Shakespeare in Our Time

William Shakespeare is generally considered the greatest playwright who ever lived. As well as one of the finest poets in English. Even today, 400 years after his death, he remains the most popular playwright in the world. Shakespeare lived in England during a time known as the renaissance when art and literature were flourishing, but many people couldn't read. Shakespeare wrote for everyone. Both the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate, gathered together to see and enjoy his plays. Shakespeare has been part of American culture since English speaking people first settled on this continent. And as this program shows, his work remains very much alive in this country. But in an age of easy entertainment, some people think Shakespeare's work is too difficult. Somehow beyond their reach or not worth the effort. The national endowment for the arts agrees with another English playwright. Ben Johnson, who was both a friend and a rival of Shakespeare's. Johnson wrote that Shakespeare was not of an age, but for all time. The national endowment for the arts is working to spread and understanding and appreciation of Shakespeare in American communities. So that he remains not only for all time, but for everyone. Mister Golding, mister James, would either of you care to name one of Shakespeare's poems for me? I thought he wrote movies. Two households. Both alike in dignity. My thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Monsters. Fly masks. We are halted. Doubt that the stars are fire. Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar. But never doubt. I love. They have made worms made of me. I'm playing. I'm both young. Film directors have been putting William Shakespeare's work on screen, almost as long as movies have been around. He's one of the most successful writers Hollywood has ever known. But Shakespeare never wrote a screenplay, never saw a camera, a microphone or bright lights. He lived some 400 years ago in England, and he wrote his dramas for the stage. The stage is still where most actors play Shakespeare's roles. And let me tell you, the thrill and terror of performing Shakespeare in front of a live audience never go away. The terror is for actors to deal with. But the thrill of a live great play is something actors and audiences experienced together. Clinton's Romans countryman lend me your ears. I come to bury Caesar not to praise him. You can find performances of Shakespeare everywhere today. You never know where Shakespeare's work will pop up. Modern writers and directors are constantly adapting his place to new settings and time periods. She did deceive her father marrying you when she seemed to shake and fear your look. She loved them loose. And so if she did. Amen. My girl's not like that, dogs. But you think about the way she put her father when he found out about you and her. She would check it out. People quote Shakespeare's words and stories, poems, speeches, songs, and more. Hobbs on the job ripping rhymes. Dozens of artists have portrayed scenes from Shakespeare in their paintings. Opera companies perform them in song. And not always in English. Shakespeare is all around us. How did his work become such an important part of our culture and our imaginations? Who was this guy? During Shakespeare's lifetime, England was fast emerging from the Middle Ages. Its economy was growing. Its merchant ships traded with far off lands. Middle class families were finding new ways of making money, improving their lives and rising in English society. Scholars agree that William Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford upon Avon, a town about a hundred miles from London. Shakespeare had a fairly comfortable upbringing with access to books and a good education. At age 18, he married Anne Hathaway 26 years old and expecting their first child. The couple would have three children together. Not much about Shakespeare's early life is certain until 1592 when it's known he was in London, acting and writing plays. He had joined a troop of performers at a time when the theater was just becoming an established profession in the city. England's first permanent building for stage performances opened in London just a few years before Shakespeare came to town. It had only the most basic features of theaters we know today. Plays depended almost entirely on what actors could do with words and gestures on stage. The 1998 movie Shakespeare in love portrays some of the agonies that Shakespeare and his company may have endured as they prepared for performance. Two households. We lost. Now it will turn out well. How will it? I don't know. It's a mystery. It is a mystery. With only minimal scenery, no lighting, except what the sun or candles could provide, and no way of amplifying their voices, Shakespeare and his fellow players were able to fill a theater with magic. To two households, both for lunch. In dignity. In fair Verona, where we lay our seat. From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. For fourth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star crossed lovers take their life. Whose misadventure hitting us overthrows death with their day Betty their parents strife. Performances and Shakespeare's day were different in some other ways from the modern theater we know. For instance, it was considered morally unacceptable then for women to appear on stage, so all women's roles were performed by boys. Shakespeare mocked the peculiar conventions of the elizabethan theater in many of his plays. I kissed the walls, who not your lips at all. I can smile. Characters often spoke their thoughts aloud. In soliloquies. What my cheeks without the short ears and frame my first tool all occasions. And in what we call a sides, sometimes spoke directly to the audience. And