This is the National Theatre.
We're in the Olivier, which is the biggest arena.
For the last three months, I've been doing Comedy of Errors here.
He that commends me to mine own content
commends me to the thing I cannot get.
There's going to be a global telecast
and I'm going to be performing on this stage
with my fellow cast members to an audience of potentially thousands,
maybe millions, all over the world.
Thou art a villain to impeach me thus:
I'll prove mine honour and mine honesty
Against thee presently, if thou darest stand.
There are two cameras on tracks, like railway tracks that move up and down.
We've got little cameras dotted around.
I'm nervous. Somebody will be going, 'Aaaargh!'
But what's been amazing is that it's Shakespeare
that's introduced me to this global audience.
Because it didn't speak to me as a human being,
it didn't seem meant for me.
Go master, go master, go master, go master!
(LAUGHTER)
How strange that Shakespeare has got me on the world stage.
I would never have dreamed.
(APPLAUSE)
(ALL PLAY MUSIC)
I to the world am like a drop of water
that in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, failing there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive...
'Playing the lead role in Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors
has been a huge challenge for me.' But, soft! who wafts us yonder?
'It's only the second time I've ever been in play
and only my second go at performing Shakespeare.'
What, was I married to her in my dream?
Or sleep I now and think I hear all this?
I play a guy called Antipholus of Syracuse,
who arrives in a very busy cosmopolitan city
to look for his mother and his brother.
Erm...it's an unusual play because Antipholus is a twin
and so is his manservant.
Both sets of twins are called Antipholus and Romeo,
so many, many complications ensue because of this.
'It's a funny, poignant story about mistaken identities.'
Which of you two did dine with me today?
(LAUGHTER)
'It's incredible that I'm doing this play
because for most of my life, I'd kept well away from Shakespeare.
Like many others, I thought I wasn't clever enough to understand it.
But where does this mental block about Shakespeare come from?
And what are we missing out on if we don't get past it?'
This is Rollason Road in Dudley
where I used to live and mostly grew up.
I used to sleep in that bedroom there. (CHUCKLES)
We were pretty much the only black family on the street.
I could have had a fight every day.
I was called nig-nog, coon, wog, every day by various people
and was rolling around on the floor of the playground.
And it wasn't until I discovered that you could actually not fight
and you could walk away or say something funny
to kind of dispel the argument or the confrontation -
It wasn't until I discovered that
that actually my life started to change for the better.
I was a daydreamer at school, I looked out of the window a lot.
And there was one year - I think fourth year or something -
where we were made to read Romeo and Juliet.
It was a whole class of disinterested kids
reading from this old, tattered book.
(LAUGHS) It was... When you hear,
(DUDLEY ACCENT) 'Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?'
it's sort of mind blowing.
So anyway, a few months later, I had a mini ping moment,
a mini revelation, where we went to The Plaza in Dudley,
which is now a bingo hall, I think,
and we watched Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.
I've got a bit of it on here on this little iPad.
It is my lady,
O, it is my love!
Incredible Italian Renaissance feel to it.
Beautiful colours, incredible costumes.
Olivia Hussey slightly naked.
O Romeo, Romeo!
wherefore art thou Romeo?
It blew my mind that Shakespeare could be like that, you know.
We worked out that it was a play and it could be sexy and exciting
and adventuresome. I remember lots of us crying when Mercutio died.
They've made worms' meat of me:
And I remember lots of us being moved and swept away by the majesty of it.
(LAUGHTER)
And then, of course, it sort of fell out of your mind
because I'm of Jamaican heritage, working class, from Dudley,
and Shakespeare's nothing to do with us, is it?
In 1975, I performed on a television programme called New Faces
and my life changed overnight. Come and look, this way.
This is my mum.
That was in the paper after I won.
I think she thought that going into showbusiness
was a bit of a flibbertigibbet idea.
(THUNDER)
My mum passed away in 1998
and erm...it sort of turned my world upside down, really.
She'd always wanted me to continue my education.
I also wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't thick.
I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something.
So for six years, while I was doing the Lenny Henry Show,
I was actually studying for a BA in English Literature.
'To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace...'
I used to drive into London and listen to part one of a play
and then drive back to Reading and listen to part two of the play.
'To be abused by one that looks...'
'And even now, To crown my thoughts with acts...'
'You have been a boggler ever:'
I liked listening to Othello. I liked listening to the Scottish play.
