An evening with Sir Mark Rylance: Tales of Shakespeare, stage and screen

ladies and gentlemen please welcome our deputy vice-chancellor professor William Lee he and some mark right turn your phone on well thank you very much for that lovely welcome I'm kind of used to it but thanks so thanks ever so much for coming along this evening to this special event it's obviously wonderful to have Mark back at Brunel now you can see that he's dressed down for this evening because obviously usually this is how you will see him walking around now as he was coming to Oxbridge I say to him maybe leave the crown at home because we have plenty of kings and queens in Uxbridge already and thus he has come as he is now before we start the session properly let me just take you back to 2005 if I may and the reason I want to take you back there is at the time I was the head of the English department here at Brunel I'm a Shakespeare scholar by the way and at that time the New Statesman magazine contacted me the arts editor of the magazine was Rosie milord and she asked me if I would like to respond respond in print to something that had been said by someone the thing that had been said publicly was that we need to rethink the traditional narrative of the authorship of Shakespeare's plays and that we need to open our minds to the fact that maybe other authors were involved for example perhaps Francis Bacon that statement was made by the then artistic director of the Globe Theatre in London marghe Rylands and obviously attracted lots of attention so I took up the challenge I responded and I wrote an article for the New Statesman which was really quite how would you describe it mark vicious okay I would say unkind thoughtful and for me that was the end of it now a couple of months later I was then approached by the times higher which is a kind of academic magazine to write something more about this issue now as it so happened there was a conference on at the Globe Theatre in London about this very issue and around collaboration in writing and given that the audience that I was writing for this time was going to be an academic audience I thought I better do some research so as well as looking at a lot of Wikipedia articles and obviously reading some books I went along to the conference the conference was chaired by Mark and it was extremely interesting and I asked lots of questions there and in fact you remember me asking questions I believe mmm which is which is very nice and I had to quite honestly say I was very taken with what was being said it by various people at that at that conference now once they it changed my mind but what it certainly did was open my mind to the fact that there is a difficulty with the traditional narrative of Shakespeare's life as they relate to Shakespeare's works and I began to research more into this area and begin to make a contact with mark around that first of all I think I apologized by email for the article which is always a good way back in and and then I wrote this article about collaboration so on and so forth and it really you know I really got very interested in this whole area and then and at the time mark was the chairman of the Shakespearean authorship which is an organization which is interested in the authorship of the of the plays and likes to investigate it very openly and the he asked me to come and give a talk at the globe about the latest things I was finding out so on and so forth as I say mark was a chairman of that trust he asked me to become a trustee which I did and now I'm chairman and he's at I see oh yeah well for me there okay the next thing that happened I hope you don't mind me just giving a bit of background to this okay we will get he will be left at the moment so I go out and come back yeah yeah so next thing to say then the next meeting with mark important one mark wrote a play called I am Shakespeare fantastically funny and interesting play about the authorship issue which premiered at the church ester Arts Festival in 2007 and at the end of that run he invited me onto the stage and we there we launched a petition called the declaration of reasonable doubt about who wrote the plays of Shakespeare so it's an online petition anyone can go on and sign it we launched it and as it so happened I was launching a master's program in Shakespeare authorship studies here at Brunel around about the same time now that story really took off so the world's press got really interested I can remember being now this is big news for me I know it's not for you interviewed by the BBC I was on telly interviewed by Time magazine and it really was global interviewed in Germany Colombia Spain all over the place often in America and it's a proof of how global it went it made front-page news in the Himalayan times which surprised me I didn't know they had a newspaper in in the Himalayas I didn't know any people with Ericsson in English and that they were interested in Shakespeare authorship question but there you are so I was very very grateful to mark for allowing me that sort of exposure which allowed me to publicize the course and we then mark came back to Brunel in 2009 and received an honorary Doctorate okay so that's that's earthing 2009 I just noticed looking at that I'm still wearing the same watch I have taken it off in between but even so so there we are we look eat little beavers there at least I do and that was the last time mark was here as of lovely occasion and so it's absolutely fantastic that he's taken the trouble now to come back revisit Brunel and expose himself a bit more to a Brunel audience so what we're going to do now okay so I'm going to speak to mark about various things okay we are going to have a substantial Q&A session okay so you can be save up to questions for the end okay and we'll have lots of opportunity for questions and other things will happen you'll see what I mean as they do okay so mark as I sit down and now allow you to speak mm-hmm the last time I saw you actually was on Saturday in Westminster Abbey now I didn't get a chance to speak to you because you're actually performing but it was a very unique kind of performance there in the Abbey could you just tell our audience what that what that performance was what it was meant to be why so many people found it so unique well 25 years ago when Sam Wanamaker was still alive he asked me to and he asked a bunch of us who were supporters of his effort to rebuild shakespeare's globe the globe wasn't built at that time so this is 92 to organize some different events that would be enjoyable for Shakespeare's birthday weekend and I had gone on a walk with a friend from Poets Corner where the monument you know all reckon you know that that famous monument of Shakespeare I think it may be actually it's the right leg of the left and he's leaning there and he's pointing with his finger to a bit of text that's coming off a plinth here and he's pointing with his finger to the word temples and then if actually in the way the words are aligned the the line of his finger goes temple through temples and then through the word globe so we had walked from Poets Corner via the temple area which is very resonant for Shakespeare lovers to the globe and I thought all that what if we did this walk again but what would be the aspect of sheikhs that would be lovely to celebrate and I thought that the sonnets