilee year,
0:41:59 > 0:42:03there can be no greater legacy of Shakespeare's ability
0:42:03 > 0:42:08to enhance our lives than to grant every child that passport.
0:42:08 > 0:42:13Like the kids at King Ethelbert, they not only deserve that,
0:42:13 > 0:42:15it's their inheritance.
0:42:15 > 0:42:20Our provision of access to Shakespeare, to drama,
0:42:20 > 0:42:23to literature, to art, to culture,
0:42:23 > 0:42:28is an index by which we judge ourselves to be civilised.
0:42:28 > 0:42:30Deny that,
0:42:30 > 0:42:34to disregard that, to underfund that,
0:42:34 > 0:42:38is to cheat ourselves and our children
0:42:38 > 0:42:42and deny them their birthright.
0:42:42 > 0:42:45I've been privileged enough
0:42:45 > 0:42:49to direct three-quarters of the plays in the canon,
0:42:49 > 0:42:51most at Stratford-upon-Avon.
0:42:51 > 0:42:57But I've never tackled King Lear until this summer.
0:42:57 > 0:43:00I began tonight by saying there were three stages
0:43:00 > 0:43:03in your life's travel with Shakespeare.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06But there's perhaps a final stage.
0:43:06 > 0:43:11It's one I feel I've only just begun to discover.
0:43:11 > 0:43:16Shakespeare encompasses a vast panorama of human experience,
0:43:16 > 0:43:21and that includes the clear and unsentimental way
0:43:21 > 0:43:25in which he addresses our fear of death.
0:43:25 > 0:43:29How he recognises our puzzlement, as Hamlet puts it,
0:43:29 > 0:43:33by "the dread of something after death,
0:43:33 > 0:43:35"the undiscovered country
0:43:35 > 0:43:39"from whose bourn no traveller returns".
0:43:41 > 0:43:45In truth, King Lear is a play I could not watch
0:43:45 > 0:43:47for over a decade,
0:43:47 > 0:43:49as before he died,
0:43:49 > 0:43:52my own father declined into dementia.
0:43:53 > 0:43:59Dad wasn't violently irrational or susceptible to fierce rages,
0:43:59 > 0:44:01like Lear is,
0:44:01 > 0:44:04but his awareness of his fading memory,
0:44:04 > 0:44:08and his attempts to hide his incapacity,
0:44:08 > 0:44:12and his occasional moments of lucidity
0:44:12 > 0:44:17echoed Lear's journey too acutely for me to watch.
0:44:17 > 0:44:23It was too painful, too accurate, too damn true.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28When mad Lear meets the blinded Gloucester
0:44:28 > 0:44:30in the fields near Dover,
0:44:30 > 0:44:33he has one of those sudden rare moments of clarity
0:44:33 > 0:44:37which I recognised in my own father.
0:44:37 > 0:44:42"I know thee well enough. Thy name is Gloucester.
0:44:42 > 0:44:48"Thou must be patient. We came crying hither.
0:44:48 > 0:44:54"Thou know'st, the first time that we smell the air, we wawl and cry."
0:44:54 > 0:44:59And then he says, with bleak and desolate simplicity,
0:44:59 > 0:45:03"When we are born, we cry that we are come
0:45:03 > 0:45:06"to this great stage of fools."
0:45:07 > 0:45:13Understand that, the absurd existential joke,
0:45:13 > 0:45:15that we are required to play a part
0:45:15 > 0:45:18on this great stage of fools,
0:45:18 > 0:45:22that indeed all the world's a stage, as Jaques says,
0:45:22 > 0:45:25and that we all have our exits and our entrances.
0:45:25 > 0:45:30That life is but a walking shadow, as Macbeth discovers,
0:45:30 > 0:45:35a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
0:45:35 > 0:45:37and then is heard no more.
0:45:37 > 0:45:42Or, if you prefer, more gently, as Prospero suggests,
0:45:42 > 0:45:46that we are such stuff as dreams are made on,
0:45:46 > 0:45:51and our little life is rounded with a sleep.
0:45:51 > 0:45:57Then our fear of death seems easier to bear.
0:45:57 > 0:46:00So, King Lear.