therefore, since I can not prove a lover, I'm determined to prove a villain and hate the idle pleasures of these dares. Elizabethan audiences weren't shy about speaking back. The people at ground level stood for the entire performance and by some accounts, the groundlings could be routed. Some individuals got so caught up in the drama on stage, they felt moved to participate. I do remember well where I should be in there. I am. Where is my Romeo? Shakespeare's plays were crowd pleasers, but he had more than the London public to satisfy. Theater companies competed for the money and favor of wealthy nobles, and of Queen Elizabeth herself, who loved the theater, and sometimes had acting troops perform for her at court. Shakespeare was judged against other talented playwrights like Ben Johnson and Christopher marlowe, whose plays are still honored and performed today. Not all of Shakespeare's plays were hits. But his wit and talent were recognized early in his career, and he soon developed a following, as his wealth grew, he bought a large house and other property in his hometown of Stratford. In 1599, Shakespeare's company built the globe. The theater that would premiere some of his most famous plays. Ten days after King James the first arrived in London to succeed Queen Elizabeth, he honored Shakespeare's company with the name the king's men. The company prospered. Shakespeare's reputation was already secure the most popular and influential playwright in English well before his death in 1616. Today, the bus to Shakespeare's burial site in this church and Stratford looks down on many thousands of visitors every year. And reproductions of the globe theater that his plays made famous regularly sell out to enthusiastic crowds. But it's the place themselves that remain the biggest draw. Shakespeare designed them to appeal to people from all walks of life, and audiences still delight in their broad humor, subtle ideas, elegant language, twists of plot and scenes of pure excitement. Currently benvolio. Look upon my death. I do but keep the peace. Put up by sword or manage it to part these men with me. Drawn and talk of peace. I hate to wear it. Does that hate hell? All montagues and the have it be carried? Calculus. Shakespeare was a showman. He based his plots on well-known tales from history and stories that were popular in his day. He took liberties with the details, altering personalities and events, crafting dramas that would grip and move his audiences. His plays explore the deepest feelings, worries, convictions that people have always had. They show us honor and courage. One small of those the water flying English dance. The plays show us delirious love. I pray the gentle mortal sting again. And that love can sometimes be a little too delirious. So is mine I enthrall it to thy shape. And thy favor virtues force Darth move me on the first view to say just where I love thee. They show us bitter hatred and evil cunning. I'll find a day to massacre them all. And raise their faction and their family. The cruel father in a traitorous sons to whom I sued for my two sons life. And make them know what is to let a queen kneel in the streets and beg for grace and vein. Um. Comes sweet emperor. Come andronicus. Shakespeare brought emotions and ideas to the stage through sharply drawn, powerful characters. I was a virtuous as a gentleman need to be. Virtuous enough. Swore little? Characters whose tragic and comical experiences allow us to consider what it means to be human. It is a spot. Out, damn spot. I don't see baby will murder there. Juliet and Romeo, doomed young lovers. I have nights close to hide me from their eyes. But thou love me. Let them find me here. Othello, a war hero tricked by a treacherous adviser into questioning his wife's faithfulness. Did you not sometimes see a handkerchief spotted with strawberries in your wife's hand? I gave her such a wand, was my first gift. I know not that, but such a handkerchief I'm sure it was your wife, did I today see cassio wipe his beard with? Oh, if it'd be that. Beatrice will use the opposite sex with amused disdain as the adversary in a battle of wits. He that has a beard is more than a youth. And he that hath no beard is less than a man. And he that is more than a youth is not for me. And he that is less than a man. I am not for him. And then there's Hamlet. The son of a murdered king confronted with the knowledge that his mother has married his father's killer, Hamlet's own uncle. No single scene or interpretation can some Hamlet up, but his brooding words are known the world over to be or not to be. To be or not to be, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows about races from you. Or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end and to die. To sleep. No more. And I have to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to. Disgusting valley to be wished devoutly to be wished. To die. To sleep. Sleep. To sleep for chance to dream, I there's the rub for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause Hamlet, maybe Shakespeare's most complex character. But in fact, they're all complex, just like real people are. Shakespeare's words give actors extraordinary opportunities to shape those characters and different ways. Lady Macbeth is trying to convince her husband to kill the king of Scotland. And take his crown. There were feared to be the same in thine own actin valors thou art in desire. Pretty peace. I dare do all that may become a man who dares to do more is none. When you just do it, then you were a man. And to be more than what you were, you would be so much more than man. Shakespeare didn't give us any cheat sheets that might tell me whether lady Macbeth's style is like silk or sandpaper. When you Durst do it, then you were a man. How I interpret her words affects how you and the audience will see her character. Her husband's character, the entire play. However, we interpret Shakespeare's characters. The way they speak rewards are closest attention. Shakespeare filled their dialog with exquisite turns of phrase to express their thoughts or feelings. Why is your cheek so pale? How chance the roses there do fade so fast? Be like for want of rain. Which I could well obtain them from the tempest of my eyes. I mean. The phrases that Shakespeare coined captured ideas so well that many have become part of our everyday speech. Ever hear any of these? The course of true love never did run smooth. Where am I lord of jealousy? It is the green eyed monster. A dish fit for the gods. It was Greek to me. This is solid sight. Household words. Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit to thine own self be true. Full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing. And there are his insults. Shakespeare was especially inventive with invective. Why are you bald painted lying rascal? You rag. You baggage, you pulled cat, you're running. Let vultures gripe thy guts. The most infectious pestilence upon me. Epoxy, your throat, you bowling, blasphemous, and charitable dog. No. Monstrous slender of heaven and earth. Now monstrous slanderer of heaven and earth, there's a bead in that line. Shakespeare's poems in most of his plays were written in meter. Generally, iambic pentameter. That means his lines have a particular kind of 5 beat rhythm that sounds like, well, like this. Have you been affections men at arms? Can sit down what you first did swear until? Too fast. She studied and to see no woman flat trees and the kingly state of youth say can you writing to a beat gives words a lilting quality that makes them pleasing to the ear. The beaten Shakespeare's line stands out clearly in the short poems he wrote known as sonnets. People don't always stress the beat when they read the sonnets, or the plays, but when they do, it's hard to miss. And faith I do not love thee with mine eyes for dead a thousand errors no. But tis my heart the loves what they despise, who inspired the viewers, please the dope. Shakespeare's use of meter in the vivid imagery of his language give his words a life of their own, beyond his plots and the lives of the characters for whom they were written. All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances. And one man in his time plays many parts most of the parts, the words for Shakespeare's great characters, were never printed while he was alive. But some years after he died, his colleagues in the theater world assembled and printed a collection of his writings so that future generations would know them. Countless editions have followed. When English colonists settled in the new world, they brought treasured copies of Shakespeare with them. Shakespeare's popularity spread as America grew. In the 19th century, actors performed scenes from his plays everywhere. Americans at all levels of society came to know and love them. Today, Shakespeare's plays move and delight audiences around the world and new languages, costumes, and settings. His work has been adopted and adapted by cultures vastly different from his own. This is wrong. Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa's epic retelling of Shakespeare's king Lear. The scenery, the characters, the language, would all have been unfamiliar to Elizabethan audiences. But Shakespeare's insights into human nature shine through. All my other questions. It's a long way from Stratford upon Avon. Shakespeare's insights are preserved in his words, but it's through people that they live on. When you listen or speak or even just read Shakespeare's words, you enter the worlds of the characters he created, much like actors do. You interpret what his characters say, and add something of yourself and your experiences to their stories. People have been doing the same since the 17th century, and we continue to find new meaning in what William Shakespeare wrote with words so rich and possibility. Maybe we really will be exploring and living in Shakespeare's worlds for all time. Because I know you're a fan of Shakespeare. More than a fan. We're involved. Okay. Who could refrain? That had a heart to love. And in that heart. Courage to make love. No. It's my path, right? Right. Parting is such sweet sorrow. You study Shakespeare. You're starting yesterday. All right, let me hear some. Go. I said I want to hear so. Let's go. See that lives? Come on, what? Where was that? I can't hear. Come on. Go. This day is called the feast of crispian. He that outlives this day and comes safe home will stand at tiptoe when this day is named. And arouse him at the name of Christian. He that shall see this day and live old age. You got y'all live this day and see all day? Well, yearly on the vigil. Feast his neighbors in safe. Tomorrow is saint crispy. Then we'll be strippers sleeves show scars and say, these wounds. I had I'll say crispy day. Old men forget yet all shall be forgot. Well, he'll remember with advantages what seats he did that day. Then Charlotte names. Familiar in his mouth, his household words. How do you the king? Bedford and Exeter. What I can tell, but Salisbury and Gloucester bee in their flowing cups, freshly remembered. This story shall a good man teach his son and crispin crispy and shall never go by from this day to the ending of the world. But we in it shall be remembered. We few. We happy few we happy few. We band of brothers. For he today, that sheds his blood with me. Shall be my brother. A gentleman in England, now a bed. Shall think themselves a curse they will not here. And hold their manhood cheap. While any speaks. Who fought with us? Can't say crispy instincts. Not enough trill sergeant? I guess we need to. Good.