'..not mad, sweet heaven;'
'It is too full o' the milk of human kindness
To catch the nearest way:' 'I am a man
More sinn'd against than sinning.'
'..unsex me here,'
I made a radio show for Radio 4 called Lenny and Will.
And in that radio show, I met Barrie Rutter,
who absolutely rocked my world.
I met Barrie at Broadcasting House.
We rehearsed the last scene of Othello, which is 14 lines,
and begins, 'Soft you; a word or two before you go.'
And we rehearsed that for four hours.
And he will bollock you if you keep doing it wrong.
..in Aleppo once, Where a malignant and a turban'd Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog,
And smote him, thus.
(GASPS)
And that's what we had -
And I remember saying, 'Don't do it casual. Don't throw away a gesture.'
'Barrie is the director of theatre company Northern Broadsides.'
And then you can start to walk around -
I don't mean in this camp way that I'm doing now. (LAUGHS)
'It's the first time I've seen him
since he gave me my first crack at Shakespeare,
playing Othello in 2009.'
O my fair warrior!
My dear Othello!
It gives me wonder great as my content
To see you here before me. O my soul's joy!
If after every tempest comes such calms...
When I first did the 14 lines of Othello with you,
on the way there... that was early morning,
but if there'd been a pub open, I would have probably -
BARRIE: Had a large one? (LAUGHS)
I would have a livener, cos I was very, very frightened.
Because it was like a big closed door, Shakespeare and theatre, to me.
It was like a big closed door with a boulder against the other end
and my mum standing there like this.
It felt like something that I couldn't get through
because I had this massive inferiority complex about it.
I was nervous as well and thought, 'What are we gonna get here?'
In terms of what you'd asked me to look at -
you doing a speech of Othello.
You first off said, 'I know nothing.'
So your modesty was a big plus in the first five seconds.
'I know nothing.' But you'd learnt the bugger. Hm.
So I thought, 'He might be modest but he's put some work into this.
He's a grafter.' '20 years ago
when Barrie's company, Northern Broadsides,
began performing Shakespeare in regional voices,
it was revolutionary. And it was that down to earth approach
that made me feel comfortable with Shakespeare for the first time.'
Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;
Dost thou say so? She did deceive her father,
marrying you; And when she seem'd to shake
and fear your looks, She loved them most.
And so she did. Why, go to then;
They are great stories told in a muscular way.
And that's the other thing - they're bloody muscular. Yeah.
You know, the iambic pentameter, although it's poetry,
is based on the heartbeat. And what's what the centre of it is.
'Barrie's evangelical approach to Shakespeare
is about more than how you perform it.
It's also about where you perform it and who gets to see it.'
I think Broadsides is very much like the original concept
of a group of people showing up somewhere
and being able to put on a show anywhere in any room.
Yeah. Skipton Cattle Market. That's right.
We pioneered it. It's the only cattle marked in the land
with a theatre licence.
What are you doing in a cattle market?!
It sells sheep on a Wednesday and Shakespeare on a Thursday.
I mean, the two oldest arts
are probably cave painting and storytelling round a campfire.
And these are sophisticated stories for a very, very vibrant population.
So you had a spellbinding language
with incredibly wonderful and vibrant stories.
And they were for everybody then.
There's no reason why they can't be for everybody now.
I mean, I don't set out to proselytise that -
I would be a fool and fatuous if I did -
but bloody hell, that's what excites me.
I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word...
And I had but one penny in the world,
thou should'st have it to buy gingerbread:
hold, there's the very...
'I'm at the New Vic Theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme
where director Barrie Rutter
is rehearsing Shakespeare's Love's Labour Lost
with his company, Northern Broadsides.'
..thou halfpenny purse of wit, my pigeon-egg of discretion.
Good, good, good. Just enjoy those two descriptions of him more.
It's the sheer pleasure of the vocal delivery
and the rhythms and physicality that goes with.
You know, you often hear me say, 'Stop shuffling. Stop slouching.'
He's laughing cos it was his first bloody note.
Stop shuffling! 'Stop shuffling!'
A general wouldn't shuffle. 'A general wouldn't shuffle.'
Most military sir... 'It's been three years
since Barrie gave me my first role. And he's still working with actors
who never thought they could do Shakespeare.'
..an the heavens were so proud that thou wert but my bastard...