would be very lovely to hear that you don't hear them very often and so it was called sweet love remembered and and every 15 minutes a group of about 15 people were sent from Poets Corner holding white and red roses along a path to the globe about a two-hour walk hour and a half walk and at 12 different locations along the way an actor would be hidden disguised as a normal person in [Laughter] that's most the budget went on those sessions in the costuming the psychological work required but they would be in a park or in a street a member in a young in a street Essex Street where the Earl of Essex's house stood house James Burbridge often visited there was a young woman as a lawyer and and when the group approached she came up and said why have you been absent from me in the spring - one of the members of the group and and just delivered the sonnet very directly and personally and when the when the person on the walk had no answer or said I don't really know why I was absent she then just moved away and so there were these little ambushes by real people with sonnets in the street and embassy the actors knew who the people were because they were carrying roses and the the audience didn't know eventually by the end of the walk they were going up to the wrong people a lot of actors choose chose to play bombs and people in poor people in that you know I'm homeless people and so that a lot of homeless people were being approached by these audiences and being rudely telling them to clear off anyway so we've done that for 25 years and we and I was just going along a few months ago to ask permission to get into Poets Corner again and I thought what if they would allow us to do a performance in the Abbey and remarkably they came back the Dean came back and said he's going to Friday into Saturday night which I realize I'm not great nights for Abbey audiences that's not the mornings at their time so it's a great but it is the best time of the week for theatrical people so miraculously they gave us the whole of the Abbey on Friday and Saturday night last week and we filled it with 25 actors each who knew a sonnet and the speed and the scene so so and I was one of those actors so 350 people came into the Abbey they could wander anywhere they wanted and and I was going on a loop I was going from Richard ii tomb where i spoke this speech he speaks in the shakespeare play at the end of the plane when he's in prison and then I would have a sonnet that I would speak with different members of the audience who I met and then I went in met Cleopatra in the North transept and as the messenger and delivered the message that that Antony had married Octavia and then I ran from that scene because she gets very upset and pulled the knife out back to Richard the second I went round that loop but there were 25 of us doing that and so the what was very nice is it a little bit inspired or Ted Hughes rather has written it very well in in his publication of collected works of Shakespeare don't know if you come upon it but there's a very nice collection of Shakespeare's writing that ted hughes has put together simply out of his tasteful as a poet for what's very beautiful and and you get these speeches removed from the context of the narrative or the pressures of being in a public performance and you just get them very simply and purely something like tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace you by the time you get to that speech and Macbeth you have a very complicated relationship with Macbeth which colours the speech but the speech stands in a fresh way in a very beautiful way outside of that context you sort of mean and um it was very very popular the last week and I think it's partly it's some Shakespeare plays a bit too long and people enjoyed having just an hour and 15 minutes of random also it you're in a Shakespeare play you're used to watching us Shakespeare actors going at it like this rather than us coming up intimately to you and saying shall I compare thee to a summers day mark I'm a teacher hmm and I was finding the best way to communicate that kind of message is to perhaps in acting at all so let's pretend okay I'm laughing cuz bill we've set this up before and yet he's acting it very well come on oh so right you didn't hear that here we are in Westminster Abbey now I need a partner would you would you mind okay here we are okay so I'm here with my mistress I mean I'm here with my wife my wife is there okay all right okay all right ma'am oh yeah okay so we're in Westminster Abbey okay and we're wandering around okay and it's hey honey this is acting by the way a chance hey honey look at those stained-glass windows there are some no I would I would see that they and I liked I've said tube cut and I would have brought them into one of the I would have brought them in to one of the many tombs beautiful tombs there's over 3,000 people buried there and so I wasn't there was a lot chase and you mind me using you you it's not lovely personal but um so this would be this would be there would be a sarcophagus here and a band of our body and maybe the face the stone face of the body is born way of it and but but the bodies dressed in stone version of oxygen but of varium very expensive elaborate clothes yes you know the title might have been a little ESET it sometimes it might be Elizabeth the first the Queen so I bring you to the mouth when I have seen by times fell hand defaced the rich proud cost of outworn buried age when sometimes lofty tow'rs I see down raised and brass eternal slave to mortal rage when I've seen the hungry ocean gain advantage on the kingdom of the Shore and the firm soil will of the water remain increasing store with loss and loss with store when I have seen such interchange of state or state itself confounded to decay ruin have taught me thus to ruminate that time will come and take my love away this thought is as a death which cannot choose but weep to have that which it fears to lose and that's built and your I don't know your name what's your name okay what we've items when I had a couple like this because that's the resonance of the poem it is that it when you love someone very much it gets frightening the longer you're together it gets more frightening that that one is going to go first who's it going to be I know I I dread the loss of my wife but I would prefer to suffer it myself than to leave her girl but it's something I think about the time will come and take my love away and to say that intimately to a couple who are not expecting you to say that and look in their eyes and give them time to think about it it was very very very remarkable and satisfying for me as a channeling Shakespeare it's very direct I would then they would it would leave them though a little depressed sorry yes sorry I then would say um I then say I'll be not afeard the aisles full of noises sounds and sweet airs that give delight and it was full of noises the abbey in fact this Isle of the abbey was also full of noises momentum in the matter it was full of noises sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not sometimes a thousand jangling instruments will hum about nine years and sometimes voices that if I then had woke after a long sleep would make me sleep again and then in dreaming we thought the clouds did open and show riches and sometimes there would be a beautiful painted