1
00:00:06,120 --> 00:00:08,120
'You can take away cricket.

2
00:00:08,120 --> 00:00:11,600
'You can skip
the Last Night of the Proms.

3
00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:14,440
'You can even lose an empire.

4
00:00:14,440 --> 00:00:17,680
'But if you lose Shakespeare,
as far as I'm concerned,

5
00:00:17,680 --> 00:00:20,480
'there's no England any more.

6
00:00:22,760 --> 00:00:25,400
'It was here,
between the pit and the galleries,

7
00:00:25,400 --> 00:00:28,520
'that an IDEA of England was born.'

8
00:00:28,520 --> 00:00:32,120
"Here, said they,
is the terror of the French."

9
00:00:32,120 --> 00:00:35,200
'One that's lasted through
wars and revolutions,

10
00:00:35,200 --> 00:00:40,480
'migrations and immigrations,
one that is still with us.'

11
00:00:40,480 --> 00:00:44,880
"This royal throne of kings,
this sceptred isle.

12
00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:48,760
"This earth of majesty,
this seat of Mars.

13
00:00:48,760 --> 00:00:51,880
"This other Eden, demi-paradise.

14
00:00:51,880 --> 00:00:55,120
"This blessed plot,

15
00:00:55,120 --> 00:00:58,440
"this earth, this realm,

16
00:00:58,440 --> 00:01:00,760
"this England."

17
00:01:03,440 --> 00:01:07,640
'But what Shakespeare gives us
is never just Fantasy Island,

18
00:01:07,640 --> 00:01:09,680
'a dream of Albion.'

19
00:01:11,160 --> 00:01:14,760
Oh, he can turn on the
sceptred isle mood music all right,

20
00:01:14,760 --> 00:01:19,440
no-one better, but that's not
why Shakespeare sings to me.

21
00:01:19,440 --> 00:01:21,680
It's because, in his histories,

22
00:01:21,680 --> 00:01:26,360
especially in the great masterpieces
of Henry IV, Part One and Two,

23
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:30,600
he gives us England unedited,
the complete thing,

24
00:01:30,600 --> 00:01:33,680
the cream and the scum.

25
00:01:33,680 --> 00:01:38,320
The fleabag hostelries on the
London Road, the chilly cathedrals

26
00:01:38,320 --> 00:01:42,080
where sour bishops
crack their knuckles and plot.

27
00:01:42,080 --> 00:01:46,640
He gives us the clapped out actors
and the greedy squires.

28
00:01:48,560 --> 00:01:53,360
He gives us the real thing
and that's what we want, don't we?

29
00:01:53,360 --> 00:01:55,520
The dirt and the devilry.

30
00:01:55,520 --> 00:02:00,240
Why, then, let grievous,
ghastly, gaping wounds

31
00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:03,720
Untwine the Sisters Three!

32
00:02:04,800 --> 00:02:08,400
'Above all, Shakespeare gives us
the voices of England,

33
00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:13,480
'cascades of tumbling prattle,
ripe curses, symphonies of gossip.'

34
00:02:13,480 --> 00:02:16,320
By this wine, I'll thrust
my knife in your mouldy chaps

35
00:02:16,320 --> 00:02:18,960
an' you play the
saucy cuttle with me.

36
00:02:18,960 --> 00:02:24,840
And this valour comes of sherris.

37
00:02:24,840 --> 00:02:29,920
'The miracle is that audiences
could see England on the stage

38
00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:33,800
'almost before it existed
in reality.

39
00:02:33,800 --> 00:02:40,200
'Over and over again, the Word
itself came booming over the boards.

40
00:02:40,200 --> 00:02:42,920
'Nought shall make us rue

41
00:02:42,920 --> 00:02:46,760
'if England to itself
do rest but true.'

42
00:02:46,760 --> 00:02:51,840
'It was Shakespeare who gave us
a sense of who we really are.

43
00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:54,280
'How did he do it?'

44
00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:15,640
'Shakespeare's theatre
could only be born

45
00:03:15,640 --> 00:03:19,280
'once an older, Catholic theatre
had been killed off.

46
00:03:21,320 --> 00:03:24,360
'For hundreds of years,
the English had gathered

47
00:03:24,360 --> 00:03:29,000
'to watch scripture
performed in front of them.

48
00:03:31,040 --> 00:03:33,280
'The Miracle plays, which dramatised

49
00:03:33,280 --> 00:03:38,200
'the supernatural interventions
of the Christian saints...

50
00:03:38,200 --> 00:03:42,600
'..and the Mystery plays,
the most dramatic bits of the Bible,

51
00:03:42,600 --> 00:03:46,920
'each story acted out
by a different guild.

52
00:03:46,920 --> 00:03:50,880
'Noah and his wife
by the fishmongers,

53
00:03:50,880 --> 00:03:52,800
'the Last Supper by the bakers,

54
00:03:52,800 --> 00:03:55,840
'the Three Kings by the goldsmiths.'

55
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:00,800
To modern ears and eyes,

56
00:04:00,800 --> 00:04:04,760
the Miracle and Mystery Plays
do seem just a bit primitive.

57
00:04:04,760 --> 00:04:08,480
The simplest of dialogue,
one dimensional characters,

58
00:04:08,480 --> 00:04:12,960
not very much in the way
of poetic or psychological insight

59
00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:15,480
and all performed by amateurs.

60
00:04:15,480 --> 00:04:19,920
But, in their day, they were
extraordinarily popular.

61
00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:22,240
People flocked from miles around

62
00:04:22,240 --> 00:04:25,240
just to see the Bible
brought to life,

63
00:04:25,240 --> 00:04:28,720
with gorgeous costumes,
fantastic spectacle,

64
00:04:28,720 --> 00:04:31,480
outsized heads breathing flame,

65
00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:35,080
a lot of screaming and shouting
just at the right time.

66
00:04:37,480 --> 00:04:42,360
'The Mystery and Miracle plays were
crude, but they served a purpose.

67
00:04:42,360 --> 00:04:45,560
'They brought the English
together and helped connect them

68
00:04:45,560 --> 00:04:48,920
'to the rest of Christendom.

69
00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:54,320
'Until, in the 1530s, that great
Catholic communion was torn apart.'

70
00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:07,800
'William Shakespeare was born

71
00:05:07,800 --> 00:05:11,600
'some 30 years after
the Protestant Reformation began.

72
00:05:14,440 --> 00:05:17,680
'This religious revolution
divided England

73
00:05:17,680 --> 00:05:19,840
'and Shakespeare's own family.

74
00:05:24,000 --> 00:05:28,680
'His mother, Mary Arden, came from
an obstinately Catholic clan.

75
00:05:30,160 --> 00:05:32,520
'One of her relatives was executed

76
00:05:32,520 --> 00:05:37,800
'for conspiracy to murder Elizabeth,
the Protestant queen.

77
00:05:37,800 --> 00:05:40,400
'His father, John,
began as a tradesman

78
00:05:40,400 --> 00:05:43,160
'but became Mayor
of Stratford-upon-Avon.

79
00:05:44,840 --> 00:05:48,960
'He didn't let religion
stand in the way of success.

80
00:05:48,960 --> 00:05:52,640
'If an appearance
of Protestant enthusiasm

81
00:05:52,640 --> 00:05:57,600
'was the price
of going places, so be it.

82
00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:01,000
'A few months before
Shakespeare was born,

83
00:06:01,000 --> 00:06:04,560
'the religious schism
which touched his own family

84
00:06:04,560 --> 00:06:07,240
'was played out in the
Guild Chapel, his local church.

85
00:06:10,120 --> 00:06:14,440
'The spectacular religious paintings
covering the walls,

86
00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:18,080
'which were so familiar to
the congregation, were whitewashed.

87
00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:24,000
'John Shakespeare was among those
who ordered this obliteration.'

88
00:06:29,800 --> 00:06:34,000
The old culture was full
of pictures, of images,

89
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:37,600
and now it was literally wiped out,

90
00:06:37,600 --> 00:06:41,360
but onto that whiteness
came the Word,

91
00:06:41,360 --> 00:06:45,240
for as Protestant preachers
constantly reminded their flocks,

92
00:06:45,240 --> 00:06:50,120
"In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was with God."

93
00:06:50,120 --> 00:06:53,160
But that was a stern
and flinty message.

94
00:06:53,160 --> 00:06:55,160
There were other kinds of words

95
00:06:55,160 --> 00:06:57,920
that would seize the attention
of the English.