'Adam Fogerty is a former professional boxer and rugby player.
Like me, he had never done any Shakespeare before he met Barrie.'
It's the repetition of the word.
Shakespeare likes it. That's why he's repeating it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no Shakespeare buff,
but I'm starting to understand this play now.
Uh-huh. Well, that's all you need to do.
You'll read them and think, 'Why is this funny?'
And then when you start walking around and doing it,
you suddenly find that it is funny.
And I think Barrie's great at pulling things out
that you don't notice, and putting a little move in there
or a little turn there that makes it funny. Mm-hm.
I think I'm enjoying it a lot more as well
because I'm doing it with Northern Broadsides
in our own accents and...
I always had an attitude about Shakespeare
that it wasn't for working class people. Yeah.
(YORKSHIRE ACCENT) Nobody spoke like that.
Everybody was posh. And it's a real barrier when you're a kid. Yeah.
So to hear Shakespeare done with Hull accents,
Manchester accents, Welsh accents, you know, it's wonderful,
cos it makes it more accessible.
'Working with a director like Barrie
finally freed me from the idea I'd held onto from my schooldays -
that Shakespeare was completely beyond my reach.'
Rutter allowed me to become childlike again and play,
because he did not put the weight of
'you're learning Othello so you'd better be good' on my shoulders.
He just said, 'This is us. How are we gonna tell the story of Othello?'
I do not think but Desdemona's honest.
Long live she so! and long live you to think so!
And yet, how nature erring from itself,--
Ay, there's the point:
What gets me is I'd always wanted to act
but I didn't know whether I could do it or not.
And Shakespeare seemed to be the pinnacle of that,
cos it's so hard.
It is like juggling while trying to speak Mandarin Chinese.
'But does performing Shakespeare get any easier?
I've come to talk to Dominic West.
He's most famous for his role in the hit US cop show The Wire,
but he's also an accomplished Shakespearean actor
and recently played Iago in a highly acclaimed production of Othello.
I want to find out what keeps drawing him back to Shakespeare.'
Why did you like Shakespeare so much?
Did you have a teacher that went 'ding' to you?
How did you discover him? Well, I suppose it was -
my mum was in an amateur theatre company in Sheffield
and they used to do quite a lot of Shakespeare.
There is that thing where you'd feel it's from another time
and it's nothing to do with you. I suppose having that
as an eight or nine-year-old... Made it normal.
.made it normal. And my mum and sisters were in it, so...
It's interesting, cos I didn't think I'd ever do anything like Othello.
It was not on the radar. I'd seen Olivier's version of it lots of times
and just thought, 'There's one of the greatest actors of his generation
wearing shoe polish and rolling his eyes.' (LAUGHS)
All that. And I had to watch it a lot of times.
Have you always wanted to play Iago? I think so.
Cos I did it for O Level. I did Othello, the play.
So I always really liked the play.
Shakespeare does this with a lot of plays. A strangely amoral play.
Not wagging the finger at us, but showing us things. Yeah.
I suppose in the same way David Simon of The Wire
was very keen that every villain's got something redeemable about them
and every hero has got a flaw, you know.
The Wire is often compared with Shakespeare.
Why do you think that is? I suppose in its scope.
It had enormous scope. And it wasn't like The Sopranos
and just about a family. It was about a major city. Mm-hm.
And within that city, you saw the whole of America, really.
And I suppose in the same way you get in most Shakespeare plays,
you get the life of kings and the life of the bellows-mender.
And he understood all levels of society.
I feel old.
I've been out there since I was 13.
I ain't never fucked up a count, never stole off a package,
never did some shit that I wasn't told to do.
I've been straight up.
This game is rigged, man.
We're like the little bitches on the chessboard. Pawns.
What's great with Shakespeare
is we can see where the villain's coming from.
We can see it's horrible what he's doing,
but we can understand why he's doing it.
And as soon as you've got that, you understand more about humanity.
And it's so funny - This is 400 years old.
Yeah, but that's why - We're still the same.
We're human experience
and our elemental jealousies and emotions
and thoughts are all the same. It's what it is to be human.
You're a soldier, Bodie.
Hell yeah.
I've always tried to keep doing Shakespeare.
And I find it's more rewarding than anything else,
just in terms of how much it stretches your...
..ability to empathise with humanity
and to understand why people do what they do.
