Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose 20130831

Nonthat generation that reflect whats going on, each person that comes to it brings their own experience and i think thats why they are great plays and why they keep being able to be done and done and done. Rose it can be adapted to any age. Yeah. Rose all about shakespeare, next. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Out, out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow. A poor player that struts and frets an hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Rose so why why this . Why . laughs thats the question im always asking myself, too. Rose its not easy. Its not. Its very, very its the most intense thing ive ever done. Rose the most intense thing youve ever done . I mean professionally. Rose laughs i mean, because its not just i play a person in a psychiatric unit, im brought in and then i start to perform macbeth and two other people, jenny stern and brendan it toly play the doctor and orderly observing me and as the play goes on they in my imagination become the play, too. Theres too narratives. Its bad enough playing macbeth, but im playing someone who is sort of exorcising some things for himself by doing macbeth himself. Rose do we learn something about macbeth we might not have known . I think the emphasis of our production makes the Mental Illness part of macbeth be more present bays i think shakespeare wrote so intelligently and earlier than anyone else about psychology and there wasnt even a term then and i theres so many things that are fascinating to me about visions and hearing voices. Rose most of the people in his plays had some semblance of psychological yeah, like lady macbeth is the first person whos ever got o. C. D. Rose laughs yes. Exactly. How is it to play both of them . Its you know, its great. I think in a way what i like about that playing that couple is that they are really together when theyre together theyre kind of the same person and when theyre apart they just fall apart. They cant be they dont function and its kind of difficult, obviously, because i basically have sex with myself in one scene. laughs . Rose not the first time, im sure. Well, no, at least youre having sex with someone you love. Rose laughs but its an amazing experience for an actor to do this. And i didnt go into it wanting to do it like this. I actually had an idea that i thought would be interesting for me to play lady macbeth one night and lady macbeth the next and swap with an actress because so much of the play is about the women chiding their man and i thought that would be an interesting thing to muck up the genders. But then i was working with john tiffany, the director, and another director called Andy Goldberg whos now the codirector. He saw the reading we did and said i think alan should play all the parts and he had this idea set in a psychiatric unit. So i was flattered into playing all the parts. Rose isnt she in some ways a mirror image of him . Opposite sides of each other. Well, freud wrote this interesting article about the fact well, its sort of like everything she wishes for solely sovereign sway and masterdom he gets and everything he worries about she gets. So its an interesting kind of cross and they lose each other. And its just really i just think im endlessly fascinated by that kind of journey of and i think its a great thing that two people who function so well together can do anything and when they stop and one of them pushes the other one away theyre just ruined. Rose where did that idea of the curse of macbeth come from . I researched and i think the real reason that people that its become the this tradition is that you wouldnt say macbeth because that would mean that there was another production if you were doing a play, if you mentioned macbeth, it was such a popular play that means it was probably going to come in and turf you out. And then everyone got people got banged on the head whilst they were doing it, but the thaoeter is a dangerous place. Every production of any play people get injured. Rose there are so many interpretations of hamlet. Are there many interpretations of macstpwh et. I think so, yeah, i do. Rose youve been hamlet, too. Ive been hamlet. And the interesting thing about a new interpretation or a new reimagining if you will is that each generation theres Different Things going on in that generation that reflect whats going on. Each person that comes to it brings their own experience and i think thats why they are great plays and why they keep being able to be done and done and done. Rose they can be adapted to any age and all the forces that rule macbeth are are forces that rule are in conflict today. Absolutely. Well, i mean really its about the thing i think at the center of the play, whatever i go back to is that you know that moment if youre going to do something bad or dangerous or illicit the moment that you look someone else in the eye and say lets do it, even its like stealing an ashtray rose lets do it. Lets do it right now. When youve made that decision, thats then everything goes nuts. But thats really whats at the base of the play is that two people seize an opportunity and when they do, you know, chaos ensues. Rose how about these lines . Lifes