96
00:06:57,920 --> 00:07:02,520
Poetic words, dramatic words
and most bewitching of all,

97
00:07:02,520 --> 00:07:05,720
words that could paint pictures.

98
00:07:05,720 --> 00:07:09,280
And the greatest
word-picturer of them all

99
00:07:09,280 --> 00:07:13,480
was the son of the whitewasher,
William Shakespeare.

100
00:07:23,440 --> 00:07:26,480
Catholicism gives you everything
in front of you

101
00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:27,920
in glorious Technicolor.

102
00:07:27,920 --> 00:07:30,720
We naturally, I think, view
destruction of all that beauty

103
00:07:30,720 --> 00:07:32,520
as a terrible act of vandalism

104
00:07:32,520 --> 00:07:35,000
and a sort of ghastly
thing to have occurred,

105
00:07:35,000 --> 00:07:39,680
but actually it seems to me that
if you don't have that moment,

106
00:07:39,680 --> 00:07:42,600
you don't get the rest
of the second millennium.

107
00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:45,280
I mean, genuinely,
because what is the Word?

108
00:07:45,280 --> 00:07:49,760
The Book and the Word
is requiring you to imagine

109
00:07:49,760 --> 00:07:52,880
and that's where it connects,
I think, with Shakespeare

110
00:07:52,880 --> 00:07:56,320
and I don't think human progress
could have happened in the same way

111
00:07:56,320 --> 00:07:57,760
without that occurring.

112
00:07:59,400 --> 00:08:03,240
'It's one of those miraculous
historical coincidences

113
00:08:03,240 --> 00:08:07,480
'that a child with a genius
for storytelling should be born

114
00:08:07,480 --> 00:08:10,160
'at a time when
the Word became supreme.

115
00:08:11,800 --> 00:08:15,240
'The place where the young
Shakespeare lost himself

116
00:08:15,240 --> 00:08:20,200
in a web of words was here,
his school room.'

117
00:08:21,520 --> 00:08:25,600
Amo, amas, amat.
You can just hear it, can't you?

118
00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:29,640
Latin verbs, boys.
Conjugate, conjugate.

119
00:08:29,640 --> 00:08:33,520
Beetling brow, scary schoolmaster
and that huge desk

120
00:08:33,520 --> 00:08:37,040
and little William Shakespeare
conjugating with the best of them.

121
00:08:37,040 --> 00:08:39,200
You think about
Shakespeare, you think,

122
00:08:39,200 --> 00:08:41,560
"There is a magpie-like mind,
omnivorous.

123
00:08:41,560 --> 00:08:45,520
"There's nothing he doesn't
want to learn about everything,"

124
00:08:45,520 --> 00:08:47,640
but what he must learn
is discipline.

125
00:08:47,640 --> 00:08:49,480
These desks lined up, you know,

126
00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:54,040
the discipline that assembles itself
in his amazing brain.

127
00:08:54,040 --> 00:08:57,280
The discipline that makes
words fall on the page

128
00:08:57,280 --> 00:08:59,400
so exactly as he wants them.

129
00:08:59,400 --> 00:09:01,680
Mind like a steel trap, then, too.

130
00:09:01,680 --> 00:09:05,600
And it's here in this room,
you don't just get Latin verbs,

131
00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:09,480
you get with Livy,
Plutarch, Tacitus.

132
00:09:09,480 --> 00:09:13,800
You get history, one of
Shakespeare's great obsessions.

133
00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:16,640
You can almost feel
the Roman emperors,

134
00:09:16,640 --> 00:09:19,000
and maybe the English
kings and queens too,

135
00:09:19,000 --> 00:09:21,880
marching out of the timbers.

136
00:09:24,280 --> 00:09:27,320
'Those kings and queens
weren't just ruling England.

137
00:09:27,320 --> 00:09:30,160
'They were creating it.

138
00:09:35,280 --> 00:09:38,920
'The Reformation Henry VIII
began in the 1530s

139
00:09:38,920 --> 00:09:42,360
'had divorced not just
king from queen,

140
00:09:42,360 --> 00:09:44,760
'but England from Catholic Europe.'

141
00:09:49,240 --> 00:09:52,920
"England is an empire
entire unto itself,"

142
00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:55,400
'his statute of separation declared.

143
00:09:56,360 --> 00:09:59,000
'England was on its own now.

144
00:09:59,000 --> 00:10:04,320
'The English needed to know who
they were and what made them unique,

145
00:10:04,320 --> 00:10:07,480
'what their story was.

146
00:10:09,760 --> 00:10:13,240
'To do this, they turned to history.

147
00:10:14,920 --> 00:10:19,120
'In the 16th century, chronicles
rattled off the presses.

148
00:10:19,120 --> 00:10:21,160
'Perhaps the greatest of these

149
00:10:21,160 --> 00:10:24,200
'was the text Shakespeare
would plunder for stories.

150
00:10:24,200 --> 00:10:27,000
'Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles.

151
00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:29,720
'Everything was in Holinshed,

152
00:10:29,720 --> 00:10:33,720
'not just the deeds and
misdeeds of kings and queens,

153
00:10:33,720 --> 00:10:37,120
'but a complete anatomy
of the English.'

154
00:10:37,120 --> 00:10:40,080
"Those that are bred in this
island are men, for the most part,

155
00:10:40,080 --> 00:10:42,560
"of a good complexion,
tall of stature..."

156
00:10:42,560 --> 00:10:46,160
"..strong in body, white of colour
and thereto of great boldness..."

157
00:10:46,160 --> 00:10:48,800
"..and courage in ye wars."

158
00:10:48,800 --> 00:10:51,640
"The situation of our region,
lying near unto the north,

159
00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:55,040
"doth cause the heat of our stomachs
to be somewhat greater force..."

160
00:10:55,040 --> 00:10:58,240
"..therefore our bodies do crave
a little more ample nourishment

161
00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:01,360
"than the inhabitants
of the hotter regions."

162
00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:03,000
"Ours is a mean language,

163
00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:06,200
"neither too rough nor
too smooth in utterance."

164
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:13,120
'The Protestant English needed
to know what they had in common

165
00:11:13,120 --> 00:11:18,640
'so they could unite against
Catholic rebels at home and abroad.

166
00:11:18,640 --> 00:11:21,080
'But few could read.

167
00:11:23,320 --> 00:11:25,760
'The only way to reach
ordinary people

168
00:11:25,760 --> 00:11:28,080
'was through a new kind
of spectacle.'

169
00:11:29,200 --> 00:11:31,800
'Down with the cult
of the Virgin Mary.

170
00:11:31,800 --> 00:11:34,280
'Up with the cult
of the Virgin Queen.

171
00:11:35,520 --> 00:11:38,160
'In all our history,
no monarch understood

172
00:11:38,160 --> 00:11:42,400
'the power of royal performance
better than Elizabeth I.

173
00:11:44,240 --> 00:11:48,200
'The royal roadshow
was regularly on tour.

174
00:11:49,320 --> 00:11:52,960
'In 1572, she arrived in Warwick,

175
00:11:52,960 --> 00:11:56,600
'a few miles from
Shakespeare's home town.

176
00:11:56,600 --> 00:11:59,800
'William, who was eight years old,
may have seen her.

177
00:12:02,280 --> 00:12:05,600
'A mock battle was laid on
to entertain the crowds.

178
00:12:05,600 --> 00:12:10,520
'Top of the bill was a dragon,
spitting out balls of flame.

179
00:12:12,880 --> 00:12:15,320
'But the pyrotechnics
got out of hand

180
00:12:15,320 --> 00:12:17,160
'and fire destroyed the house

181
00:12:17,160 --> 00:12:19,360
'of a pensioner couple
living nearby.'

182
00:12:20,560 --> 00:12:26,240
In the morning, the Black Book,
the archive of Warwick, tells us,

183
00:12:26,240 --> 00:12:30,160
"It pleased her gracious Majesty
to have the poor old man and woman

184
00:12:30,160 --> 00:12:33,440
"whose house had been burnt,
brought before her

185
00:12:33,440 --> 00:12:38,320
"and being so brought,
her words much re-comforted them."

186
00:12:38,320 --> 00:12:41,480
It probably helped that
she also gave the man and woman

187
00:12:41,480 --> 00:12:45,960
£25 to restore
their damaged property.

188
00:12:45,960 --> 00:12:48,560
It was all a big
public performance

189
00:12:48,560 --> 00:12:52,160
designed to celebrate
the union of Queen and people,

190
00:12:52,160 --> 00:12:55,520
but you have to say,
"What a trooper."