And the amazing thing about it is, whatever part you play,
whether he's the nastiest guy in the world like Iago,
you-you have to take your tiny self and make it big to match him.
You feel - To inflate.
Yeah, it's much bigger than you. And it'll always be too big for you,
but it's great trying to reach for the heights.
'It's clear from talking to Dominic that he has no fear of Shakespeare
because he grew up with it.
But because I didn't, I've never felt comfortable with it.
This is the world many people associate with Shakespeare -
the lofty academia of Oxford University.
I've come to meet Professor Jonathan Bate,
Provost of Worcester College and leading Shakespeare scholar,
to see where this perception comes from.'
Certainly when I was growing up, Shakespeare did seem to be
the sole property of people that went to grammar schools and universities.
I'll tell you exactly when you can date it.
Middle of the Victorian period, you have universal state education
introduced for the first time.
But you can't expect these working class types to do Latin and Greek,
so what do you give them instead? You give them Shakespeare.
So Shakespeare was, as it were,
for the people who couldn't quite cope with Latin and Greek.
That was when Shakespeare became part of the educational syllabus.
And then what happened through the 20th century,
as the study of the classics declined,
Shakespeare kind of took over from the classics.
And so by the time you get to when you and I went to school,
it was the absolute centre of the academic curriculum.
Taught at universities, you know. Appropriated by the elite.
The really interesting thing
is that Shakespeare's father was a glove maker, a local businessman.
So little William goes to grammar school.
But what then happens
is that Shakespeare's father runs into financial problems.
There's a kind of credit crunch and he runs out of money
and so William, instead of going on to university
and a career in the law or whatever, is taken out of school.
And what do you do if you're stuck in the provinces?
You head off to London. You get on your bike.
Get on your bike. Was it unusual
as a playwright in London or were there other guys like him around?
People thought he was a country bumpkin
with that Warwickshire accent. Straw in his hair. Yeah, exactly.
And he was definitely a little bit of an outsider.
Nearly all the successful playwrights
have got university degrees. Uh-huh.
People like Christopher Marlowe, who went to Cambridge.
So someone like Shakespeare, OK, a grammar school boy as an actor,
but him becoming a script writer - that was unusual.
I think that is one of the great things about Shakespeare.
Suppose he had gone to Oxford.
Would we have Shakespeare's plays as they are? I think we wouldn't,
because I think the fact of not getting a very high level education
kept Shakespeare grounded,
kept him in touch with the voice of the ordinary person.
I mean, you know, in Shakespeare's time,
the plays weren't for posh people - they were for everybody.
He gave a voice to the common man.
'It's really interesting to find out that Shakespeare was an outsider
and wasn't part of the academic elite,
and that that gave him a better understanding of humanity.
But today his 400-year-old language
stops most of us being able to relate to his work.
I've come to South London to meet MOBO Award-winning rapper Akala.'
# Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
# Thou art more lovely and more temperate
# Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
# And summer's lease hath all too short a date #
'Akala believes we can still connect with Shakespeare
if we can just get over our fear of the language.'
Brilliant!
'He helps kids get Shakespeare
by presenting it to them in a form they can understand - hip hop.'
# So long lives this, and this gives life to thee #
Yeah, boy! Stratford-upon-Avon posse!
Peace!
Shakespeare - the main MC. Get me?
Both these art forms are very misrepresented.
The mainstream brand of hip hop has kind of given hip hop as a whole
a particular public persona for some people.
What would that persona be? Misogyny, violence, materialism.
Then with Shakespeare, similarly, he's marked as, 'Wow, Shakespeare.'
This kind of intellectual deity that all of us average people
should just stand in reverence of and not touch.
But to me, Shakespeare's incredibly violent. Very violent.
In Titus Andronicus, a man getting carved up
and put in a pie and fed to his parents.
If Biggie Smalls said that, it'd be like,
'Biggie's a sadomasochist!' Never heard that in a rhyme.
Do you understand that I'm saying? Macbeth was a gangster.
Really, when you look at it, Lady Macbeth and that whole,
'Take my milk for gall.' 'Turn me into a man,' she's saying.
'I wanna be bad.' And for me to be bad, 'Unsex me here.'
'I don't want to be a woman no more.
Take all this female love and energy out of me
and let me be a gangster.' That's what Lady Macbeth's saying.
A rapper says the same thing, she's held to different standards.
So are we gonna drop a beat? We are gonna drop the beat.