but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What does that mean to you . Pretty bleak. It means that macbeth says those lines after he learned that lady macbeth has died and i think thats his in our production for me who the character of the man whos come into the psychiatric unit and macbeth have this sort of realization that, you know, life is so bleak and its weve all been told that theres more to it and everything. Theres this great kind of afterlife and theres this whole journey that we are on and were not. Were just all rose and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by a an idiot. Signifying nothing. Rose i want to see a scene from macbeth. Here we go. What is done, it were done quickly. This blow might be the be all end all here but here upon this bank and shoal of time we jump the life to come. Then these cases we still have judgment here that we but teach bloody instructions which, being taught, return to plague the inventor. This evenhanded justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. Hes here in double trust. First as i am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed. Then, as his host, who should against the murderer shut the door not bear the knife myself rose you said that the thing about this production is that it not only the chutzpah of it, its also the stupidity of it. Whats that mean . I think that the idea of doing a whole play itself, i think its rose ballsy. Yeah, ballsy and out there. And this is the thing of everything ive done ive done some balanc balance baly things but every wee while i think i dont know i can do it. Its the most challenging thing, im going to try it. But with this one i actually thought i couldnt do it at one point. Rose could not do it. I thought i wasnt going to be able to pull it off. Rose that was after you started. Yeah, in rehearsals. Rose cant do it . Cannot do it i mean, i didnt say that to anyone. I didnt go i cant do it. But at home i think i started to panic. So i think thats part of it. I mean and what i liked about it when we did it in scotland and here now is that people were like what . Whats he doing . They were intrigued by the madness of me doing this thing. Rose first time you heard macbeth from was from your brother . Yeah. Rose he came home and you said he told me the story of it. Rose and you loved it. I loved it rose because you knew the place. Where i was born, dun keld and burnham share a strain station so burnham wood is right by dunkeld and my fathers family worked on an estate for generations. Rose we do a thing here because wherever we talk about shakespeare we ask a question for a series that i an ongoing series that i do. Its simply this why shakespeare . I think he has things to say about the human condition that are so incredible and so relevant and so kind of penetrating and curious i just every time i do him im just amazed about the depth and the the brilliance of him. Is this a bag cher i see before me . Sgsz the handle toward my hand. Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not and yet i see thee still. Are thou not fatal vision sensible to feeling as to sight . Rose heres what you said. When macbeth starts i have three hours to inhabit this role. This man whos saying these amazing things, its not just a great story, its mineexpanding. Just getting your head around this imagery and this language, its like a drug. There is nothing to match it. Yes, its been like that most of my career, since i was a precocious teenager and its better and stronger and more attractive and appealing now than it ever was. Rose because youve lived a life and therefore the words mean Different Things . Yes it is perhaps the one great bonus of being an aging actor. Rose or aging anything. You accumulate this bank account of experience good, bad, sad, confused, murderous, rebellious, whatever it is and as it grows you tap it more and more. I think the hope for most actors who like doing this kind of work is that the right parts will then come at the right time. And i was reading something just now before we came on air about being in florence recently and looking at those unfinished michaelangelo statues and the impression the huge impression they made on me a few months ago was that it was a kind of metaphor for how i felt about acting these days that the role actually exists inside. Its not, as i used to believe for many years, something which you assume, you put on, you put on this brilliant carapace of performance and repeat it. That its its there and you simply have to dump things, get rid of them or, you know, using michaelangelo, chisel it all away until oh, hello. Rose did off certain series of roles in mind you said theres a time for certain roles that you wanted to do and then macbeths time came . Yes, its come rather late. And the fashion became over the years to cast these two, lady macbeth and macbeth younger and younger and younger. And certain overbold journalists have questioned me about this. Arent you a little old to be playing this part . Rose maybe a lear but not macbeth . The fact is, theres nothing in the play that indicates age. Lear there is, yes. We foe exactly how old he is. But theres nothing to tell us how old macbeth or lady macbeth are in the play. And i