macstpwh *et. >> i think so, yeah. >> rose: you've been hamlet. >> i've been hamlet. and i think the interesting thing about a new interpretation or a new reimagining, if you will, is that each generation, there's different things going nonthat generation that reflect what's going on, each person that comes to it brings their own experience and i think that's 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) that's the question i'm always asking myself, too. >> rose: it's not easy. >> it's not. it's very, very -- it's the most intense thing i've ever done. >> rose: the most intense thing you've ever done? >> i mean professionally. >> rose: (laughs) >> i mean, because it's not just -- i play a person in a psychiatric unit, i'm 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. there's too narratives. it's bad enough playing macbeth, but i'm 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 wasn't even a term then and i -- there's 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 who's ever got o.c.d. >> rose: (laughs) yes. exactly. how is it to play both of them? >> it's -- you know, it's great. i think in a way what i like about that -- playing that couple is that they are really together -- when they're together they're kind of the same person and when they're apart they just fall apart. they can't be -- they don't function and it's kind of difficult, obviously, because i basically have sex with myself in one scene. (laughs). >> rose: not the first time, i'm sure. >> well, no, at least you're having sex with someone you love. >> rose: (laughs) >> but it's an amazing experience for an actor to do this. and i didn't 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 who's 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: isn't she in some ways a mirror image of him? opposite sides of each other. >> well, freud wrote this interesting article about the fact -- well, it's sort of like everything she wishes for-- solely sovereign sway and masterdom he gets and everything he worries about she gets. so it's an interesting kind of cross and they lose each other. and it's just really -- i just think -- i'm endlessly fascinated by that kind of journey of -- and i think it's 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 they're 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 it's become the this tradition is that you wouldn't 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: you've been hamlet, too. >> i've been hamlet. and the interesting thing about a new interpretation or a new reimagining if you will is that each generation there's different things going on in that generation that reflect what's going on. each person that comes to it brings their own experience and i think that's 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 it's about -- the thing i think at the center of the play, whatever i go back to is that you know that moment if you're going to do something bad or dangerous or illicit the moment that you look someone else in the eye and say "let's do it," even it's like stealing an ashtray -- >> rose: let's do it. >> let's do it right now. when you've made that decision, that's -- then everything goes nuts. but that's really what's 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? "life's 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 that's his -- in our production for me who the character of the man who's come into the psychiatric unit and macbeth have this sort of realization that, you know, life is so bleak and it's -- we've all been told that there's more to it and everything. there's this great kind of afterlife and there's this whole journey that we are on and we're not. we're 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 even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice to our own lips. he's 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, it's also the stupidity of it. what's that mean? >> i think that the idea of doing a whole play itself, i think it's -- >> rose: ballsy. >> yeah, ballsy and out there. and this is the thing of everything i've done -- i've done some balanc balance -- baly things but every wee while i think "i don't know i can do it. it's the most challenging thing, i'm going to try it." but with this one i actually thought i couldn't do it at one point. >> rose: could not do it. >> i thought i wasn't going to be able to pull it off. >> rose: that was after you started. >> yeah, in rehearsals. >> rose: can't do it? >> cannot do it! i mean, i didn't say that to anyone. i didn't go "i can't do it." but at home i think i started to panic. so i think that's 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? what's 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 father's 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. it's simply this: why i think hy are so incredible and so relevant and so kind of penetrating and curious i just -- every time i do him i'm just amazed about the depth and the -- the brilliance of him. >> is this a bag cher i see before me? s-gsz 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: here's what you said. "when macbeth starts i have three hours to inhabit this role. this man who's saying these amazing things, it's not just a great story, it's mine-expanding. just getting your head around this imagery and this language, it's like a drug. there is nothing to match it. >> yes, it's been like that most of my career, since i was a precocious teenager and it's better and stronger and more attractive and appealing now than it ever was. >> rose: because you've 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. it's 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 it's -- it's 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 there's a time for certain roles that you wanted to do and then macbeth's time came? >> yes, it's 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. "aren't you a little old to be playing this part?" >> rose: maybe a lear but not macbeth? >> the fact is, there's nothing in the play that indicates age. lear there is, yes. we foe exactly how old he is. but there's 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: it's age, you think, in part? >> i think that he has an out-of-control 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, that's my life exactly." >> rose: (laughs) , no but i understand, don't you? >> i understand all of it, yes. >> rose: so what do you ask yourself? you say "i'm 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 don't know what i'm doing." >> rose: dear willie, dear willie. >> give me a sign! because, yes, there are these legendary actors who've 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 you'll 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 don't, you're 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: shakespeare's in your blood. >> that would be nice, yeah. i have made a commitment to it and i don't know if i've made a personal commitment to it because i believe in it or it's one of those things where i've made a commitment to it because i'm one of the silly guys in school who studied it. >> rose: and it resonates with you. >> i realized might have a market cornered. >> rose: you've done hamlet, henry v, you've 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 actor's life if you could plot it out. i realize things don't happen that way. you do "romeo and juliet" first, you do "henry -r v" second, "richard" third. >> macbeth is sort of the mid-life crisis play, the nervous breakdown play. it was just -- it's one that i've always wanted to do. i've 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 it's one of the -- i think it's 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 there's something about -- it's hard to get the production right. which always shocked me because it's such a lucid play and there's such a clear trajectory in it. >> rose: peter o'toole, 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 don't know why that is. and it seems to happen consistently. i don't remember anyone ever talking about a fantastic production -- well, there was that -- the trevor nun ian mckellen judi dench one. >> rose: that's a good start one when you've got those three. >> but there's one! i wanted to kind of hopefully to along with the public theater add another. >> rose: who is macbeth? >> macbeth is a -- well, there's two very different stories here. there's 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 banquo's grandchildren and macbeth became kind of a bad di. >> rose: macbeth killed him and sent him to his death. >> that's right. i think who macbeth is in shakespeare's 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 it's 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. there's a line in the play where he says "mine eternal jewel give on the the common enemy of man." and i think that's 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 person's 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 wasn't 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, they're so in love with each other and yet at the same time they fuel each other's 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 don't 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 he's sort of driven to a sort of mad -- a madness