ceiling above me in the Abbey and I'd say look riches ready to drop upon me that when I woke I cried to sleep again and then I might walk away or I might even if they were still attentive as you or I'd say on our life's but a walking shadow a mere poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more and I leave on that so is there like a melody of rhythm I think it's much nicer than sit I mean I like to sit and watch and listen to Shakespeare play but there's something magical about giving it direct isn't there an intimate unfortunately it's difficult for me to to do it so intimately because large groups of people would gather around me because I'm notorious now whereas some of the other actors who were you know as anonymous as each of you may be to each other they were able to have a lot of intimate um Shakespearean experiences with people and uh and and then you get then you get a real feel of the author's character I mean particularly in the sonnets you get a very very strong feeling of the of the character III I despair the teaching that says the sonnets are technical a technical exercise but that unfortunate is one of the twisted positions that on Stratford II and scholars have to get into to explain away the difficulties and the sonnets with their candidate for the authorship okay thanks a lot for a modest I was supposed to take five minutes with in mind I have to say I find acting really easy actually the first one move on now let's start so I think now lot of people would be surprised to hear that you are actually brought up in America yeah is that right now what were you doing there my parents emigrated there in 1962 and we lived on a campus of a am a level school a high school called choked school my father was an English teacher and um and then in 69 we moved a way from England much to my mother's despair to the Midwest to a city called Milwaukee where my father became the head of an English department and we lived in the suburbs of that town and my mother then eventually became a teen English teacher as well and then eventually a therapist but uh we lived there until nineteen eyelet there until 1978 when I came back to go to rod or at London all right so you came back to go to Rada so the acting thing had already started there in in America yeah and how did you get what was it that got you into acting I acted before I was taken to the theatre a lot by my parents but I acted with my friends for our own enjoyment really not not with an audience and there is a certain part of me that still feels betrayed by by the fact that I act for people and in front of people now there's a certain child as part of me that doesn't understand that we reacted in the in the conduct we have this huge campus of this school so there were many forests and fields and different things on this campus and also there was the basement and we would we would take the the a bit like a commedia troupe of actors we would take the stock characters from a show like Star Trek Spock Kirk the The Scotsman in the in the engine room the general hora and we would we would improvise for hours and hours and hours different dramas and events inspired by these different TV shows of my of that era voyage to the bottom of the sea land of the Giants lost in space wild blob West so I was acting long before I knew there was a that you that there was a profession for Franklin okay and then in school I got involved in a very very active drama department very very active from the age of about 12 we building sets to enlighten playing many classical parts singing Don Quixote and Men La Mancha Pseudolus in funny thing happened the way to the forum in America it's part of the tradition that you do musicals every year in high school and so I used to do a lot of singing and dancing as well as playing Hamlet at 16 you have the floor and Romeo at 17 and so I was exposed to a lot of very drama including new plays as well in between the age of 12 to 18 and much to my surprise arrived at Rada thinking that I would be well out of my league coming from the Midwest of America but I actually had more experience than most of the English kids know Lily at the school yeah so you felt very comfortable at Rhonda no and why not even in the Midwest it I have a friend in the state next to Wisconsin called Minnesota friend called Robert Bly wonderful poet and and Robert it was asked once what's the difference between someone from Wisconsin and some from Minnesota and and he said if a man from Wisconsin tells you a joke you don't laugh until a week later that the sense of humor is very dry and due to long winters in that part of the minute you have a week to think about job you need a week really you need to fit last that long so I rolled out the rod well I had I know you I had no no I just had no connection I didn't really know pop culture I didn't know I didn't know what a Lancashire accent was or a Yorkshire accent or I spent quite a few summers in England at my grandparents house in the 60s and early 70s oh I had a little bit of an inkling of things but I was some I was just I was quite I was just quite shy - and I didn't it was a very foreign culture for me okay so after rather I mean what what's what's the next guide where did you go because it seems quite quickly you became quite an important Shakespearean actor it didn't feel that way to me but I suppose I was given my first job at the citizens theatre in Glasgow which is a wonderful theatre and I had it was a 60 week repertory contract and we did the number of plays and went to the venice biennale festival which at 1920 was pretty wonderful aspect of being an actor and then shortly after that I was yes I got a job at the RSC in 82 and did two and a half years with them playing aerial - Derek Jacoby's Prospero and playing with a number of wonderful actors Bob Peck and Alun Armstrong Helen Mirren she made Cusack Michael Gambon David Bradley the company was chock-a-block full of wonderful actors so I learned a lot from them and what would they are asking like in that color it was it was a mafia run but it was a kindergarten run by the Mafia I really was it was what we act as felt about it was very directed led there wasn't much there wasn't much we go to the pub afterwards and these actors would be singing and telling stories and playing games and being they were wild wonderful characters Pete Postlethwaite was in the company you might want to slip away before things got two drunken as it was sometimes turn nasty but they they were really rich fantastic people but in the rehearsal room it was so no offense intended though but it was so um literary and an accolade and planned out by the directors and staged and blotted or the actors sat around on myself asleep reading their newspapers in it and I as a young actor felt I'd always grown up in school having a lot of input into the story and being very involved and I just felt we weren't none of our natural energy was being involved we were all just being controlled and moved around and once the opening night passed the directors never came back they were only interested in the reviews one very famous director at that time really successful director I couldn't believe he would came out to dinner and opened a briefcase full of reviews and shared his reviews round like they were reports that from the school and I thought you don't need these people