0:46:00 > 0:46:03We start rehearsals in three months' time.
0:46:03 > 0:46:08A thought-provoking and nerve-racking thought,
0:46:08 > 0:46:09thrilling too.
0:46:09 > 0:46:12Someone asked me, "How are you going to do Lear?"
0:46:12 > 0:46:16As if you have to do something with Shakespeare to make him work.
0:46:17 > 0:46:19I answered, "I'm going to try and do it
0:46:19 > 0:46:21"as well as Shakespeare wrote it."
0:46:21 > 0:46:22SOME LAUGHTER
0:46:22 > 0:46:25That's challenging enough.
0:46:25 > 0:46:30Now, centenaries seem to demand redefinitions.
0:46:31 > 0:46:36Here in this most iconically contemporary of buildings,
0:46:36 > 0:46:41the Shard, the Bard's crusty heritage associations
0:46:41 > 0:46:43must be shaken off.
0:46:43 > 0:46:47This vertical city is the perfect location
0:46:47 > 0:46:53to celebrate Shakespeare as robustly and defiantly contemporary.
0:46:53 > 0:46:56Today he's translated into
0:46:56 > 0:46:59every language from Armenian to Yakut,
0:46:59 > 0:47:02from hip-hop to Klingon.
0:47:04 > 0:47:07He's been excitingly appropriated and reinvented
0:47:07 > 0:47:10by different cultures all over the world.
0:47:10 > 0:47:14Now we reinterpret him, relocate him,
0:47:14 > 0:47:17rewrite him, regender him.
0:47:17 > 0:47:18All fine.
0:47:18 > 0:47:20He's tough, he can take it.
0:47:20 > 0:47:24He's for today and for everyone.
0:47:24 > 0:47:25So a new definition?
0:47:25 > 0:47:28Well, Shakespeare requires none -
0:47:28 > 0:47:32mainly because his mate Ben Jonson has said it all first.
0:47:32 > 0:47:35In the dedicatory epistle he wrote
0:47:35 > 0:47:39for the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio,
0:47:39 > 0:47:43Jonson called his fellow playwright "soul of the age",
0:47:43 > 0:47:45"sweet swan of Avon",
0:47:45 > 0:47:49and, one of my favourites, "thou star of poets".
0:47:49 > 0:47:53But perhaps most memorably, Jonson said,
0:47:53 > 0:47:57"He was not for an age but for all time."
0:47:57 > 0:48:01As Shakespeare roars into his fifth century,
0:48:01 > 0:48:06that assertion seems pretty indisputable.
0:48:06 > 0:48:11As for "my Shakespeare", I guess it's the way
0:48:11 > 0:48:14he maps our hearts which keeps me returning to him,
0:48:14 > 0:48:17even if in a play like Lear he provides
0:48:17 > 0:48:21a sort of spectral analysis for our capacity
0:48:21 > 0:48:25for cruelty and violence that can be challenging to face.
0:48:25 > 0:48:27In the end, for me, he is,
0:48:27 > 0:48:31as someone once said, the prophet of the soul.
0:48:31 > 0:48:35And I find more sustenance, more profundity,
0:48:35 > 0:48:41more compassion, more philosophy and more simple truth in Shakespeare
0:48:41 > 0:48:45than I have ever found in the Bible.
0:48:45 > 0:48:47Sartre said that in a secular age,
0:48:47 > 0:48:53most people feel a God-shaped hole in their consciousness.
0:48:53 > 0:48:57I here declare, I filled mine with Shakespeare.
0:48:57 > 0:49:03On the other hand, the late, great actor Donald Sinden once quipped,
0:49:03 > 0:49:06"Man cannot live by Bard alone."
0:49:06 > 0:49:07LAUGHTER
0:49:07 > 0:49:10But it's given me an immense amount of joy to do so,
0:49:10 > 0:49:13and to deliver tonight's lecture.
0:49:13 > 0:49:18As Shakespeare said, and we should give the last word to him,
0:49:18 > 0:49:21"To business that we love we rise betime,
0:49:21 > 0:49:24"and go to't with delight."
0:49:24 > 0:49:26Thank you.