only had this one thought and it was perhaps my only significant contribution to the production at the very beginning. I strongly advocated that my lady macbeth should be significantly younger because i hoped that would create a dynamic, a marital sexual dynamic between them which could help to explain and justify some of the rather difficult aspects of the early part of the play. How does she have this control over him . Why can she persuade him to do things that he admits are against his judgment, his social conscience, his morality, and yet he does them. Rose its age, you think, in part . I think that he has an outofcontrol devotion, passion, and dedication to this beautiful, exciting, thrilling, dangerous woman and he rose laughs yes, yes. He gives into it. Why are you laughing . You say oh, yes, thats my life exactly. Rose laughs , no but i understand, dont you . I understand all of it, yes. Rose so what do you ask yourself . You say im going step in into these shoes and olivia has been there, owe tool has been there, gielgud has been there. In the past that was intimidating. When i was working a lot at stratford years ago i used to walk down to Holy Trinity Church late in the afternoon and sit in one of the front pews where i could see the tomb and i would say to this guy help me out. Please help me out. I dont know what im doing. Rose dear willie, dear willie. Give me a sign because, yes, there are these legendary actors whove given legendary performances in these great roles and ultimately they if you want to be a classical actor you have got to take off these roles because these are the roles that youll be judged by. You know, if you believe if you hope that at some point you might have built up a reputation it can only be built on a certain number of roles exactly like an opera singer. There are certain roles you have to sing. Rose right. And if you dont, youre dodging the issue of the great challenge. If you can be brave enough and fear, you know, is plays a huge part in this, and it did for me for years, fear of failing. Not fear of getting it right, but fear of failing. If you can dispense with that, it just opens up so many opportunities for any kind of creative artist. But the actor has to be open to those things. Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow. I shad say good night till it be morrow. Rose shakespeares in your blood. That would be nice, yeah. I have made a commitment to it and i dont know if ive made a personal commitment to it because i believe in it or its one of those things where ive made a commitment to it because im one of the silly guys in school who studied it. Rose and it resonates with you. I realized might have a market cornered. Rose youve done hamlet, henry v, youve done what else . Iago. Tempest. Richard iii, romeo and juliet. Rose everything except lear. No. Rose laughs . Rose was where does macbeth come in an actors life if you could plot it out. I realize things dont happen that way. You do romeo and juliet first, you do henry r v second, richard third. Macbeth is sort of the midlife crisis play, the nervous breakdown play. It was just its one that ive always wanted to do. Ive done it before, i played advantage quo for bang quo. Rose his brother. Friend. I love how short it is. I love the poetry. I love the lucidity of it. I think its one of the i think its one of the sharper plays and for some reason it has this sort of strange curse on it that it has nothing to do with any of the superstition stuff but i think theres something about its hard to get the production right. Which always shocked me because its such a lucid play and theres such a clear trajectory in it. Rose peter otoole, for example, had a long conversation with me and said after he did macbeth he got these terrible reviews. He had just felt like he had was so up for this and it just collapsed around him. Yeah. I dont know why that is. And it seems to happen consistently. I dont remember anyone ever talking about a fantastic production well, there was that the trevor nun Ian Mckellen Judi Dench one. Rose thats a good start one when youve got those three. But theres one i wanted to kind of hopefully to along with the Public Theater add another. Rose who is macbeth . Macbeth is a well, theres two very different stories here. Theres the real history because, in fact, macbeth was a great nationalist king of scotland. But in the retelling of it the play was commissioned by banquos grandchildren and macbeth became kind of a bad di. Rose macbeth killed him and sent him to his death. Thats right. I think who macbeth is in shakespeares play is a character who through some supernatural soliciting has been told he will become king and given that information he has the choice of how to act and he chooses to kill the king. Rose because the king is going to be succeeded by his son malcolm. And macbeth sees his way to the kingdom blocked. And for me its about a guy who is a good soldier and a decent person who clearly has a con swhoepbs is tempted with power and ambition. Rose the conflict is between goodness and the lust for power . Bang quo. I think so. Theres a line in the play where he says mine eternal jewel give on the the common enemy of man. And i think thats ambition as embodied by the