That's not what we're gonna do first though. I've got a challenge.
These quotes are either hip hop or Shakespeare.
So you're gonna read each one out
and decide whether you think it's hip hop or Shakespeare. OK.
READS: Fair is foul and foul is fair.
That's the Scottish play. Yeah, very good.
READS: As we engage in battle. That sounds like a rap to me. Yeah.
READS: There's daggers in men's smiles.
That's rap.
Is it? That's the Scottish play. Ah! Ooh.
READS: Who inflicted this bitter sickness?
That's Shakespeare.
That's Inspectah Deck from the Wu-Tang Clan. You're kidding me!
No. It's a track called A Better Tomorrow. Damn.
READS: Hear my soul speak.
Is that a rap? It's from The Tempest.
Damn!
READS: Maybe it's hatred I spew, maybe it's food for the spirit. Rap.
That one is. That's Eminem. Yeah.
READS: Sleep is the cousin of death. That's Shakespeare. Sure?
Yes, I am sure. You sure? Yeah, I am.
No, that one's Nas. Oh, my God!
So as you can see, when we do this exercise with people,
no-one gets them all right. That's amazing.
We've done this with some of the highest ranking people
at Shakespearean institutions and they've got some wrong.
It's no reflection on any group, but the point is,
once you take away the context, your personal perception
of what a rapper should say and what Shakespeare should say -
we've found that people will generally get a good chunk wrong.
People misunderstand both Shakespeare and hip hop.
And by misunderstanding these human stories
or these vehicles for human stories,
they're missing out on self-expression.
The moment it's humanised, there's a certain confidence.
'Right, if I can get Shakespeare
and I'm told he's the most unattainable guy in the world,
then I can get anything.' That's really what it's about.
We're not trying to turn everyone into rappers.
It's about using lyricism and hip hop and Shakespeare
as a vehicle for self-confidence and a vehicle for education.
Brilliant. (LOUD BEAT PLAYING)
That's really loud, Akala. Sorry about that.
All the wax shot out of my ears then.
One, two, three, four.
# Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
# Thou art more lovely and more temperate
# Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
# And summer's lease hath all too short a date #
# Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
# And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd
# And every...# Argh!
Almost, almost. Let's go again. Almost. Almost.
I'm impressed by that. There's a lot of people that call themselves MCs
that can't do this. I'm being deadly serious. Whoo!
# Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
# Thou art more lovely and more temperate
# Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
# And summer's lease hath all too short a date #
# Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
# And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd
# And every fair from fair sometimes declines
# By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd
# But they eternal summer shall not fade
# Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest
# Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade
# When in eternal lines to time thou growest
# So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see
# So long lives this, and this gives life to thee #
Whoa, I'm very impressed.
You're gonna have to beat my tongue to death with a stick.
I'm very impressed, man. I'm very impressed. Well done.
'I think Akala's right
about Shakespeare being a vehicle for confidence. It has been for me.
Doing Othello was a huge turning point.
But I think how you're first introduced to it is key.
I've arranged to meet a friend of mine, actor Adrian Lester,
who's letting me join in a Shakespeare school workshop.'
Hello. Hey.
How are you, man? Hello. Are you all right?
How you doing? I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.
Adrian Lester. (LAUGHS)
What we're kind of doing here is debunking Shakespeare.
My thinking was to take a group of kids
who wouldn't have done a lot of Shakespeare beforehand.
Who I suppose, really, were like me with Shakespeare
when I was at school. Because I felt that I needed an English degree
to even read one of the plays.
Well, I got one and I still don't understand 'em!
See, you're ahead of me. What I'd like to do
is do what was never done for me.
I know the road is paved with good intentions,
but I would like to somehow explode and go, 'Here it is!' Yeah.
Well, we don't want to say to them, 'Forget all your references
as a young person living in Britain today.'
No. Use all your references, keep those references,
keep your emotional life and the observations you have
because they are relevant to approaching Shakespeare.
'We're doing the workshop at a school in South London.'
I've been to the toilet, in case you were worried.
I was gonna ask. Why am I nervous? I'm so nervous.
It is a bit - It's nerve wracking.
Now we know how teachers feel. Yeah.
Have a seat.
Right...
'I'm at Norwood School in South London
with my friend and fellow actor Adrian Lester.'
I'm Adrian Lester. I'm an actor.
I'm Lenny. I'm an actor and a comedian.