to approve what you're doing you you're a genius with Shakespeare but there was something about getting like getting good marks for doing it so it wasn't very theatrical I found and it led me to leave the RSC and form a cooperative theater company and try and work without directors alright now that point you're making there about the reviews you don't read your reviews - I don't anymore no when since when since about mid 80s late 80s all occasions stumble upon someone by accident but I'll tend to just look away and not um my wife reads them and enjoys them and she tells me whether they're bad or good medium but that kind of general that general kind of description but I don't I I find I then I don't find them helpful to me but I don't I'm not like I don't mind people writing reviews and people enjoying reviews it's it's a kind of it's just a different profession it's a different activity than the one I'm doing okay another BRC at that time you're a young actor you are I suppose what one would say developing your craft yeah what what would you developing how were you developing your craft how was your your development or your approach differently let's say that any of those famous actors that you just told us about well I've always been an actor who I've always been it took me a while to understand why I was an actor not to my thirties that I realized that the most important things for me in acting with the community was having a community where we were making something together that I find that I find a party I'm a little bit shy when there isn't any thing we're doing other than talking directly with other people or that bit straight on for me I prefer to be making something together with a group of people or playing a game or that there's something we're focusing on together rather than just looking straight at each other and so the community was very important to me but also in terms of acting I like to play I I don't like to present the demonstrations of what's happening I like to have actually play it and pretend I'm really there I have a very childish enjoyment of that from a very early age something was in my DNA or maybe because I had difficulty speaking when I was very young and it was liberating to pretend to be someone else I was sitting funnily enough I was sitting on the sonnet walk on Sunday to sit in the middle temple hall and pretend to be a barrister with a mosque on a commedia mosque and I would say that that's that that um sonot I did you in a very grand voice when I have seen by times fell hand to face slightly better than that but I really don't understand I said this a few hours believing I was embarrassed that I thought well I'll do something I need to do while I'm waiting for the people to come because it's 20 minutes or so so I thought well I'll write a letter of thank you to the Queen for forgiving me a knighthood and I read this letter back at the yesterday at the end of the day and it's so grand and pompous that kind of barrister like you know Your Majesty how much I admired you notice and I thought I was really in character I wrote the letter in character without even being aware that's partly the man stood the Italian masks are very powerful but it was funny too how much how much we we are we we take on a character to do to meet a bank manager to meet our line manager to talk with our children talk with our dog or to get a ticket at the Oxbridge train station we're taking on characters all the time and I'm just very practiced or fluid at that I don't know why I got into this what did I learn what did you ask me a fact I asked you oh why why what did I learn it took me a while to realize that that's what I enjoyed I'm glad to remember because I have got it and then that's where I enjoyed him it's why I wasn't particularly keen on film work because unless unless you do what Dan day-lewis does and and and becomes President Lincoln for the whole of the shoot so so from about a month before they film Lincoln Steven Spielberg was saying to me when he would call Dan they lose President Lincoln would answer and then throughout the shoot um he would go and visit President Lincoln in the caravan and would speak with President Lincoln dan doesn't come out of character and goes and lives and I think Rebecca is reckoned Miller his wife stays away and he lives alone in the hotel room so he immerses himself and is President Lincoln for time so when the shoot ended Stephen went to the caravan too and there was Dan Jane Lewis being the Schachter again and Stephen had to step out of the car Bannen and wept because he realized he would never meet his friend President Lincoln again amazing isn't it so but unless you do something like that on film it's all stop and start and you never really you can't really you can't really make the kind of headway that you can if you play Hamlet 400 times eight times a week including places like the Palace Theatre Manchester and and Broadmoor special Hospital to small group of patients and doctors what do you lose that so you you you want to link the Palace Theatre Manchester and Broadmoor are they similar am i picking a time supporting I know they are very different audiences very different okay so you developed your craft there you move on from the RSC can also sense your coming back to do questions so it so one of the things is sorry sorry I've remembered your question now now one of the things was I'm in a preview of Arden of favish and you know the play Arden establishment is a very wonderful played the first middle-class domestic murder tragedy where Alice Hardin tries to murder her husband anyway I was playing young Michael the who had been left to guard the house on an evening and and it's dark and I and in rehearsals I had been lying down like this and then this man comes in and and I think it's a ghost and I just been going from here who are you or whatever the line was what he who are you or maybe who are you and when the man came in on this preview um I oh I did different was I got up and and said who are you I really don't feel I did anything much different than that but I didn't stay lying down I stood out um at the this was the old other place at the RSC and we then the actor is playing this part who is about that tall and this big and I had to walk down these alleyways and one more we passed by some lockers and he got me he turned got me by the coat and pushed me against the lobby the lockers bang and said well no improvisers and now and then we walked on and stood waiting to go on for another scene and on and so so I'm sorry about that mondo didn't you know one of the main things you have to learn as a young actor is how to deal with older actors okay yeah because there's always a new energy coming in isn't there breaking things up in any profession and it's frightening and upsetting for the older actors very you don't even realize that you are frightening and challenging them just by being who you are okay so can you tell us before we move on because I want to deal with this in a bit more detail later but at the RSC there you are with all the experiences you know in one of these centres of Shakespearean culture and whole world were you already having doubts about the authorship of the plays no none at all no okay no none at all I would have many many a romantic evening wandering around stratford-upon-avon imagine the