devil. If you go back to the original sin, the serpent gave adam and eve knowledge of their own nakedness and that that awareness a persons awareness of the their station in life not being sufficient is sort of the root of all evil, i think. I think shakespeare chooses that model of ambition and awareness. He was perfectly fine before someone told him he wasnt fine and everything stems from that. Rose his relationship with lady macbeth . Very, very complicated. I think she suffers from the same thing and what i love about shakespeare is and i think he precedeprefreud and everyone eln this, is the first modern psychologist is that that relationship is so nuanced and so full of behavior that i think we recognize from contemporary life, theyre so in love with each other and yet at the same time they fuel each others aspirations and ambitions and good qualities and bad qualities. In this case it is the latter. Rose some would say if she had survived she would have that he would have done better in the end. Yeah. I dont know. Rose i think Jimmy Stewart once said or somebody once said that if Ronald Reagan had met nancy reagan earlier he would have won an Academy Award and never gotten into politics. It seems like he shuts her down in act iv of the play. He tells her well, then, god be with you, we will keep ourself alone. And he shuts her out. And she has a scene where she asks him why do you keep yourself alone . Let me many . He keeps her out because i think hes sort of driven to a sort of mad a madness of solitude by his own ambition and by the spirits hes seeing. Rose you mentioned what good qualities there was in macbeth, do you have to find do you search for those so that you can have some way to make someone who is a murderer in pursuit of power have this redeeming quality that is something . Yes. I believe in that probably because of shakespeare. I learned that from shakespeare. The duality of for instance, for all intents and purposes her havent of venice is a very antisemitic play relatively and yet shakespeare cant help but write the speech hath not a jew eyes, senses, emotions . And you see that hes always playing those two sides off of each other. In othello as well theres this horrible vicious murder and yet at the other side of that in the soliloquies is this deeply compassionate vulnerable human being. I think that thats the trick to good drama. And its something that i learned from reading those plays. So if you can get someone to identify with a character like macbeth its much more i think youre its a much more successful endeavor than to get them to vilify him. Rose to access the journey hes on. To find the Common Thread so that people can find the connection in their own life and emotionally ei identify with it. Rose is the second act tough . Physically, yes. Because theres that that huge break. I have about ten minutes off while my guys knock off lady macduff and everything and then theres the fight at the end. But i actually find the first act more difficult just because youre working more. Rose hes on more often. Almost every scene in the first act. The second act is the dramatically more expensive act and also the big fight. Rose this is the first time youve done macstpwh et. First time ive played the character, yeah. Rose did you go out and Read Everything you could find about macbeth . Did you go out and see every performance of macbeth on film or. Rose yeah. I like to watch everything that i can possibly see. I watche watched thor son as wes and i watched the polanski, i watched the mckellen and several others. Rose and how do you keep those things from creeping into your performance . Its impossible. Because ive become this guy who does remakes everyone asks me this all the time. I think its impossible. If youre connected t a, the te, which is the core engine of any shakespeare performance and your own truth within that text youll be different this from that other actor. Now, if they have good ideas i personally feel that you owe it to the audience to steal every single one of them. Rose i do, too, if its something good its worth stealing and you find your own authenticity in terms of whatever you do with it. Its also what i love about the shakespeare plays is that theres there 400year tradition of story telling that passes from generation to generation and i find that very satisfying. Rose how hard was it to get the language when you first began as a young actor . I dont know that i i dont know that i had it. Rose lets assume you got it at some point. What is this key to unlocking the rhythm of the language . Theres a great story that i think may be true, i hope it is, hunter thompson, a friend of mine, friend of this show, was once seen at the New York Public Library and he was poring over shakespeare and they said what are you doing, hunter . He said im trying to get the rit rhythm of the way shakespeare wrote. And if you have to speak it its ten times more. I think its built into all of us, i do. Rose all of us who are actors . All of us who are human beings . All of us period. You just have to access it. I think part of whats so appealing about first plays from the greeks through to shakespeare is that that inner rhythm exists in all of us. It has something to do with biology