'We're about to do a workshop
with a group of kids from year eight and nine.
I'm hoping we'll be able to really bring Shakespeare to life for them.'
For the purposes of today, we're gonna treat you like actors.
So I want you to take your jackets off
and put them by your bags.
'In this lesson, the kids won't be sitting at a desk reading out loud
like we had to when we were at school.'
Pull up some chairs and sit facing this way.
'The first thing Adrian does with them is play a game
that shows the important of hierarchy and status in Shakespeare's plays.'
One of the rules that all of Shakespeare's plays used is status.
The top was the king, then the lords have their position,
and then ladies, and you went all the way down.
Everyone has their place. Like ranks in the army.
Like ranks in the army, like people at this school.
Do you all understand that? Yeah.
OK. So I'm gonna show you how we can interpret,
how we can look at status and positions and order in Shakespeare.
Status two, going to the most powerful of status ten.
This is status two.
(MEEKLY) Hello, my name is Adrian.
(LAUGHTER)
Now, what did you notice about that? You were slouching. Slouching.
You looked quite shy. Quite shy.
You weren't very proud of yourself. I was proud of myself? Wasn't. OK.
Let's take it up a little notch. Lenny's an eight.
Er...
Yeah, erm... (LAUGHTER)
My name's Lenny, yeah?
OK, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. (CHUCKLES)
Who would like to have a go? Do you want to have a go? Come up.
And go.
Well, my name is Ben and I think this -
I'm going to go.
'As they act different positions in Shakespeare's hierarchy,
the group gets a real feeling what it might be like
to be one of his characters.' What did that have?
Strong minded. He came in strong minded.
Strong minded. There was a bit of a showman about it as well.
It was like, 'Yeah, you're pleased to meet me.'
There was that little touch about it. OK, come and have a go.
'Watching Adrian work with the class,
it's obvious that taking Shakespeare off the page
really does work.' My name is Neddy.
I mean Kato. (LAUGHTER)
'They really do seem to be enjoying themselves.
They're not staring out of the window like I did.'
I've gotta say, you lot are good. If I was to ask you a question -
what was the most famous Shakespeare speech?
What speech comes to your mind? Romeo, Romeo!
wherefore art thou Romeo?
She's saying, 'Why are you called Romeo?
Why can't you have another name?
Why do you have to be from that house, from that family?'
Exactly. Everyone always thinks that.
Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
To the left, to the right.
On the beat. Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da.
ALL: Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da.
T-t-t-t, p-p-p-p, t-t-t-t, kah.
ALL: T-t-t-t, p-p-p-p, t-t-t-t-kah.
Very good. Anybody listen to rap? I know you've all heard some rap.
Shakespeare did that first.
So I'm gonna do a beat and we're gonna go round two lines at a time.
Are you all ready? Yeah. Four, three, two, one.
(BEAT-BOXING) # Through the forest have I gone
# But Athenian found I none
# On whose eyes I might approve
# This flower's force in stirring love
# Night and silence - who is here?
# Weeds of Athens he doth wear
# This is he, my master said
# Despised the Athenian maid #
Brilliant. (LENNY WHOOPING)
(LAUGHTER) You know why it was good?
It's like the rhythms telling you how to say it. Exactly.
And if you use the rhythms - And all the 'kah' sounds and 'pah' sounds,
they really push the line along.
So you should really dance those rhythms, rock 'em and roll 'em.
They sound great. OK, all together. Hit it!
Four, three, two, one.
# Through the forest have I gone
# But Athenian found I none
# On whose eyes I might approve
# This flower's force in stirring love
# Night and silence - who is here?
# Weeds of Athens he doth wear
# This is he, my master said
# Despised the Athenian maid #
Stop there, stop there. Very good.
(CHEERING) We're done for today.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
I get to be in this one.
If Adrian Lester had come to my school when I was 15 and done that,
I'd walk out of the door skipping. How fantastic is that?
Do you know stuff about Shakespeare you didn't before? ALL: Yeah.
Has it changed your idea of Shakespeare?
I thought Shakespeare was only for people that are 16 and up,
like smart university people, yeah, cos it's difficult to analyse.
But I understand it. When you think about it, it's not that difficult.
OK, great. You lot are funny.
It was great that the girl said at the end,
'I thought it was for people 16 and up, people going to university.
I didn't think this stuff was for me but now I think it is.'