191
00:12:57,560 --> 00:13:01,320
'Elizabeth couldn't be
on stage all the time,

192
00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:04,280
'so the patriotic
Protestant England message

193
00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:06,920
'was spread by licensed
acting companies

194
00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:12,200
'who travelled up and down
the country playing in tavern yards.

195
00:13:12,200 --> 00:13:17,680
'Elizabeth's most trusted courtiers
were their patrons and protectors.

196
00:13:17,680 --> 00:13:23,240
'You can never really pin down
why cultural sea changes happen,

197
00:13:23,240 --> 00:13:26,000
'but at some point
in the late 1560s,

198
00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:31,680
'someone had a simple
but very brilliant idea.

199
00:13:31,680 --> 00:13:33,800
'Instead of taking
drama to the punters,

200
00:13:33,800 --> 00:13:36,960
'why not have the punters
come to the drama?'

201
00:13:43,280 --> 00:13:46,200
'And where better than in London,

202
00:13:46,200 --> 00:13:48,840
'where thousands had settled
in the filthy slums

203
00:13:48,840 --> 00:13:51,680
'that teemed on the edge
of the city?'

204
00:13:57,880 --> 00:14:02,320
This no-man's land
was called The Liberties,

205
00:14:02,320 --> 00:14:06,640
the place outside city law,
and there anything goes.

206
00:14:06,640 --> 00:14:11,280
On one side are city walls, the
other, open fields and hedgerows.

207
00:14:11,280 --> 00:14:14,360
Roads that went somewhere
and roads that went nowhere.

208
00:14:14,360 --> 00:14:16,440
The footpads' delight.

209
00:14:16,440 --> 00:14:22,080
Bear baiting pits, slop pail
taverns, brothels and fencing yards

210
00:14:22,080 --> 00:14:25,120
where you could make
or lose a fortune.

211
00:14:25,120 --> 00:14:29,360
And it was there, amidst
the nasty, exciting stuff,

212
00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:32,640
that a cultural revolution
was happening.

213
00:14:35,960 --> 00:14:38,720
'In the 1550s,
the great crowd pleasers

214
00:14:38,720 --> 00:14:42,880
'had been bear baiting
and cock fighting.

215
00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:47,680
'But by the 1590s,
between 15 and 20,000 Londoners

216
00:14:47,680 --> 00:14:49,680
'saw a play every week.

217
00:14:58,240 --> 00:15:03,040
'In a few decades,
modern theatre was born.

218
00:15:03,040 --> 00:15:05,560
'On the outskirts of the city,

219
00:15:05,560 --> 00:15:11,560
'the first purpose-built playhouses
since Roman times sprang up.

220
00:15:11,560 --> 00:15:14,640
'The Reformation signalled
the death knell for the Mystery

221
00:15:14,640 --> 00:15:18,320
'and Miracle plays,
but now there were new shows,

222
00:15:18,320 --> 00:15:22,200
'new congregations
and a new homespun creed.'

223
00:15:27,360 --> 00:15:30,040
The theatre was now a place
for a new kind of communion,

224
00:15:30,040 --> 00:15:32,920
the communion of Englishness.

225
00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:35,520
What you feel at Wembley,
they all felt in the rows,

226
00:15:35,520 --> 00:15:37,920
the curtain and the glow.

227
00:15:37,920 --> 00:15:40,880
Oh, the hoi polloi and the gents
still sat separately,

228
00:15:40,880 --> 00:15:43,480
four pence of the gents,
a penny for the rest of us,

229
00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:49,080
but they all went through the same
storm of emotion, blood and tears.

230
00:15:49,080 --> 00:15:51,800
There was only one thing
they could do here

231
00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:54,320
that they couldn't do
in the cathedrals...

232
00:15:54,320 --> 00:15:57,720
laugh out loud,
and that they did a lot.

233
00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:01,800
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

234
00:16:04,520 --> 00:16:10,960
'And with the theatre, inevitably,
celebrities and stars.

235
00:16:16,160 --> 00:16:18,360
'Most of them Londoners,

236
00:16:18,360 --> 00:16:22,880
'many of them Oxbridge boys,
men living on the edge.

237
00:16:24,280 --> 00:16:27,600
'Kit Marlowe, double agent, atheist,

238
00:16:27,600 --> 00:16:33,080
'author of Tamburlaine the Great,
Doctor Faustus, the Jew of Malta.

239
00:16:33,080 --> 00:16:38,720
'Thomas Kyd, master of blood
and guts revenge drama.

240
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:41,640
'Robert Greene,
dissolute and drunken,

241
00:16:41,640 --> 00:16:46,280
'the specialist in
Elizabethan rom-com.

242
00:16:46,280 --> 00:16:50,760
'But then, up pops someone
who definitely didn't fit in.

243
00:16:52,160 --> 00:16:55,640
'For most of the 1580s,
Shakespeare had been in Stratford,

244
00:16:55,640 --> 00:17:00,920
'married with three children,
Susanna, Judith and his boy Hamnet.

245
00:17:02,360 --> 00:17:07,000
'But at some point,
he left his family behind.

246
00:17:07,000 --> 00:17:11,720
'The first we hear of Shakespeare
in London is in 1592.

247
00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:15,680
'By now, he was an actor
and a budding writer.

248
00:17:15,680 --> 00:17:17,160
'His theatrical ambitions

249
00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:21,360
'were putting Robert Greene's
nose out of joint.'

250
00:17:21,360 --> 00:17:26,640
"There is an upstart crow," Greene
said, "beautified with our feathers

251
00:17:26,640 --> 00:17:30,760
"that with his tiger's heart
wrapped in a player's hide,

252
00:17:30,760 --> 00:17:34,840
"supposes he is as well able
to bombast out a blank verse

253
00:17:34,840 --> 00:17:38,480
"as the best of you,
and is in his own conceit,

254
00:17:38,480 --> 00:17:41,520
"the only Shake-scene in a country."

255
00:17:47,840 --> 00:17:52,640
'Shakespeare's first history play,
Henry VI, isn't a classic.

256
00:17:52,640 --> 00:17:54,120
'It has too many battles

257
00:17:54,120 --> 00:17:58,360
'and not enough of the profound
poetry of his later work,

258
00:17:58,360 --> 00:18:02,600
'but as the record of a genius
in the making, it's priceless.'

259
00:18:04,360 --> 00:18:07,480
History was the obsession of the age

260
00:18:07,480 --> 00:18:11,200
and Shakespeare services
the craving by dishing up tales

261
00:18:11,200 --> 00:18:15,240
of the Plantagenets,
Lancastrians and Yorkists.

262
00:18:15,240 --> 00:18:17,880
Feuds, wars, butcheries.

263
00:18:17,880 --> 00:18:20,560
The powers that be liked this,

264
00:18:20,560 --> 00:18:24,680
because the message of Henry VI
is, "No more civil wars"

265
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:28,000
at a time when,
without an heir to Elizabeth,

266
00:18:28,000 --> 00:18:30,880
this seemed more
and more on the cards.

267
00:18:31,920 --> 00:18:35,960
And the people, they ate it up,
because what Shakespeare gave them

268
00:18:35,960 --> 00:18:38,440
was Kill Bill in tights,

269
00:18:38,440 --> 00:18:42,520
or rather Kill Humphrey,
Henry and Dick.

270
00:18:42,520 --> 00:18:45,320
CROWD SHOUTS

271
00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:49,600
'Henry VI, Part One.

272
00:18:49,600 --> 00:18:52,640
'The setting, France during
the Hundred Years' War.

273
00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:56,040
'Style, all action stuff.
Battle every five minutes,

274
00:18:56,040 --> 00:19:00,280
'can't move for dead bodies.
Buckets of the red stuff.

275
00:19:04,560 --> 00:19:06,320
'The characters.

276
00:19:06,320 --> 00:19:11,000
Weedy "Oh, dearie me.
I should have been a monk"

277
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:12,880
'King Henry VI,
disastrously indecisive.'

278
00:19:15,480 --> 00:19:19,200
'But in compensation,
a true English hero,

279
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:24,920
'the doughty warrior Talbot, built
like a cliff face, craggy all over.

280
00:19:33,240 --> 00:19:36,920
'Talbot scares the Bejesus
out of the Nancy French,

281
00:19:36,920 --> 00:19:39,120
'even when they've
taken him prisoner.'