and a pulse. We just have it. And all of those verse forms, i think, are rifts on the human pulse. Rose i mean, i so much want to have you do the tomorrow and tomorrow. laughs well, i do it differently. Rose how do you do it . Theres something about it that i just that i that got me this year that i really and im happy to and that is that the first two lines are connected. She should have died here after. Then theres no end stop there. I believe that tomorrow is directly related to that first statement. So she should have died here after, there would have been a time for such a word, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So that you see in the moment the discovery of his own sort of existential nausea that what he was First Talking about is tomorrow there wouk a time to mourn for her, after the battle, perhaps once i was dead. Tomorrow would be okay. But isnt there always a tomorrow . And isnt that the horror of existence that if i have to accept as macbeth is told by the witches that he may live forever give than there is no person whos not born of woman he has an eternal tomorrow in front of him without her. And so in a sense its an existential speech and at the same time a very romantic one. Rose is it a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury well, thats not very flattering. But rose laughs signifying nothing. Yeah. The plays the thing rose one of your actors said this is shakespeares african play. Yeah. Its i had the great privilege to meet Nelson Mandela and discovered that on robin island he had a copy of shakespeare. It was owned by one of the other a. N. C. Inmates and he handed this around to all the inmates who could read it at night. It was the charming thing was they didnt allow literature on robin island but they would allow prayer books so sonnys wife had sent him some cards of cedar and he stuck them all over the books. Robben island. So mandela had red was reading it and each of the inmates would autograph a phrase or a quotation that really struck them and the lines thatted mandela chose were from jewel i cant say caesar. He chose the lines that caesar says just before hes assassinated when he says cowards die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of death but once. And i that just made me read the play in a completely different way. And it just struck me that in a way it its a play that speaks to africa in a particular and potent way. Particularly in the last 50 years since the countrys begun to gain their independence and i think looking at how many times rulers have come to power on a wave of popularity, theyve been overthrown in a vicious military coupe and that has plunge it had country into civil war. Well, thats the plot of jewel i cant say caesar. And we were doing a bit of work on the play a year before we before we rehearsed it and while we were doing it the big question was not are they going to assassinate qaddafi, the big question is what happens next. That is the crucial question in jewel i cant say caesar. Rose thats the yes in syria. Exactly. Where is the play has a reputation for being a dying fall after caesar is assassinated. The one thing we know is that caesar will be assassinated. Its the single perhaps most famous fact of the pagan world, i guess. And so the big urgent question is whats happened next. So that the african setting i hope has allowed us to illuminate that. Rose this is what you said. I dont want to wade in as a gay white middleclass director in his middle age and go jewel i cant say caesar should be done in an african context laughs well, exactly. I wanted to test it out with my peers. Weve got great, great classical actors who happen to be black in the u. K. Now. 50 years ago the first black actor appeared in stratford, it was an actor called edrick connor in a production of pericles. Following year, 1959, paul robeson came to play othello. And over thoerz years actors of black actors have gained in their classical skills and they this is the first time we fielded an entirely black cast. It just it happens to be black because thats how we chose to do this particular production. But there is no shortage of Exceptional Talent in the u. K. Rose is voice especially important in shakespeare . It is. Its very important because, you know, in the prolong to romeo and juliet he says if you with patient ears attend thats one of the great differences. We talk about television audiences, we talk about theater audiences. Its about hearing. Its about how the language itself can create the story. Can create the magic, i think. Rose when you look at this, what was the hardest thing for you to do. You had already developed a play in south africa in 1995. That was a very special experience. The it was with the National Theater studio. We were invited my partner anthony cher and i were invited as part of a team that went out to the market theater in johannesburg to begin to explore postapartheid what and the ending of sanctions and artistic boycotts that we would try and really open up lines of communication, artistic relationships. And the guy who ran the market theater, barney simon, asked me and tony if we would doll a play there. And the play we chose to do was titus an tkropb cus. Its shakespeares gohriest play. Its people