Whatever she said. I'm paraphrasing, obviously.
But it was a wonderful moment.
And erm...these things are good. It made my heart feel good.
These young people are taking it on and not scared of it like I was.
What I've gleaned so far is that Shakespeare is about performance.
It's no good just reading it out. You've got to get it in the body.
Storytelling in the body.
'And if there's one place to get to grips
with how Shakespeare's plays were meant to be performed,
it's the Globe Theatre.
Its artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole,
is passionate about debunking the snobbery of Shakespeare
and putting it back where it belongs, in front of a rowdy audience.'
Oh, look at this, Dominic. Here we are.
This is your place. This is my personal home.
This is my home. It's beautiful, isn't it? Yeah.
Are you gonna get the roof to come across like at Wimbledon?
That would slightly spoil the point of it. Would it? Yeah.
Watching Shakespeare with the rain pissing down?
It's what people like. They stand here - (LAUGHS)
We give them plastic macs. They put the macs on themselves
and stand here like 600 condoms.
(LAUGHS)
Brilliant. Wobbling in the rain.
Essentially, we're standing where most of the audience stands.
600 people stand down here in the yard.
Then on each of these galleries, you get 300 there, 300 there, 300 there.
The classic academic treaty about it has been, you know,
poor people, rich people, rich people, rich people.
And then with that there's been an idea
that the intelligence goes up as you go up. (LAUGHS) Yeah.
And I think that's balls,
cos, actually, this place is where all the electricity and excitement
for the whole theatre is generated.
And if this place isn't lively and happening
and enjoying itself and sharing jokes,
then the rest of the place goes dead.
I'd be frightened of this because I'm worried about seeing faces.
It's petrifying before you come out, terrifying,
but then once people are on and they feel this warmth and embrace,
it's just the best thing in the world.
I guess for a while, before this place got built,
there was a sense that Shakespeare
was only for people who went to Stratford
and the National Theatre and stuff like that.
This is what you wrote about. This is about your colleagues at school.
I wasn't rude about anyone, was I?
READS: They had behind them the whole piss-elegant,
Stratford-worshipping, relentlessly bourgeois,
quietly racist, deeply English orthodoxy about Shakespeare,
the holy and the wonderful. Well, it's true.
And it pertained for a hell of a long time.
And there was a sort of hieratic thing
that there were priests who understood.
You know, that certain actors got it, the rest didn't.
Certain academics got it, the rest didn't.
And you had to sit there in dumb silence in the congregation
being frightened of your priest
because they had some sort of mystic knowledge not available to everyone.
And that's not what he wrote for. He wrote for events
when a hell of a lot of people -
Of all sorts. It doesn't matter if they're archbishops
of punks or if they're politicians or thieves or whatever.
They altogether get it. Mm-hm.
Do you mind if I go onstage? Yeah, go on.
Do you feel that there's still an elitist thing going on?
I think this place has had a big effect
and has broken down a lot of barriers that were there before.
The key thing about it is the architecture Shakespeare wrote for.
He didn't write for a little black studio box,
he didn't write for a senior march with gilt frame. He wrote for this.
God! How does it feel?
I think it's incredible.
It's about breaking down the divide between the stage and the audience.
So that you can come there
and somebody in the front row will be like that.
They'll have their arms there, they'll grab your foot.
No way! That would really put you off, wouldn't it?
I have done the stage some service. Put the phone away!
(LAUGHS) You'd love it. Would I?
You would. Cos you'd get an enthusiasm off them and excitement.
So instead of this... Yeah.
He that commends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get. Yeah.
It's... He that commends me to mine own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get. Exactly.
I to the world am like a drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:
Exactly. And it's to them and them. Yeah.
You look them in the eye and it's an honest conversation.
And you spread it round gently. A bit here, bit there, bit up there.
Your voice is great in here. Thanks.
I'd still be scared, though.
Tell me about your experience of Shakespeare when you were a kid.
If you grew up like I grew up, without any religion of any sort,
and you needed a big canonical thing
that you can help define your own shape through
by how you talk to that and how you hurl yourself against it,
Shakespeare was that.
The complete works sat in the middle of our house
just emitting all of this generous, warm, brilliant energy. Hm.
That was the thing that we used to understand ourselves and the world.
As a guide to life kind of thing. As a guide to life.
Thank you so much for giving me the time.