282
00:19:41,920 --> 00:19:46,040
"Here," said they,
"is the terror of the French."

283
00:19:47,840 --> 00:19:52,200
"The scarecrow that
affrights our children so."

284
00:19:54,680 --> 00:19:59,000
Then broke I from
the officers that led me,

285
00:19:59,000 --> 00:20:02,720
and with my nails
digg'd stones out of the ground

286
00:20:02,720 --> 00:20:06,800
to hurl at the beholders
of my shame.

287
00:20:06,800 --> 00:20:09,840
My grisly countenance
made others fly.

288
00:20:09,840 --> 00:20:13,600
None durst come near
for fear of sudden death.

289
00:20:17,320 --> 00:20:21,600
In walls of iron
they deemed me not secure.

290
00:20:24,040 --> 00:20:28,920
So great fear my name
amongst them was spread

291
00:20:28,920 --> 00:20:33,360
that they supposed
I could rend bars of steel...

292
00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:39,680
..and spurn in pieces
posts of adamant.

293
00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:48,400
'But aren't the English winning the
Hundred Years War?' you're asking?

294
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:50,200
'Well, no.

295
00:20:50,200 --> 00:20:55,040
'The problem is they're as busy
fighting each other as the French.

296
00:20:56,720 --> 00:21:00,120
'With King Henry VI unable to
make a decision about anything,

297
00:21:00,120 --> 00:21:05,000
'civil war has broken out between
the houses of Lancaster and York.

298
00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,160
'Bringing up religion
in Elizabethan England

299
00:21:11,160 --> 00:21:13,400
'could land you in jail
or even worse,

300
00:21:13,400 --> 00:21:17,480
'so Shakespeare uses
the Wars of the Roses as cover

301
00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:22,080
'to explore the religions
schism of his age.'

302
00:21:25,800 --> 00:21:29,120
One of the reasons for the
popularity of history plays

303
00:21:29,120 --> 00:21:31,880
was it's an opportunity to safely
talk about the present

304
00:21:31,880 --> 00:21:33,440
through the prism of the past.

305
00:21:33,440 --> 00:21:36,880
It is an England struggling
with self-definition

306
00:21:36,880 --> 00:21:39,400
and it's an England where...

307
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:44,680
you have to talk carefully
as you try to define it.

308
00:21:44,680 --> 00:21:47,320
You have to talk in metaphor,

309
00:21:47,320 --> 00:21:50,040
you have to talk in euphemism
or in equivocation.

310
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:57,320
You have an old world
of shared values

311
00:21:57,320 --> 00:22:01,520
that reeks of a Catholic England

312
00:22:01,520 --> 00:22:04,920
that is also beset with corruption

313
00:22:04,920 --> 00:22:08,240
and a crumbling
of its genuine authority

314
00:22:08,240 --> 00:22:10,720
against a new broom...

315
00:22:12,360 --> 00:22:16,200
..that is, at its best, reformist

316
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:21,920
and critical of the old
corrupt...complacent world,

317
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:28,360
and at its worst, turns into
a kind of Machiavellian

318
00:22:28,360 --> 00:22:30,760
'I am myself alone.'

319
00:22:33,640 --> 00:22:35,240
I have no brother.

320
00:22:37,040 --> 00:22:39,200
I am like no brother.

321
00:22:42,360 --> 00:22:46,400
And this word, love,

322
00:22:48,040 --> 00:22:50,280
which greybeards call divine,

323
00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:53,200
be resident in men
like one another and not in me.

324
00:22:56,920 --> 00:22:59,440
I am myself alone.

325
00:23:03,880 --> 00:23:09,560
'If Henry VI and his crumbling court
embody old Catholic England,

326
00:23:09,560 --> 00:23:12,640
'then in Richard, Duke of
Gloucester, we see a new world,

327
00:23:12,640 --> 00:23:15,080
'where only power and money count.

328
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:18,680
'If the character seems familiar,

329
00:23:18,680 --> 00:23:22,440
'it's because he's
the first draft of Richard III,

330
00:23:22,440 --> 00:23:24,800
'the crook-backed king.'

331
00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:29,160
I have often heard my mother say

332
00:23:29,160 --> 00:23:32,120
I came into the world
with my legs forward.

333
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:37,600
A midwife wondered
and the women cried,

334
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,280
"Oh Jesus, bless us.

335
00:23:42,880 --> 00:23:45,920
"He is born with teeth!"

336
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:48,760
And so I was.

337
00:23:52,240 --> 00:23:57,520
Which plainly signified that I should
snarl and bite and play the dog.

338
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:05,440
Then, since the heavens
have shaped my body so,

339
00:24:07,280 --> 00:24:11,680
let hell make crook'd
my mind to answer it.

340
00:24:13,440 --> 00:24:15,800
'Even in his first history play,

341
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:18,640
'Shakespeare is writing
brilliant characters.

342
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:26,160
'But there's something else
about Henry VI

343
00:24:26,160 --> 00:24:30,400
'that is trademark Shakespeare,
breathtaking in its boldness.

344
00:24:34,560 --> 00:24:40,760
'At the end of Part Two, he puts
the people themselves centre stage.

345
00:24:40,760 --> 00:24:45,480
'What's more, they come on as
rebels. Filthy, cursing, ferocious,

346
00:24:45,480 --> 00:24:49,920
'the very stuff of the galleries'
worst nightmares.'

347
00:24:51,960 --> 00:24:54,520
A-a-a-agh!

348
00:24:54,520 --> 00:24:58,400
'They are led by a charismatic
rabble-rouser, Jack Cade.'

349
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,240
Away! Burn all the records
of the realm.

350
00:25:05,240 --> 00:25:08,800
My mouth shall be
the parliament of England!

351
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:13,960
And you that love
the commons, follow me.

352
00:25:13,960 --> 00:25:17,160
Now show yourselves men,
tis for liberty.

353
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,520
We will not leave one lord,
one gentleman. Spare none!

354
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:27,120
"My mouth shall be
the parliament of England."

355
00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:29,960
'A brilliant Shakespearean
one-liner.

356
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,800
'Cade loathes
politicians and bureaucrats.

357
00:25:32,800 --> 00:25:35,000
'He wants primitive justice,

358
00:25:35,000 --> 00:25:39,240
'his mouth the only
law-giving Chamber in the land.'

359
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:49,480
'There'd been crowd scenes before,
though not many. This was different.

360
00:25:49,480 --> 00:25:52,880
'Shakespeare put the onion breath
into his Dicks and Georges

361
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:56,120
'and let the middling sort smell it.

362
00:25:57,880 --> 00:26:01,080
'He was the first poet
of class war.'

363
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:10,640
So, sirs, now go some
and pull down the Savoy,

364
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:14,640
others to the inns of court.
Down with them all.

365
00:26:14,640 --> 00:26:19,080
As for these silken coated slaves
I pass not.

366
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:23,880
It is to you good people that I
speak, over whom in time to come

367
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:29,280
I hope to reign, for I am
rightful heir unto the crown.

368
00:26:32,600 --> 00:26:37,200
Jack Cade gives you this vision
of the city of London

369
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,240
razed to the ground
with horses grazing on grass

370
00:26:41,240 --> 00:26:43,480
where there used to be buildings.

371
00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:46,520
It's sort of...year zero
is what he wants to return to.

372
00:26:48,360 --> 00:26:50,360
I think there's a part
of the Cade rebellion

373
00:26:50,360 --> 00:26:52,960
that is a scene
in front of the hell mouth

374
00:26:52,960 --> 00:26:55,040
offering sweeties to the people.

375
00:26:55,040 --> 00:26:58,280
"Come on, let's misrule,
let's chuck it all out".

376
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:04,240
'In an age when apprentices
rioted each Shrovetide

377
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:08,280
'and when martial law was
regularly imposed on London,

378
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:11,240
'Shakespeare was
dramatising revolution.

379
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:16,200
'But he was no fool.

380
00:27:16,200 --> 00:27:20,040
'and to avoid any suspicion
that he was endorsing rebellion,

381
00:27:20,040 --> 00:27:25,280
'Shakespeare turned Cade into a
character of gormless megalomania.'

382
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:29,800
I thank you, good people.

383
00:27:31,560 --> 00:27:33,560
There shall be no money.

384
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:36,880
All shall eat and drink on my score

385
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:40,520
and I will apparel them
all in one livery,

386
00:27:41,600 --> 00:27:45,000
that they may agree,
like brothers,

387
00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,240
and worship me, their lord.