get their heads chopped off. Their heads are baked in pies. Its a very violent play. But in a country which has experienced such a high level of violence, the play changed. It became, in fact, a play more about reconciliation, about trying to break cycles of violence. Stkphaoup is what south africa became. Indeed. And it spoke very in a very particular way. I dont know whether you find this, but shakespeares like a kind of giant magnet and all the iron filings of whats going on in the world somehow get attracted to that and somehow he manages to articulate. Rose now why is that . He just had a kind of humanity and an ability to give us words that when words fail. You know, i was thinking now coming coming back to new york about 12 years ago i was doing a production of king john at stratford, not very often done as a play. And oddly enough we were doing a tuesday matinee, it was september. And as the play started, 1 30, about 20 minutes in the guys backstage were watching a television and a plane flew into a building in new york. 20 minutes later another plane. And the actors thought what do we do . Do we go out and stop the show . Do we tell the audience whats happening . The audience, of course, knew nothing. Does the play seem relevant . What are we doing here . Just before the matinee, one tower came down of the interval, after the interval the other one came down. Then a character came on stage and says i lose my way among the thorns and dangers of this world. And he said the line now vast confusion waits upon the world. And it was like shakespeare articulated in that moment what everybody was feeling and kind of gave us words to articulate that. Rose so did you finish the play . We didnt. We carry on somehow the play itself helped to articulate, understand, comprehend, heal. And that was a very astonishing moment. Rose talk to me about caesar and the play and what we should take away from it. Other than power corrupts. Well, do you know, its one of those plays that you can take from almost any political point of view. Its been done many, many times over the years looking at brew us the as a great republican hero. Indeed, its rose hero of the republic. Indeed. Rose because he thought he was acting in the interest of the public. On the other hand you could think of him as a wishywashy liberal who hadnt thought things threw. And the reality is that shakespeare presents both and he understands that life is not black and white. Caesar is perhaps a tyrant seen from one point of view. On the other side hes a strong man needed at a time when the country was falling apart. At a time of civil war when the country needed a strong leader and shakespeare makes you see both sides of the story. So just as youre thinking yeah, theyre right, they should assassinate caesar, suddenly you see caesar vulnerable in his dressing gown first thing in the morning afraid, alone, and you realize there are always two sides to the story and shakespeares very good at being able to do that somehow. Rose and Everybody Knows whats going to happen yet they remain transfixed beyond the of julius caesar. Well, of course, hes more than just the man. Hes the icon. Thats one of the extraordinary things theres something beyond him which falls when caesar dies. And what brew us the and cassus do is in assassinating caesar they do provide a vacuum into which much more ruthless men rush. And thats an eternal story. We should listen to that but we tend not to. Rose this quote may come from you and you can take authorship if you like. Theres a danger that shakespeare on his pedestal is throwing everybody else too far into the shade for us to consider them viable. You. You see, shakespeare didnt spring fully formed like athee that from the brow of suisse. He came out of a school of writers, a stable of writers, a bit like the hollywood stable of writers in the 1930s. Shakespeare was collaborating probably more than we know of more. And i guess whats happened is zeus weve put shakespeare so high on his pedestal that we forget all those other writers, the Christopher Marlowe and john webster. Those are great writers, too. And its important that we see shakespeare in context and i think a company that the Royal Shakespeare company in stratford is very, very well placed to do. If it be you that stirs these daughters hearts against their father fool me not so much, touch me with noble anger and theyre not womens weapons, water drops stain a mans cheeks. You unnatural hags rose on balance is he an interesting noon you . He is a fascinating noon me. Rose not in terms of what he wrote but just in terms of him. If you didnt have the body of work would you look at as we seem to elude to earlier would you say rather a conventional life . Whats fascinating about him, charlie, we cant strip the work away and throw it away. Whats fascinating about him is precisely that he had a careful life but an interesting life, a cautious but complicated one in relation to this absolutely astonishing body of work. Its the relationship between these two things that matters. Its not this isnt the swashbuckling life that is fascinating in itself. Sir Walter Raleigh had one of those but shakespeare has had a remarkable life. A poignant and compelling life in relation to