Huge pleasure. It's great.
Come and play here some time. You must be joking! (LAUGHS)
Not that big a worry.
Meeting all these people has just confirmed to me
how universal Shakespeare's appeal is.
It's sort of made me think... that I could have done it before.
I could have done it earlier.
'The National Theatre
is preparing for the global telecast of Comedy of Errors.
I've come to run through a scene with one of my co-stars, Michelle Terry.'
She goes over there and she's really worried now.
Your sister's husband has now fallen in love with you
and you're having feelings, too. I'm going to woo you now.
This is a woo, isn't it? It's a woo.
(CLEARS THROAT)
Sweet mistress--what your name is else, I know not,
Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine,--
Less in your knowledge and your grace you show not
Than our earth's wonder, more than earth divine...
I've always wanted to act.
I've always wanted to be in films and stuff.
But it feels like erm...
..the comedy took precedence.
He gains by death that hath such means to die:
Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!
There wasn't regret, but there was a slight feeling of
that thing of putting a ladder against a building
and then looking, realising your ladder's against the wrong building.
Why call you me love? call my sister so.
Thy sister's sister. That's my sister.
No; it is thyself, mine own self's better part,
Mine eye's clear ear, my dear heart's dearer heart.
My food.
I feel like I've slightly missed out and I'm anxious for more.
It's weird doing it in a rehearsal room again.
It's strange. It's odd doing it.
How do you feel about the live thing?
Cos I've done lots of live telly but this is a different thing.
It is different. I did All's Well and everyone was, like,
'Do the play as the play.' Then you get out there and go,
'How can I do that when you've removed half the audience?
Why are all these cameras everywhere?'
We're just going to do the show, aren't we?
We're just going to do the show.
It's been three years
since I first stepped on a stage and did Othello.
And I think it's fair to say
that many people thought it was going to be a car crash of some kind.
But that didn't happen.
And suddenly, here I am about to do this broadcast.
After 35 years on stage, this will be the biggest show I've ever done.
Comedy Of Errors is about to be beamed live around the world
to 700 cinemas in 22 countries.
It would be stupid to say that I'm in love with Shakespeare
because I'm not, I find it very, very difficult and hard to learn.
But I do feel like I've climbed a mountain, as it were.
There's many more mountains to go but I feel like
I'm in the foothills, as it were, of trying to figure it out.
I'm richer for the experience, certainly.
I had a manager once who said,
'One day, chap, you're going to be as big as Max Bygraves.'
But not really what I wanted to do with my life.
I was a big fan of Richard Pryor and everything
and I thought I was going to be in America, playing big clubs and stuff.
But actually, here I am, performing this play.
It's a massive journey.
12, 11. Ten seconds.
Nine, eight...
Three, two, one, zero.
So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.
Here comes the almanac of my true date.
What now? How chance thou art return'd so soon?
Return'd so soon! Rather approach'd too late:
The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit.
Comedy Of Errors is a farcical story of mistaken identity,
in which two sets of twins, separated at birth, end up in the same town.
(LAUGHTER)
As from a bear a man would run for life,
So fly I from she that would be my wife.
Then she bears some breadth?
She is spherical, like a globe;
I could find out countries in her.
How extraordinary that this material,
which is at once parochial and universal,
is able to penetrate to such a huge audience.
It's seen and performed all over the world and enjoyed all over the world.
If this be not a dream I see and hear.
That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.
It's a very funny play.
But among all the laughs and crazy plot twists,
the genius of Shakespeare is his brilliant insight
into what it means to be human.
We in your motion turn and you may move us.
He writes about big emotions we can all relate to.
(SHUDDERS)
(LAUGHTER)
Why call you me love? Call my sister so.
Thy sister's sister. That's my sister.
No;
It is thyself, mine own self's better part,
Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,
My food, my fortune and my sweet hope's aim
My soul earth's heaven and my heaven's claim.
The fact that there is a movement
to make Shakespeare more populist is right.
And what I've noticed more and more
is that there is a more multi-ethnic audience coming to see theatre
because people are realising that it's for them too.
At its heart, Comedy Of Errors is about the reunion of a family.
This family has been torn apart by all manner of situations
and slowly but surely, they are being reunited
and that's an incredibly moving situation.
Everybody can relate to that.
Everybody deserves to have
some Shakespeare in their lives. It's for you.
(APPLAUSE)
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