388
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:57,400
'Jack Cade's rebellion is put down
and he is executed.

389
00:27:59,840 --> 00:28:03,520
'Cade's ferocity, Talbot's heroism

390
00:28:03,520 --> 00:28:09,080
'and Richard Duke of Gloucester's
villainy transfixed the audience.

391
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:15,120
'Over 10,000 people flocked to see
Henry VI, one in 20 Londoners.'

392
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:21,240
Henry VI seems like the work
of a playwright in progress,

393
00:28:21,240 --> 00:28:25,240
especially compared to
the high voltage masterpieces

394
00:28:25,240 --> 00:28:26,640
which are to come.

395
00:28:26,640 --> 00:28:30,920
But if you think about it as
a crowd pleaser, it is all there.

396
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:34,760
The groundlings get to laugh
at lines of Jack Cade's like,

397
00:28:34,760 --> 00:28:37,720
"First kill all the lawyers,"

398
00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:42,360
and the toffs and the merchants
get to chuckle at the idiot rebels.

399
00:28:42,360 --> 00:28:46,160
As commercial shows go,
it is utterly brilliant.

400
00:28:48,680 --> 00:28:52,240
'Almost alone among
his contemporaries,

401
00:28:52,240 --> 00:28:53,520
'Shakespeare wrote plays

402
00:28:53,520 --> 00:28:57,520
'which delighted both
the pit and the gallery.

403
00:28:57,520 --> 00:28:58,920
'How did he do it?'

404
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:11,240
'Well, he was from
the heart of England

405
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:16,160
'and he seemed to know the rest
of it too, Catholic and Protestant,

406
00:29:16,160 --> 00:29:18,640
'town and country,

407
00:29:18,640 --> 00:29:21,920
'the humble and the high born.

408
00:29:25,480 --> 00:29:28,000
All these identities served him well

409
00:29:28,000 --> 00:29:30,240
when he became
a playwright in earnest,

410
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,160
because he ended up
as a kind of everyman,

411
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:36,120
someone who knew how to talk
not just to the gents,

412
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,240
but to the groundlings.
He knew what made them laugh,

413
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:43,040
what would bring tears to their
eyes and what got their goats,

414
00:29:43,040 --> 00:29:48,320
how to make them clap their hands
in applause and stamp their feet.

415
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:59,920
'Just as Shakespeare was making
his name, disaster struck.

416
00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,040
Plague.

417
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:07,080
The theatres closed their doors.

418
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:09,880
Shakespeare's acting company
shut down.

419
00:30:11,960 --> 00:30:15,920
For the best part of a year,
he was exiled from the theatre.

420
00:30:19,200 --> 00:30:24,280
Then, in 1594, he joined
a prestigious new acting troupe,

421
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:26,480
the Lord Chamberlain's Men,

422
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:30,280
and not just as a part-time actor
and script doctor,

423
00:30:30,280 --> 00:30:34,200
but as lead writer
and partner in the company.

424
00:30:36,640 --> 00:30:39,840
One of his new smash hits
was a masterpiece...

425
00:30:39,840 --> 00:30:41,520
Henry IV.

426
00:30:45,840 --> 00:30:52,120
Henry has deposed Richard II. Guilt
weighs heavily on his conscience.

427
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:58,160
But what makes the play
groundbreaking is the fact that
it's not really about kings at all.

428
00:31:00,760 --> 00:31:04,880
Ordinary English men and women
don't just appear in crowd scenes

429
00:31:04,880 --> 00:31:07,280
or in brilliant cameos.

430
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:12,640
In Henry IV, they're the rowdy,
mouthy, magnificent stars.

431
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:24,000
Maybe it was because Shakespeare
was now in-house writer
for the Lord Chamberlain's Men

432
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:27,800
that he felt the surge of confidence
that allowed him to do things

433
00:31:27,800 --> 00:31:32,160
in Henry IV that he would
never have done in Henry VI.

434
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:35,200
Sure, there is still
loads of swordplay,

435
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:38,400
but the real action
is now in the language itself.

436
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:42,040
Explosive, dynamic,
lacerating with irony.

437
00:31:45,360 --> 00:31:49,360
And it came out of the mouth
of someone who was brutal

438
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,520
only in his honesty,
whose blade was wit,

439
00:31:52,520 --> 00:31:56,880
who used that blade to cut through
all the hypocritical cant

440
00:31:56,880 --> 00:32:02,160
to what actually counted in the late
Elizabethan world - money and power.

441
00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,040
Sir John Falstaff.

442
00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:08,480
"What is honour?

443
00:32:09,720 --> 00:32:11,920
"A word.

444
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,800
"What is in that word, honour?
What is that?

445
00:32:17,400 --> 00:32:18,960
"Honour.

446
00:32:20,680 --> 00:32:23,280
"Air.

447
00:32:23,280 --> 00:32:26,760
"A trim reckoning.

448
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:29,200
"Who hath it?

449
00:32:29,200 --> 00:32:33,320
"He that died o' Wednesday.
"Doth he feel it?

450
00:32:33,320 --> 00:32:38,120
"No. Doth he hear it? No.
Is it insensible, then?

451
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,760
"Yea, to the dead.

452
00:32:42,040 --> 00:32:43,600
"But...

453
00:32:45,440 --> 00:32:51,120
"Doth it not live on
with the living?

454
00:32:54,040 --> 00:32:56,280
"No. Why?

455
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,360
"Detraction will not suffer it.

456
00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:02,800
"Therefore I'll none of it.

457
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,560
"Honour is a mere scutcheon.

458
00:33:07,840 --> 00:33:10,080
"And so ends my catechism."

459
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:22,800
In Henry IV, Shakespeare creates
an entirety of an English world,

460
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:26,880
the courts and the country,
lords and lowlifes.

461
00:33:26,880 --> 00:33:31,600
And it's an authentic portrait
of England, warts and all.

462
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:37,440
And nowhere is this more true
than in the character of Falstaff.

463
00:33:37,440 --> 00:33:43,520
He's a bundle of contradictions -
cowardly, cynical and calculating,

464
00:33:43,520 --> 00:33:49,080
but also fiercely intelligent,
warm-hearted, brimful of bonhomie.

465
00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:56,120
"The second property of your...

466
00:33:56,120 --> 00:34:01,000
"excellent sherris is the warming
of the blood,

467
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:07,080
"which before, cold and settled,
left the liver white and pale,

468
00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:10,200
"which is the badge
of...pusillanimity...

469
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:15,960
"..and cowardice,
but the sherris warms it,

470
00:34:15,960 --> 00:34:20,720
"makes it course from the inwards
to the parts' extremes.

471
00:34:20,720 --> 00:34:22,720
"It illumineth the face,

472
00:34:22,720 --> 00:34:28,880
"which as beacon gives warning to all
the rest of this little kingdom,

473
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:35,720
"man, to arm. And then the vital
commoners and inland petty spirits

474
00:34:35,720 --> 00:34:39,200
"muster me all to their captain,
the heart,

475
00:34:39,200 --> 00:34:42,160
"who, great and puffed up
with this retinue,

476
00:34:42,160 --> 00:34:45,480
"doth any deed of any courage.

477
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:50,600
"And this valour comes of sherris."

478
00:34:55,600 --> 00:35:00,320
In Falstaff, we find
all those characteristics
we associate with the English,

479
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:03,600
wit, irony, irreverence.

480
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:10,480
The great question since
the Reformation had been,
"What is England?"

481
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:15,120
In Henry IV, Shakespeare answers
that question in a single word.

482
00:35:17,760 --> 00:35:19,440
Falstaff has to be big,

483
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:24,280
because almost all of England
and its pulsing, meaty, rowdy,

484
00:35:24,280 --> 00:35:28,440
uncontainable life flows
directly through him.

485
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:31,720
He's the living embodiment
of a small country,

486
00:35:31,720 --> 00:35:35,440
which suddenly has an outsized
sense of itself.

487
00:35:37,120 --> 00:35:41,840
He's very much part of that
English strain who doesn't really
give a toss, actually, you know.

488
00:35:41,840 --> 00:35:43,760
You want the world? Have it.

489
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:47,440
You want all that Tudor power
or Plantagenet power

490
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:50,720
or whatever it is, you know, have it,
because life...

491
00:35:50,720 --> 00:35:54,120
life itself is about
something other than that.

492
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:55,560
About what? Come on.