of solitude by his own ambition and by the spirits he's 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 haven't of venice" is a very anti-semitic play relatively and yet shakespeare can't help but write the speech "hath not a jew eyes, senses, emotions?" and you see that he's always playing those two sides off of each other. in othello as well there's 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 that's the trick to good drama. and it's something that i learned from reading those plays. so if you can get someone to identify with a character like macbeth it's much more -- i think you're -- it's a much more successful endeavor than to get them to vilify him. >> rose: to access the journey he's 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 there's that that huge break. i have about ten minutes off while my guys knock off lady macduff and everything and then there's the fight at the end. but i actually find the first act more difficult just because you're working more. >> rose: he's 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 you've done macstpwh *et. >> first time i've 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? >> it's impossible. because i've become this guy who does remakes everyone asks me this all the time. i think it's impossible. if you're connected t a, the te, which is the core engine of any shakespeare performance and your own truth within that text you'll 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 it's something good it's worth stealing and you find your own authenticity in terms of whatever you do with it. >> it's also what i love about the shakespeare plays is that there's there 400-year 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 don't know that i -- i don't know that i had it. >> rose: let's assume you got it at some point. what is this key to unlocking the rhythm of the language? there's 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 "i'm trying to get the rit rhythm of the way shakespeare wrote." and if you have to speak it it's ten times more. >> i think it's 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 what's 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? >> there's something about it that i just -- that i -- that got me this year that i really and i'm happy to and that is that the first two lines are connected. she should have died here after. then there's 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 isn't there always a tomorrow? and isn't 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 who's not born of woman he has an eternal tomorrow in front of him without her. and so in a sense it's 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, that's not very flattering. but -- >> rose: (laughs) signifying -- >> nothing. yeah. >> the plays the thing! >> rose: one of your actors said this is shakespeare's african play. >> yeah. it's -- 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 didn't allow literature on robin island but they would allow prayer books so sonny's 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 can't say caesar. he chose the lines that caesar says just before he's 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 -- it's a play that speaks to africa in a particular and potent way. particularly in the last 50 years since the country's begun to gain their independence and i think looking at how many times rulers have come to power on a wave of popularity, they've been overthrown in a vicious military coupe and that has plunge it had country into civil war. well, that's the plot of "jewel i can't 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 can't say caesar. >> rose: that's 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. it's the single perhaps most famous fact of the pagan world, i guess. and so the big urgent question is what's happened next. so that the african setting i hope has allowed us to illuminate that. >> rose: this is what you said. "i don't want to wade in as a gay white middle-class director in his middle age and go "jewel i can't say caesar should be done in an african context!" >> (laughs) well, exactly. i wanted to test it out with my peers. we've 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 that's 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. it's very important because, you know, in the prolong to romeo and juliet he says "if you with patient ears attend --" that's one of the great differences. we talk about television audiences, we talk about theater audiences. it's about hearing. it's 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 post-apartheid 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. it's shakespeare's gohriest play. it's -- people get their heads chopped off. their heads are baked in pies. it's 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 don't know whether you find this, but shakespeare's like a kind of giant magnet and all the iron filings of what's 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 what's 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 didn't. 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, it's one of those plays that you can take from almost any political point of view. it's been done many, many times over the years looking at brew us the as a great republican hero. indeed, it's -- >> 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 wishy-washy liberal who hadn't 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 he's 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 you're thinking yeah, they're 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 shakespeare's very good at being able to do that somehow. >> rose: and everybody knows what's going to happen yet they remain transfixed beyond the of julius caesar. >> well, of course, he's more than just the man. he's the icon. that's one of the extraordinary things there's 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 that's 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. "there's 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 didn't 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 what's happened is zeus we've 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 it's 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 they're not women's weapons, water drops stain a man's 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 didn't have the body of work would you look at -- as we seem to elude to earlier would you say rather a conventional life? >> what's fascinating about him, charlie, we can't strip the work away and throw it away. what's 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. it's the relationship between these two things that matters. it's not -- this isn't 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 -- >> that's 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 what's fascinating is that this category we assume somehow is only for gods but this is a human being. >> rose: and that's 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 didn't know what to do, his father's glove business had fallen apart. he hadn't 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. that's 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. crispin's 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 can't 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. there's 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 intellectual's 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 mark's original jesus and mohammed's 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. i've been -- it's 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 won't 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 it's beyond parallel in some sense it's 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: what's 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 people's materials sensitive to what is working in the theater, there had been a play,ossibly 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 life-changing 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 can't be entirely an accident that his son's 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 that's 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 can't 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 you're no longer speaking to a thee, to an i/thou relationship to a person because the person no longer exists, is dead, and it's 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, what's amazing about shakespeare's play, of course, is that that's precisely the question that hamlet asks himself. what is this? am i encounter ago demon who's 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 father's spirit, hamlet. but what it means to be the father's 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 -- that's why these religious issues, though they're fascinating as part of the surround of the play, you don't 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 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] from pacifica, this is democracy now! >> i strongly believe in the need for a top response to the use of chemical weapons but i also respect the will of this house of commons. while the house has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the british element, reflecting the viewsf