this astonishing thing he did. Rose since shakespeare, who do you think has come close, close, to the body of work to the genius. Well, there are lots of candidates. Rose name three. Milton. Keats. Blake. Words worth. Lots and lots. Rose but shakespeare thats only the beginning of the list. Rose but shakespeare is in a different category. Shakespeare is in the category that dante is in, that homer is in. That category that but whats fascinating is that this category we assume somehow is only for gods but this is a human being. Rose and thats the point you want to make . E and elaborate on that. He was not a good, this was a living breathing human being who put pen to paper. Rose . By the time this man was 20, he had three children, no job, no vocation, he didnt know what to do, his fathers glove business had fallen apart. He hadnt gone to oxford, the family lost its money, there was a religion that the family was associated with that was dangerous and persecuted. There was not a future for him. And he figured out how to have not only a future but how to express this extraordinary thing that he had inside him. Thats a remarkable story. Rose what does he teach you about love . I suppose that you can write brilliantly about love without ever fully having it. Rose laughs well what does that say . It says that he longed for something deeply that he never fully acquired, never fully achieved in his life. Rose . He today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he near so vile this day shall gentle his condition and gentlemen in england now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here and hold their man hoods cheap whiles any speak and fought with us upon st. Crispins day cheers and applause . Rose how do you explain shakespeare . The best possible question to ask. At the beginning of this book i can say i cant explain him after all these decades of teaching him. I think the proper stance towards him is awe. It is astonishing that it could have happened. You can trace any other writer to some source you can talk about if you will, societal context, you can talk about history. But shakespeare transcends any context that you try to find for him. The power of creation in him i think i can even focus it. Theres an excess in him. There is an overflowing not just of meaning but of being. It is a here is newness which comes flowing out of him for which we have no precedent and in a deep sense he has had no successors in spite of the fact he has been such an immense influence on all who came afterwards. He is, i suppose, the largest single miracle i know of, not just in the history of the human arts but in the history of human consciousness. I suppose if you are a religious believer and you might want to talk about moses and jesus and mohammed. But as a secular figure this is as astonish ago phenomenon as any of the great religious founders have. This is indeed the secular scripture, the complete plays of shakespeare or the complete works of shakespeare. I think i remarked somewhere in that book in a kind of wonder myself that hamlet has become the intellectuals christ. And even though in the past i have been much condemned for saying that the western worship of god is the worship and the end of three literary characters, yahweh, the gospel of marks original jesus and mohammeds allah i think only shakespeare competes in his nine or ten strongest characters with those three great literary characters. Which, of course, you know, is a laughs is a somewhat blasphemous thing to say. But i am a bardologier. I am a dinosaur now in academic terms i refer to myself as bloom brontosaurus bardoletor. Ive been its been quoted against me but it seems a perfect designation. I can appreciate shakespeare but i cannot explain him. I can hope to help others appreciate him more. I can hope to teach others to see that we must not condescend to him. That he is always out ahead of us, that he always knows more than we do. That he has always more than anticipated our latest developments. You can push any idea you want to into shakespeare and it wont necessarily light up to play but the play will light up the idea. The power of mind, the power of consciousness, the power of here is stuff of being in him is beyond parallel. And if its beyond parallel in some sense its beyond explanation. Now is the very witching turn of night and churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion into this world. Now could i drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on. Soft, now to my mother. Oh, heart, lose not thy nature. Let not ever the soul of nero enter this firm bosom. Let me be cruel, not unnatural. I will speak daggers to her but use not. My tongue and soul in this be hypocrite, how in my words so ever she be shamed to give them seals never my soul consent. Rose whats the context, the Historical Context . The Historical Context is that it was a play written 1599 or 1600 by shakespeare. There had been a hamlet play that had been a success, shakespeare often uses other peoples materials sensitive to what is working in the theater, there had been a play, possibly even two of them before that. Based on very old story, a story that had been told multiple times that goes back to a 12th century danish chronicle. And