author there and that these were fields that he walked in and this is where his house was and know I was through I've been taking there very often during the 70's dawn my family and it always been a kind of Mecca for my mother particularly I my father but my mother particularly and so I was thrilled to be there I hadn't connected with it at all okay so then you you left the RSC you set up your own company and then I guess a fairly momentous thing happened where whereby you are asked to become artistic director of the Globe Theatre in 1995 now I know this this picture got out this play your play is much much later than that but yeah oh back to that there's a reason why I've just the pose of two can you tell us a bit about 1995 you are asked to be artistic director of the globe the first artistic director is just opening it sounds - you know what sound to us like a dream job so of course you would take it but were you worried were you did you jump at it did you think oh my god this is why me no I actually honestly I turned it down at first I there the it's funny the think I don't know if your lies are like this Tituba there's such a synchronicity in my life at certain moments and it feels like I feels like I pass by certain major things they're going to happen before they happen I get an image of them and when I form this cooperative Theatre Company in 1985 we couldn't find anywhere cheap enough to play in London until we found the bear gardens Museum which was where some wanna maker was ensconced that and we could read that very cheaply him so I played there in 1985 but then I didn't really get involved with the project until 1991 when my wife and I were doing a production of we'd formed a company called Phoebus cotton we were doing a production of The Tempest at the raw light stone circle to explore what would happen in those ancient stone circles if you did a kind of you know a healthy good ritual and drew 600 or 700 people to it and we discovered at that time that the stone circles like the rollright stones and these stone hands have the same diameter as the globe this 100 foot diameter so we approached Sam or my wife said why don't we approach Sam and when I bumped into him in at a conference with Mel Gibson about Hamlet in Berkeley California of all places I driven across Blackfriars Bridge in a taxi looked over and thought I'd seen the globe so I said to Sam oh it's coming on really well I saw it the other day from the bridge and he looked at me so strangely and said no it's just a hole ground the economic downturn had really killed it in the late 80s and they they were they were begging cement trucks who were coming from other building sites and still had a little bit of cement in their truck to swing by and drop the remaining bits of cement into those big pillars that hold up the powder they were had a small crew of about five men building it very very slowly so we went and saw Sam and he allowed us to do our tempest there on the in the concrete substructure of what it would eventually become the globe site and at that time I got invited to be part in a group called the artistic director 't artist that Sam had gathered around him and when Sam died in 93 those elderly actors much to my surprise I was the youngest person in the group said we need an actor again running this place and and he's the one who should do it pointing at me and I knew I was much too um improvisational again and I was going to get thrown up against some lockers if I did that job and and I said no I really think you need a very much more steady hand to bring this big boat so to speak up the Thames so to speak and planted here was royal openings and all these different people given money needing to be satisfied and Sam want to make a bit like max the other stock in the producers had promised a hundred percent to everyone you know what I mean the academics the Americans there are all the different groups that were interested in it all all wanted their pound of flesh and so on I said no at first and then I thought about it I thought well I really loved Sam and if this group of people feel that I am the one who'd be best to do it then then then then maybe that's my service to Sam I did think like that at the time and um and so I went back into the processing and Peter hore and OH [Music] Birkhoff were they were the other two candidates with me and I got unanimously elected to do it but it was a very very difficult job yeah well I mean we're youwere I can remember at the time so I was just about to start my PhD I think at the time there was this kind of fear that this new globe would become a kind of Shakespeare Disneyland almost like a theme park yeah just to attract American tourists as an afterthought I mean were you aware of that kind of fear and did you actively work against yeah the possibility of that ever happening yeah I personally don't I found it a little bit odd the fears about tourists coming to Shakespeare what's wrong with that who are all those people I've been strapped upon Haven are they all local people I was a little bit suspicious of that and I thought how wonderful that people want to visit our country with all the stuff that goes on here I mean I'm wonderful and that they want to come when they come here and and hear a Shakespeare play certainly and about you but for me when I'm on holiday a certain window opens in my soul I'm a little bit more open I'm not so focused on jobs and fixing the windows or all those different things that you have to do in your mundane life so I think someone on holiday coming to a play is a great opportunity to affect them and to give them a different perspective so I had no problem with that I the project had been haunted by that accusation partly cuz Sam was American and and Sam and his excitement in the early days had plans for the whole of the south bank he had whole models for the whole of the South Bank a lot of what he saw you will now see on the south bank he was right it was ripe for development into a great cultural center of one of the cultural centers of London but at that time they thought he was just in it to make money and he was to Disney fight and cheapen it and and so those those some fears and criticisms they just sharpened my intent that as they had sharpened Sam's and and that the project had to have enormous academic rigor research and scholarship that we would build the globe with authentic materials green oak fat which was a incredible fight to get the first thatched building allowed again in England all the materials and all this craft that feel closely the Great Architect that we would we would not do things with power tools we would we would really investigate it very very rigorously because of that criticism that we were Disney fiying it so in approaching it in a cartoon or facile way I think it's what they meant by that criticism so it was very it meant that when had to be very rigorous well and in fact I mean you were very successful in that it actually became recognized for precisely being that kind of a very rigorous environment for Shakespeare I hope so sometimes we were we weren't always not ok but I guess so you there for 10 years now this is the time you know one one mark of the success of the globe is that have actually really become the center of global Shakespeare knowledge if you like you know some kind of focus for it and