493
00:35:55,560 --> 00:35:58,200
Well, about appetite and... Yes.

494
00:35:58,200 --> 00:36:00,480
Having fun and...

495
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:02,880
And love in the Doll Tearsheet
scene...

496
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,520
And love and sex and, you know.
Companionship.

497
00:36:08,800 --> 00:36:14,240
Falstaff was instantly
and extraordinarily popular.

498
00:36:14,240 --> 00:36:18,080
Whenever he appeared,
the playhouses were full.

499
00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:25,640
Understandable, really. Elizabethans
needed something to smile about.

500
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:32,120
By the mid-1590s,
there was roaring inflation,

501
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:34,920
made worse by a succession
of bad harvests.

502
00:36:36,160 --> 00:36:42,080
As Shakespeare wrote Henry IV,
London was gripped by riots,

503
00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:45,240
sparked off by the skyrocketing
cost of food.

504
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:53,040
Perhaps Falstaff's belly was
a reminder of the good old days,

505
00:36:53,040 --> 00:36:56,080
the days of plenty.

506
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:04,240
It's not just Falstaff's girth
that's bursting at the seams.

507
00:37:04,240 --> 00:37:09,440
It's also his language, which is
abundant and baggy and brimful

508
00:37:09,440 --> 00:37:15,040
to overflowing with intoxicating,
exhilarating verbal juice.

509
00:37:15,040 --> 00:37:19,360
Shakespeare's letting the
lusciousness of the English language

510
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:23,040
roll around his
and his audience's mouths,

511
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:27,560
so that they revel in the sounds
of it, they wallow in the pictures.

512
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:32,200
You can almost taste the flavour
and the savour of England in it.

513
00:37:34,640 --> 00:37:38,520
"There's no more faith in thee
than a stewed prune.

514
00:37:39,960 --> 00:37:43,000
"His wit is as thick
as Tewkesbury mustard.

515
00:37:44,840 --> 00:37:47,680
"Hang me up by the heels
for a rabbit-sucker."

516
00:37:51,720 --> 00:37:53,760
What Shakespeare gives us
in Henry IV

517
00:37:53,760 --> 00:37:57,280
is the full performance
of the English voice,

518
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:02,080
whether the pub crawlers
of Eastcheap or the most high
and mighty of aristocrats.

519
00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:05,600
But whether he's giving us alehouse
England or manor house England,

520
00:38:05,600 --> 00:38:07,400
you know he's been listening,

521
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,440
because only an actor
could have that ear

522
00:38:10,440 --> 00:38:14,520
for the riotous carnival
of English diction.

523
00:38:14,520 --> 00:38:18,760
No-one else gets into the skin and
the head of every kind of Briton.

524
00:38:21,800 --> 00:38:25,200
In the late 1590s,
Shakespeare lodged in Southwark,

525
00:38:25,200 --> 00:38:28,120
on the south bank of the Thames.

526
00:38:28,120 --> 00:38:32,560
Hundreds of brothels and alehouses
packed together cheek by jowl.

527
00:38:34,240 --> 00:38:38,280
The riot of English which
Shakespeare heard on the streets

528
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:42,120
is captured in the scenes
in the Boar's Head Tavern,

529
00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:45,560
the pub in Eastcheap
that's Falstaff's home.

530
00:38:45,560 --> 00:38:49,440
There's the landlady,
Mistress Quickly,

531
00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:52,480
Falstaff's sidekick Pistol.

532
00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:56,120
And, most compellingly of all,
Doll Tearsheet,

533
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,760
the feisty neighbourhood whore.

534
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,320
In one scene,
Pistol crudely propositions Doll.

535
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:08,040
Her response
is a blistering broadside.

536
00:39:08,040 --> 00:39:13,920
"What! You poor, base, rascally,
cheating, lack-linen mate!

537
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:16,640
"Away, you mouldy rogue. Away!

538
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:21,320
"Away, you cut-purse rascal,
you filthy bung!

539
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:24,800
"By this wine, I'll thrust my knife
in your mouldy chaps

540
00:39:24,800 --> 00:39:27,640
"and you play the saucy cuttle
with me."

541
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,720
It feels as though
Shakespeare was eavesdropping

542
00:39:30,720 --> 00:39:32,440
and knew these people terribly well.

543
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,320
It feels as though he's writing about
people. He's not far away...

544
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,040
Well, you know, he was an actor
running round in the theatre

545
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:42,800
and the taverns, they were all
kind of right next to one another
and all mixing in the same world.

546
00:39:42,800 --> 00:39:45,440
He's the one who contains
the whole society,

547
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:48,960
you know, from the top to the bottom,
and is truthful and different

548
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:52,400
in each category,
particularly in the Henry IV plays,

549
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:56,560
where you've got all the strata
of society kind of echoing a theme.

550
00:39:56,560 --> 00:40:01,560
It's like a huge great choral
symphonic picture of England.

551
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:07,280
In capturing the gabble
and patter of English,

552
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:10,680
Shakespeare wasn't just
recording the nation.

553
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:12,440
He may also have helped create it.

554
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:18,000
What's extraordinary about
Shakespeare's language subsequently

555
00:40:18,000 --> 00:40:19,600
is that it's become quite...

556
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:23,880
..unbeknownst to us,
part of the way we think.

557
00:40:23,880 --> 00:40:27,880
It's not just vocabulary
and it's not phrases, famous phases.

558
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:31,880
It's to do with the rhythm.
It's to do with the rhythm,
the way Shakespeare uses language,

559
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:35,480
so that it's become...
part of the way we speak,

560
00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:37,080
even if we don't know that it has.

561
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:41,360
The self-conscious creation
of our national personality

562
00:40:41,360 --> 00:40:43,240
perhaps has something to do with it,

563
00:40:43,240 --> 00:40:49,280
that Shakespeare just is part of
the river of our language that most
people would only half acknowledge.

564
00:40:49,280 --> 00:40:53,880
In the second half of the 16th
century, English was transformed.

565
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:58,960
Hundreds of new words and phrases
appeared in print every year.

566
00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:02,480
And many of these words appeared
for the first time

567
00:41:02,480 --> 00:41:04,320
in Shakespeare's plays.

568
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:11,440
Now, in all likelihood
Shakespeare didn't invent

569
00:41:11,440 --> 00:41:17,320
all these phrases, foul-mouth, puke,
queasy, fob off, good riddance.

570
00:41:17,320 --> 00:41:20,560
They were there already
in the speech of the people,

571
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:25,360
in street slang, but what he did
was to bring it onto the stage,

572
00:41:25,360 --> 00:41:29,520
to wire together two totally
different language worlds,

573
00:41:29,520 --> 00:41:33,840
the world of the high-ups
and the world of the lowlifes,

574
00:41:33,840 --> 00:41:39,440
and by doing that, he expanded
what literary English was,

575
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:44,920
and out of that expansion
came image-rich ideas.

576
00:41:44,920 --> 00:41:49,400
The green-eyed monster,
pomp and circumstance,

577
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:53,680
a spotless reputation,
the world is my oyster.

578
00:41:53,680 --> 00:41:57,040
And after this language revolution,

579
00:41:57,040 --> 00:42:01,960
we all think bigger, richer
and in brighter colour.

580
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:03,880
CAR HORNS BLARE

581
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:16,720
In Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff
is the life force - cakes and ale,

582
00:42:16,720 --> 00:42:20,520
laughter and comradeship,
the innocence of sinning.

583
00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:25,400
His comrade-in-sin
is the Prince Of Wales, Hal.

584
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:29,960
Shakespeare was writing Henry IV
in the shadow cast

585
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:33,480
by the death of his son, Hamnet,

586
00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:38,200
probably taken off
by the plague aged just 11.

587
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:42,760
We don't know how affected
he was by Hamnet's death,

588
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:48,120
but perhaps it led him to brood
mournfully on the relationship
between fathers and sons,

589
00:42:48,120 --> 00:42:50,520
for it is at the heart of the play.

590
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:57,160
Hal and his father are tangled up
in terrible bitterness.

591
00:42:58,240 --> 00:43:01,880
Henry IV's crime of usurpation

592
00:43:01,880 --> 00:43:05,000
has turned him into
the opposite of Falstaff,

593
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:07,440
a life denier.

594
00:43:09,240 --> 00:43:12,480
"Now perceive
the body of the kingdom,

595
00:43:12,480 --> 00:43:17,560
"how foul it is",
says the gloomy King Henry IV.