shakespeare takes this story which is a revenge story, a bloody mystery and he turns it into arguably the greatest single tragedy ever written and certainly a lifechanging work for him. His career really pivots around rose what happened to his career . Well, his career was also already magnificent before then. But this initiates rose it unleashed a whole series of it initiates an unbelievable outporing of work including plays like othello and macbeth and king lear. It also unleashed something in shakespeare in itself. He uses more words in hamlet, including more words that never appeared in print before. They must have been in the at least to some extent in the culture than anyone has ever released in a single work. So it was written in a whole new language for him. An absolutely extraordinary outpouring of new relationship to his own language, to what it is to what you can address an audience with and it changed everything. Rose are there parts of this that are of this that might have unleashed this in him . Was it any part of the subject matter that might have had some catharsis for him . Well, speculatively we could say that it cant be entirely an accident that his sons name was hamlet which is a not only very close to hamlet, but interchangeable in the records with the name hamlet, sometimes spelled either way. His son died in 1596 at 11 years old and then his father was also, depending on when the play was first drafted, dead or dying. And so there there probably are in his own immediate life things that are disturbing him that he wants to come to terms with. Rose and where did he put in the the context of elizabethan world . Chance at least one of the pieces thats fascinating for me this is a play about as shakespeare tells it, about a ghost. A ghost coming to his son and demanding revenge. The peculiar thing about that act is that from about 50 years before shakespeare wrote this play his culture had changed the rules governing the relationship between the living and the dead. Protestantism said there are no ghosts. There are only demons that come from the other world. Ghosts are a remnant of the superstition of purgatory, the idea of purgatory. Catholic superstition. Forbidden. And they changed the rules and they say you can no longer pray to the dead or for the dead. You cant pray for their the remission of pain. And, in fact, they make a very simple change in the Burial Service in the years before shakespeare writes the play. They change the words from we committee to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to tkus to we commit him or her to the earth. And in other words youre no longer speaking to a thee, to an i thou relationship to a person because the person no longer exists, is dead, and its just someone who is now in the earth. And that change should make it, in effect, impossible for a ghost to come back to demand revenge unless that ghost is a not a ghost at all but a demon. Now, whats amazing about shakespeares play, of course, is that thats precisely the question that hamlet asks himself. What is this . Am i encounter ago demon whos trying to lead me astray . Can i test this ghost . Can i find out whether it actually is a ghost . That is to say, a somehow a returner from the other world. The other world which could only be this now forbidden world of a middle state between heaven and hell. Rose who do you think the ghost represents . The ghost is what the ghost is, he says your fathers spirit, hamlet. But what it means to be the fathers spirit is tied up with centrally in the play with what the ghost tells hamlet he wants hamlet to do. Remember me. Rose revenge. The ghost says revenge, but the ghost repeats again and again remember me. So in answer to your question, i would say the ghost is first and foremost about remembrance of the dead. What it is what kind of life the dead have, not simply thats why these religious issues, though theyre fascinating as part of the surround of the play, you dont need to know this to encount they are play and to feel it in your bones. All you need to know is something about what it is to remember. What it is to remember especially here people who are gone and what kind of negotiation we have with the people who are gone. What claims do they have to make on us . 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 to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. To die. To sleep no more and by a sleep to say we tend heartache and the thousandth natural shock that flesh is heir to. tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep, to sleep. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org this is nignightly busines report with Tyler Mathisen and susie gharib brought to you by. Sailing through the heart of historic cities and landscapes on a river, you get close to iconic landmarks, to local life, to cultural treasures, viking river cruises, exploring the world in comfort. The world has an obligation to make sure that we maintain the norm against the use of chemical weapons. Now i have not made a final decision about various actions that might be taken to help enforce that norm, but as ive already said, i have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options. Will he or wont he . The white house layshe