Kadima has become much more interested in how the plays were plays performances we look at exactly now but at that time during those 10 years there you are in this environment and you are now publicly questioning the authorship of the plays now what sort of what sort of issues did that give rise to now this is why I've put this this picture of your yeah because the play is very much about well I knew my job was not my job as artistic director was not to not to forward any particular candidates case or even forward the authorship question on the other hand my job I felt was to welcome any lover of Shakespeare to the globe and every ever person I've ever met who's interested in the authorship question has been a devout lover of Shakespeare so I I felt that I felt I wanted I really wanted the groups to get the different people who had different I thought we all have a different image of who the author is and it's probably someone like us so I am Shakespeare the will and and I wanted the different people who rather than fighting about your image is better than is not as good as my image to accept that and talk with each other so I wanted more openness but I was told in no uncertain terms very early on not to mention it by a Bible chief executive and they were worried about it and I think I was I was pretty attacked behind the scenes by Stanley wells and by other people who were concerned about my views I think Bernhard Levin wrote when I when I was announced one of the articles was a heretic at the globe and it is it is almost a religious question for some people it has that emotional connection so the word heretic is is used aptly you know I had to be a little bit careful but if I would get into conflict in the shop for example because there would be I would say could we have um of there's a wonderful book by John Michell um who wrote shake school or Shakespeare it's just an overview of the orchestra question it's not really it's not like fighting for one candidate others just introduce us to do could we have that in the bookshop not why not well we're you see where we're about to expose workplace not his birthplace we're not about the authorship question at the globe we're about the playing of Shakespeare's plays and I think yeah that's right we are then I go in the bookshop and I'd find twelve books on the man from Stratford four or five of them aimed at children two or three biographical films picture books cut out books they'd be about 15 or 18 items in there that were all about the Stratford man and aimed at young people got I brought an authorship book aimed at young people and so I go back and say um you know you say we're not depart biography but there's all these books in about the Stratford man could we not just have one or two books that are about another view these people love Shakespeare - oh well it's a bit like the Green Party and the Labour and conservative parties it's proportionality you see most people believe the man from Stratford wrote the place so that's why there should be 18 or 20 books and maybe you can have one and it in but but we all need the literary committee was formed we're all going to need to read that one and comment on it well I said we're going to do that with all the other biography books no no no they're all they're all right they the cambridge press and people who publish them you know they're all fine but we are going to read this one and so I had to be very patient and sit through what I thought was a very very unfair this fearfulness of the orthodoxy about about what might happen if unorthodox views came in but I would never I hasten to add though I feel the authorship question has helped me in my own acting and enjoyment of Shakespeare I I would never do a Shakespeare play to put two four with the case for Francis Bacon I mean that's not I don't feel the author wrote the place to forward their own biography so that would never come into my mind but I'd yeah okay but I mean I guess it's understandable there you are your very public figure talking about these things and as around the end of that period that I got to know you and I started then talking publicly about the authorship question and as maybe the first academic doing so received quite a lot of adverse publicity quite a lot of hate mail and I just I've got a few quotes that I've taken now this I just want to show you a few of the sort of emails that I've received everything is because I'm sure you've received a lot more and a lot worse than this now these are V these are just the emails usually in response to something that I've written in Guardian or whatever so these are not the comments that come after those online articles which really really are so super toxic okay but it's this sort of thing that I would receive so I thought it'd be helpful to illustrate again what a useless you are see below so I look below you are an imbecile another one William Lee he I must remember your name just so I don't waste any more time reading your stupid theories you clearly are ignorant and deranged stop spouting utter bollocks about the greatest writers at the English language has ever known and here's his one that's very relevant to where we are now I could understand it if Lee he was from a proper University for Brunel to real favor ha ha ha ha ha ha ha now I assume that you've received or well also oh yeah there is stuff like that so he has publicly and I believe even Stanley Wales didn't he pull your beard or something at one I did I had to be at at some point but I was doing something at the global we met at the Rose Theatre Stanley was a board member trusty member of The Globe Theatre and at the RSC when I was worked at the RSC and we met it we would have it was a kind of one of those wine receptions at the role the site of the Rose Theatre and some yes he kind of went red when he saw me and came over and pulled my beer I like that naughty mark he said and since when he generally caused me naughty mark yeah it is then the I so it is when you put it in this kind of context it's pretty funny okay this sort criticism however there is there is a quite a serious side to the criticism and I've got one here this is a letter to the New York Times so the demand that Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him seemed harmless enough until one reflects on its implications should claims that the Holocaust did not occur also be made part of the standard curriculum so you can see that from Stephen Greenblatt who's probably the world's most famous Shakespearean scholar and who's a friend of mine now by the way I cause we correspondent about this and I said that it was on I said that was particularly insulting to people like me I felt it was also insulting to those who had suffered the Holocaust to even to compare that event to this much less important matter he says he was misunderstood and he didn't mean it that way and but it's an it is an interesting question whether when you're teaching a subject you do need to channel the thinking within a certain area and not you know if you if you allow I mean you're channeling this conversation now through your questions before opening up to anyone's questions and do you need to do that with a subject matter where if you draw a line like that does that enhance the teaching or not enhance the teaching it's not an it's an interesting question I just think I