596
00:43:17,560 --> 00:43:24,120
"What rank diseases grow, how
near to danger the heart of it is."

597
00:43:24,120 --> 00:43:27,720
Unlike Falstaff who lives
in a carnival merry England,

598
00:43:27,720 --> 00:43:30,960
constant booze-ups, joke-slamming
with the prince,

599
00:43:30,960 --> 00:43:34,600
Henry IV, insomniac, guilt-ridden,

600
00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:40,280
doomed never to enjoy the fruits
of his usurped throne, is trapped,

601
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,800
like all of his courtiers,
loyal or treacherous,

602
00:43:43,800 --> 00:43:48,040
in a death star where everyone
moans and plots

603
00:43:48,040 --> 00:43:52,680
from inside the steel casing
of their dark armour.

604
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:06,640
Henry IV wants his son, Hal,
to be a paragon of virtue

605
00:44:06,640 --> 00:44:09,160
to compensate for his own crimes.

606
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:14,280
Hal deals with the pressure
by deliberately insulting

607
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:16,200
everything his father stands for.

608
00:44:17,280 --> 00:44:21,960
Because his father is the big crook,
Hal will be the little crook.

609
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:24,240
He'll get pissed and laid
and lie and steal.

610
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:31,080
Because he can't love his real
father, Hal turns to a fake father.

611
00:44:32,520 --> 00:44:35,960
Falstaff takes Hal to his heart.

612
00:44:35,960 --> 00:44:41,200
But there's a part of Hal which is
always the calculating politician.

613
00:44:42,880 --> 00:44:45,320
Even in the high noon
of their friendship,

614
00:44:45,320 --> 00:44:48,160
he's planning to kill
the relationship off.

615
00:44:49,960 --> 00:44:52,240
In one of the greatest scenes
of the play,

616
00:44:52,240 --> 00:44:58,520
Hal impersonates his father,
the King, and Falstaff is Hal,
the erring son.

617
00:45:00,040 --> 00:45:03,960
As usual, there's an undercurrent
of ferocity to the play-acting.

618
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,520
Hal lets loose with a barrage
of insults,

619
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:15,160
and Shakespeare's writing
gets wilder and higher

620
00:45:15,160 --> 00:45:18,040
with each insult piled on the last.

621
00:45:18,040 --> 00:45:22,040
"There is a devil haunts thee
in the likeness of a fat old man,

622
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,160
"a tun of a man is thy companion.

623
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,080
"Why dost thou converse
with that trunk of humours,

624
00:45:27,080 --> 00:45:29,120
"that bolting-hutch of beastliness,

625
00:45:29,120 --> 00:45:34,560
"that swollen parcel of dropsies,
that huge bombard of sack?"

626
00:45:34,560 --> 00:45:36,680
It's one of the funniest scenes
in the play,

627
00:45:36,680 --> 00:45:40,160
but also one of the most savage.
Hal on Falstaff,

628
00:45:40,160 --> 00:45:43,680
"Wherein is he good,
but to taste sack and drink it?

629
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:47,880
"Wherein cunning but in craft?
Wherein crafty but in villainy?

630
00:45:47,880 --> 00:45:53,320
"Wherein villainous but in all
things? Wherein worthy but nothing?"

631
00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:57,200
It's like a physical assault,
merciless and unsparing,

632
00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:00,440
that the mirth dies on our face.

633
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:03,000
It will do again.

634
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:05,960
The penny drops.

635
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:10,400
Falstaff realises that more is
going on than comedy role-play.

636
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:16,520
So he puts in a plea for himself and
what he represents - love and life.

637
00:46:18,080 --> 00:46:22,600
"My lord, the man I know,
but to say I know more harm in him

638
00:46:22,600 --> 00:46:25,240
"than in myself,
were to say more than I know.

639
00:46:26,480 --> 00:46:30,080
"That he is old,
the more's the pity.

640
00:46:30,080 --> 00:46:33,120
"His white hairs do witness it,
but that he is,

641
00:46:33,120 --> 00:46:37,240
"saving your reverence,
a whoremaster...

642
00:46:37,240 --> 00:46:39,680
"that I utterly deny."

643
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:45,320
"If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked!

644
00:46:46,560 --> 00:46:49,440
"If to be old and merry be a sin,

645
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:53,400
"then many an old host
I know is damned.

646
00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:58,160
"If to be fat, be to be hated,

647
00:46:58,160 --> 00:47:02,400
"then Pharaoh's lean kine
are to be loved.

648
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:07,680
"No, my good lord, banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins.

649
00:47:07,680 --> 00:47:12,120
"But for sweet Jack Falstaff,

650
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:18,000
"kind Jack Falstaff,
true Jack Falstaff,

651
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:20,440
"valiant Jack Falstaff

652
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,520
"and therefore more valiant,
being, as he is...

653
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:28,600
"..old Jack Falstaff."

654
00:47:30,640 --> 00:47:33,400
"Banish not him thy Harry's company.

655
00:47:36,920 --> 00:47:39,600
"Banish not him thy Harry's company.

656
00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:47,480
"Banish plump Jack
and banish all the world."

657
00:47:51,640 --> 00:47:56,560
Then comes Hal's reply -
a stab to the heart.

658
00:47:56,560 --> 00:47:59,280
"I do. I will."

659
00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:07,200
Falstaff is going off to war,

660
00:48:07,200 --> 00:48:11,680
so he spends one last night
with his girl, Doll.

661
00:48:11,680 --> 00:48:15,920
In Henry IV, the lowlifes come
across as cleverer and wittier

662
00:48:15,920 --> 00:48:17,240
than the high-borns.

663
00:48:17,240 --> 00:48:22,640
But in this scene,
Shakespeare also shows them
to be more tender-hearted.

664
00:48:22,640 --> 00:48:28,120
"Thou whoreson little tidy
Bartholomew boar-pig,

665
00:48:28,120 --> 00:48:32,600
"when wilt thou leave fighting
o' days and foining o' nights

666
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:35,280
"and begin to patch up
thine old body for heaven?"

667
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,760
"Peace, good Doll.

668
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:42,960
"Do not speak like a death's-head,
do not bid me remember mine end.

669
00:48:42,960 --> 00:48:48,240
"Kiss me, Doll. Thou dost give me
most flattering busses."

670
00:48:48,240 --> 00:48:51,520
"By my troth, I kiss thee
with a most constant heart."

671
00:48:51,520 --> 00:48:54,960
"I am old. I am old."

672
00:48:54,960 --> 00:49:01,080
"I love thee better than I love e'er
a scurvy young boy of them all."

673
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:03,080
"Thou'lt forget me when I'm gone."

674
00:49:03,080 --> 00:49:04,480
"By my troth.

675
00:49:05,920 --> 00:49:08,360
"Thou'lt set me a-weeping
and thou sayest so."

676
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:14,440
And everybody's howling with
tears... Yeah. ..at that point,
aren't they, really?

677
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:18,920
Well, you know, she's got,
it is this sort of stupid...

678
00:49:18,920 --> 00:49:22,520
I mean, she's just so forgiving.
Yeah. And, um...

679
00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:26,720
..and just understands, you know?

680
00:49:26,720 --> 00:49:30,360
I know you're old,
but I'd rather have you, you know,

681
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:34,240
because you're a person. Yes.
You're a person that I love.

682
00:49:34,240 --> 00:49:37,280
It's the fact that he gives
that vulnerability to her

683
00:49:37,280 --> 00:49:40,440
that makes him, you know,
win her heart.

684
00:49:40,440 --> 00:49:43,880
Shakespeare's daring
to make something very touching

685
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:47,760
out of what could be
just howlingly funny.

686
00:49:51,640 --> 00:49:54,040
Falstaff is love and tenderness,

687
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:58,320
but he also understands the world
of ruthless profit and ambition

688
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,720
and means to get his piece of it.

689
00:50:01,720 --> 00:50:05,440
His whole life is a brutal
scramble for cash,

690
00:50:05,440 --> 00:50:08,280
barely a step ahead
of the creditors.

691
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:11,320
He fleeces his landlady,
he lies to the law,

692
00:50:11,320 --> 00:50:13,760
he's an exploiter as well as a chum.

693
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:20,720
As a recruiting officer,
he scours the countryside,

694
00:50:20,720 --> 00:50:24,160
pocketing money to get fit men
off the hook,

695
00:50:24,160 --> 00:50:27,320
while packing the army
with impoverished starvelings.