just think the comparison is a little bit on tactless in fact they've seen the film the son of Saul by the way here have you seen that one because if you haven't seen son of Saul it's the most amazing film so I just decided to halt it there so 2005 then you leave the globe now I assume this was a momentous kind of step because as far as I know you're leaving something you know a job that seems made for you in any ways into nothing else yeah there was no kind of structure after that just 2005 you're out and yeah well I mean what was going through your mind there what that was a risk I got red tides and I got very depressed and dispirited about everything and resigned and I felt I couldn't um I couldn't really cope him more with the with the pressures of the job and uh and I didn't I really had stopped on working elsewhere and so I didn't I didn't know where I was going to do it I I am I decided to take three months to archive all my papers and my work at the ten years which is now really great now I can go back and find things and other people who want to find out things it's good to do an archive but it was pretty painful because I I was put in Sam's old office in the bare gardens and I thought Dominic who is a great friend of mine and would I thought people going to come over regularly and asked me how did you do this how do you play the stage ah what what do you think about this or why was this done no one came not just no really no one I looked out the window and saw the actors going to rehearse for the first plays of that season now Dominic took the rational decision it is a it's not a bad decision that he did that he couldn't connect it was as I was too powerful a shadow or resonance and he needed to just make his own and stop so this is dubbing Tom goes out following all the things I'm sorry but only my daughter Juliet came helping archive so it was a very strange three months after it was a very strange experiences as any of you who've changed jobs or gone from one a leadership role to not being a leader it's very strange not to be needed and um and I think I would have taken the archives far away and not done them hereby it was a little bit strange to be around see but now i can i'm still be so yeah i went up and nothing happened for a while but then you seem to fall on your feet when the portrayal of dr. david kelly yeah in the program that was called the government inspector the government inspector so that was very very well received and indeed i think won a BAFTA am I right yeah now that's playing on television so yeah was that your first major television role and how did you adapt to that different sort of environment well that was with the marvelous director Peter kozminski who subsequently directed Wolf Hall and and is directed to cleave rewrites his own things I think he wrote that he's about to come out with the film about young people leaving England to go and join Isis and so you can imagine the dangerous process of research for such a film like that he's most radical and fantastic film director so it was very exciting to work with others the first time we work together I think I made that before I left the globe and then it came out after the clothing generously but it was some we were we filmed that there was a famous meeting between a journalist called Gilligan and David Kelly at the Charing Cross hotel in the bar when when kelly shares some of the stuffy the government by wished he hadn't shared about sexed up sexy up dossiers so I'm not using the right words and when we filmed it we were sitting at a table in that Charles bar and I went over to get a glass of water from the bartender was there at the bar and I was getting a glass of water from him and he said them he said they didn't sit there he said they sat over there I said we mean Kelly and Gilligan they sat at that table they understand why you're here the lights better but they sat over there and it was only a year later that we were in the same places filming so it was very it was a very resonant job that job but um I don't remember it raising my profile much or anything and if that's what you mean did I feel suddenly I was more famous no no no no just a different style of acting yeah a different style of acting yeah yeah well because there's a lot of footage of of Kelly and a lot of um vocal I listened to his voice a lot that that and I mean that even that gesture there I couldn't I couldn't really get I might I cut I couldn't his hair was white on he was more academic than I I can portray really look see but some of that some of that is him he was very very um careful and an intelligent man dr. David Kelly so then I mean having left the globe then you start I suppose the kind of this one call it the portfolio career now where you're working in television you're on stage you're in film and you have a number of successes on the stage so starting the big one with Boeing Boeing after I left the globe I set off I wanted to write this play I am shakes I wanted to I wanted to go back I felt like I'd been the frontman not only the lead actor and which is really the frontman the the waiter if state is like a restaurant but I was also the host the artistic director and I was doing press conferences and I I was really just always in the suit up at the front of the restaurant and I thought I'd really like to get back and chop vegetables and be in the kitchen so to speak so I being a great admirer of a big company called complicity and artists like Robert Lapage and actually right back to the early 80s that's what I wanted to do is make a worse and I happened by accident to be good at Shakespeare what I did was Jason was popular so it it was kind of by accident that I my whole career has been about Shakespeare not about making new things so I've kind of decided in 2005 I'm only going to do Shakespeare be five years or so and I want to write a play what do I know about I know but Shakespeare so I felt it write it very bad so that's how I am Shakespeare came up and then I was trying to get Matthew watches but directed the Old Vic now to direct it and he said well I'll do that if you'll come and do boeing-boeing which is this French fast we're just going to fit it in we'll just do it for a little while and vote for both of us it was just something a chance to enjoy working together and then that really took off and and I met Sonja Friedman the incredible producer the most powerful producer in the world now with the largest production company primarily run by women um and led by her fantastic example of of what um what an organization run by women can do Sonia Friedman productions anyway she took me to New York she argued when the play transferred to New York that I should go which was quite a fight she had to have and then then that was very popular in New York and I developed this relationship with this Broadway career yeah so you you for that performance you received a Tony and then Jerusalem was on the way on in the West land well then I came back from abroad we're having saved a year on Broadway and said I was going to do this play at the Royal Court and at that time rooster fire was in a wheelchair delayed the character rooster by rooster Byron and somnium my wife they all thought I was not to be going back to the Royal Court to do an unknown play but I'd seen old jazz Butterworth's plays from mojo arm and I thought