696
00:50:35,160 --> 00:50:37,960
On one of these human
scavenger hunts,

697
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:41,760
he descends on the Gloucestershire
estate of an old friend,

698
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:43,560
Justice Shallow.

699
00:50:46,040 --> 00:50:48,720
Somehow, even though
Falstaff's up to no good,

700
00:50:48,720 --> 00:50:55,120
he and we let ourselves drown in
the dream world of rustic abundance.

701
00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:04,760
This is deep England, the remembered
world of Shakespeare's childhood.

702
00:51:04,760 --> 00:51:08,600
He gives us the full sweetness
of the English countryside,

703
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:13,280
the bucolic realm where there
are always short-legged hens,

704
00:51:13,280 --> 00:51:18,360
where the pippins are always juicy
and the fields are always packed

705
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:20,040
with golden wheat.

706
00:51:24,240 --> 00:51:30,760
So when Justice Shallow orders
his steward Davy to sow the headland

707
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:34,400
with red wheat,
when he orders up a joint of mutton,

708
00:51:34,400 --> 00:51:38,240
when he insists that Falstaff
join in, in an orchard

709
00:51:38,240 --> 00:51:43,760
and eat last year's "pippins of my
own grafting" did the groundlings,

710
00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:47,240
stuck in their verminous rat holes,
cellars and garrets,

711
00:51:47,240 --> 00:51:50,040
hunger for the lost country home

712
00:51:50,040 --> 00:51:54,200
that Shakespeare so bounteously
had set before them?

713
00:51:58,600 --> 00:52:02,200
It's on Shallow's estate
that the thunderbolt strikes.

714
00:52:03,440 --> 00:52:06,680
News arrives that Henry IV has died.

715
00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:15,560
Falstaff saddles up,
rides all night.

716
00:52:15,560 --> 00:52:19,960
Once Hal is crowned,
his hard-up years will be over.

717
00:52:23,560 --> 00:52:26,520
But what he finds
when he reaches London

718
00:52:26,520 --> 00:52:29,040
is anything but the Promised Land.

719
00:52:30,440 --> 00:52:34,680
Doll Tearsheet, pregnant,
is dragged off to be whipped.

720
00:52:34,680 --> 00:52:40,600
Doll is Hal's friend, but instead
of sacking the Lord Chief Justice,

721
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:46,520
who has ordered her punishment,
Hal, now King Henry V, embraces him.

722
00:52:47,720 --> 00:52:53,200
It's already unbearable,
but what happens next is merciless.

723
00:52:56,280 --> 00:53:00,800
What we witness is not just
a repudiation of Falstaff,

724
00:53:00,800 --> 00:53:04,360
the father figure, the friend,
the fellow reveller,

725
00:53:04,360 --> 00:53:07,440
but a demolition, a living death,

726
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:12,080
and of a peculiarly English kind -
the social cut,

727
00:53:12,080 --> 00:53:15,320
as sharp and as lethal as a blade.

728
00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:19,800
"My sweet boy, my heart!"
cries Falstaff, reaching out.

729
00:53:26,040 --> 00:53:29,960
"I know thee not, old man.
Fall to thy prayers.

730
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:37,680
"How ill white hairs
becomes a fool and jester!

731
00:53:40,320 --> 00:53:44,720
"I have long dream'd
of such a kind of man,

732
00:53:44,720 --> 00:53:49,680
"so surfeit-swell'd,
so old and so profane.

733
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,960
"But, being awaked,
I do despise my dream.

734
00:53:58,880 --> 00:54:02,040
"Make less thy body hence,
and more thy grace.

735
00:54:03,240 --> 00:54:06,640
"Leave gormandizing,
know the grave doth gape

736
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,680
"for thee thrice wider
than for other men.

737
00:54:10,800 --> 00:54:13,440
"Reply not to me
with a fool-born jest.

738
00:54:14,440 --> 00:54:17,680
"Presume not that I am
the thing I was.

739
00:54:19,200 --> 00:54:22,560
"For God doth know,
so shall the world perceive.

740
00:54:23,880 --> 00:54:26,240
"That I have turned away
my former self.

741
00:54:27,680 --> 00:54:30,160
"So will I those
that kept me company."

742
00:54:35,280 --> 00:54:41,080
With that, we can feel the air
sucked out of Falstaff, a deflation.

743
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:45,720
Worst of all, the very essence
of Falstaff's genius, his wit,

744
00:54:45,720 --> 00:54:49,000
is snuffed out by royal command.

745
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:55,560
"Reply not to me with a fool-born
jest", says King Henry V.

746
00:54:58,240 --> 00:55:02,400
I cannot believe Shakespeare
would've written the rejection
of Falstaff like he did

747
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:04,640
if he did not want to make you
feel two things.

748
00:55:04,640 --> 00:55:06,720
One is really sorry for Falstaff.

749
00:55:06,720 --> 00:55:10,160
And secondly a feeling that
Hal has sacrificed

750
00:55:10,160 --> 00:55:11,840
a really important part of himself.

751
00:55:11,840 --> 00:55:15,880
He has got to cut Falstaff
off from himself.

752
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:19,160
It's an act of surgery
which wouldn't work for him

753
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,480
unless he did it in that cruel way.

754
00:55:25,160 --> 00:55:30,040
Falstaff's bigness is no longer
the measure of his life force.

755
00:55:30,040 --> 00:55:33,320
It's simply the measure
of his coffin.

756
00:55:40,920 --> 00:55:45,920
In the epilogue, we're told
that the fat knight will return.

757
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:49,920
Elizabeth I
loved him so much that,
according to tradition,

758
00:55:49,920 --> 00:55:53,560
she even commissioned
a new Falstaff play.

759
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:57,240
But what Shakespeare gave her
was slapstick Falstaff

760
00:55:57,240 --> 00:55:59,480
in The Merry Wives Of Windsor.

761
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:05,200
The real Falstaff would never
come back,

762
00:56:05,200 --> 00:56:11,000
except in his death scene,
told by the grieving
Mistress Quickly in Henry V.

763
00:56:12,280 --> 00:56:17,360
"The King's rejection,"
she says, "hath killed his heart."

764
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:19,400
For all his faults,

765
00:56:19,400 --> 00:56:25,280
Falstaff is the embodiment of
England that we end up going with.

766
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:29,680
It's like the sort of battling out
between that cold, repressed England,

767
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:32,760
and the warm, earthy,
beer-drinking England,

768
00:56:32,760 --> 00:56:35,840
and they're sort of still there
out there.

769
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:42,000
It's always dangerous to say,
"Here is Shakespeare's mind."

770
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:46,160
But if there's a place
where he's happiest,

771
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:50,080
it is in the remembered old feast

772
00:56:50,080 --> 00:56:52,960
that's circumscribed
by Falstaff's stomach.

773
00:56:54,240 --> 00:57:00,080
And if there's a place where he is,
God forbid, judgmental,

774
00:57:00,080 --> 00:57:07,040
it is on those people who rely
overmuch on rational thought,

775
00:57:07,040 --> 00:57:11,360
on cold, expedient rational thought.

776
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:35,040
Shakespeare had done his job
of creating England on stage,

777
00:57:35,040 --> 00:57:38,000
but it turned out
there were two Englands.

778
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:41,840
In the first one, it was always
midsummer, Friday night,

779
00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:46,440
beery abundance, tender lust,
lots of jokes.

780
00:57:46,440 --> 00:57:48,960
But the second England
was a much wintrier place,

781
00:57:48,960 --> 00:57:53,480
run by hard men,
concerned with power and money.

782
00:57:53,480 --> 00:57:58,360
And right now the boot
of the second England
was on the neck of the first.

783
00:58:02,040 --> 00:58:07,080
Though Falstaff is dead, the shock
of his rejection lingers on,

784
00:58:07,080 --> 00:58:11,480
a ghostly echo asking,
"Was friendship always
going to be sacrificed

785
00:58:11,480 --> 00:58:13,520
"when the man became the monarch?

786
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:19,640
"Are kings capable of humanity
or must they leave it behind

787
00:58:19,640 --> 00:58:21,680
"when they ascend the throne?"

788
00:58:21,680 --> 00:58:28,320
The awkward fit between humanity
and royalty obsessed Shakespeare

789
00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:31,400
into the new century
and a new reign.

790
00:58:31,400 --> 00:58:36,040
From that obsession came some
of the greatest works

791
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:40,760
that he, or any dramatist
of the tragedies of power,
ever created.

792
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,880
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