they were just fantastic so I didn't I didn't care whether this one was going to work or not I just wanted to work with it did many people in the audience see Jerusalem yeah it was it was quite extraordinary and the question that I wanted to ask you actually was when you saw this play when you had this playing front I mean it's now regarded as perhaps the most important British English play of the last 30 years or so were you aware of how this is play 1 no I came to me it came to me many years before and it was called st. George's Day and it was very raw and rough Jessa's very broad rough writen and um I just liked it because I was very interested in st. George's Day that going back to the connect solution to Shakespeare and V there's the myth of our culture of of st. George the dragon and the maiden and there are lovely different versions of that so I was interested in that aspect of it and I thought well this is a subject matter that it's curious to me that the play the play itself wasn't done the play was just was just roar and wild and then and then and then it came up again in 2005 years later they came back to me I think they've tried it with other people for a while and then they came back to me and it had changed and rooster and now he'd had a motorcycle accident he jumped and had a motorcycle accident that was still in the play when we did it but he'd been he was in a wheelchair and um and so the set was all ramps and and then that got changed just before he went into rehearsal but I've never been in a play that changed so much in the rehearsal we they discovered after a week or two we needed two more characters the World Court said okay he one day he arrived with all those speeches six or seven set speeches that speaks about the giant the speech about the UM the would at the end all the tall tales that that um rooster told he would just arrive with this material and that I liked it and I liked it but it was very it was unusual the whole thing got shaped and then we cut about forty-five minutes of it to before we eventually opened so what you know if you ever get it if it's ever put back on I mean I really recommend it and then of course it went to Broadway as well you lose another Tony for that yeah then you while you're doing other things also then came back to the globe and did Richard the third and Twelfth Night which then went to the state to Broadway and you received another Tony so you're doing quite well on stage so remove from the globe again turned out okay in the end again and let me say about that time I got rid of all my agents to about every time I decided I really what didn't or my career as an actor don't know if any of you are active but all your career is in acting you're told by agents you must have them you get equal power in all the different mediums it's no good to just be successful in the theatre you must break into television and film and you must have a career in all these mediums agents make a lot more money from films and television and theater so they have a motivation to do that but it's convincing to you as young a young actor and I was seeing all my fellow actors stand a lewis and gary oldman and Ken Branagh and all of them were doing wonderfully in film and I was never able to really break into film I made good films with television like the grass arena early on but somewhere it never happened for me so I always felt a little inadequate and then I thought well this is ridiculous Here I am really successful and having a lovely time and I'm feeling inadequate it's stupid and the kabuki actors don't worry about being film actors or TV actors they're just great kabuki actors of the Kathakali actors all these wonderful internal international actors I'd seen at the globe who was so marvelous and I thought I've had enough I'm happy I'm going to be a theatre actor and I don't want an agent and I don't want to do television or film anymore if something comes I might do it but this is what I like to do this is what I'm trained to do and then of course as soon as I said that [Laughter] yeah nature abhors a vacuum it's a bold thing to do to actually really say you don't want the thing you really want we have to really say it for the vacuum to be formed but it does feel like that that's the womb-like way isn't it that's the mary magdalene feminine way of moving towards your fate of to what you want is to draw to draw in a womb like fashion the thing towards you rather go out and try and hunt it or penetrated or capture it you know and which is a more masculine way okay so interesting I'll move fairly quickly in these last few questions because say that we can ask get questions from the audience so Wolf Hall what do we need to say enormous ly successful quite rightly and then of course you're over in Hollywood yeah bridge of spies before which you get an Oscar yeah you know come on now even you had enough I know I know really men are and which very interesting feel and quite serious film in many ways so but that's start to start in your development of the relationship with Steven Steven Spielberg's and this you can see behind you it says BFG that's because I think we weren't allowed to use a photo from the film The BFG really yeah because this is not teaching whatever it is so you've developed this relationship with Spielberg now you know one thinks of the great sort of relationships between directors and actors Martin Scorsese over the Nero for example I believe you're making another film with him now my or in the future or soon yeah we were going to be making a film right now about a young boy called Eduardo matura Mataura who was um was a Jewish boy in the 1840s 1860 in Italy whose Christian may in this Jewish family got very concerned when he was a baby he was dying and she blessed him privately in the bedroom without telling the family she christened him so to speak because she was frightened he'd go to hell and and he survives and about six years later she confesses this to her Catholic priest and at that time if that if once the Catholics knew a child had been baptized so to speak they would then go in and take the child from the Jewish family and raise it as a Catholic child and so I would play the Pope Pius the sixth Huan who oversees this this kidnapping of Edgardo Motala so it's a very interesting film that Tony Kushner has written and you've just got this connection with yeah the corner but they couldn't find the little boy so the film's been put off but yes I've made three films with Stephen and we enjoy working together very much so and again because I'll be making more quite successful so there you are yeah this is another picture of you and me yeah I had to find squeezing for that dress hey she odd I don't know who the two women act I know I should but who the two women actors well um she i've forgotten their names you know she was in that amazing from that the one who won the Best Actress that the yeah I just saw the film recently about about the woman whose kid room yeah Oh edible son yeah okay incredible story so can I just ask you a final question okay before we are open floor on Hollywood to escalate Hollywood's what I mean by that is how do you even have a normal conversation in in Hollywood what can you possibly or is it everyone's just in your face at all time talking load of rubbish I mean a bit like Oxbridge I suppose but there's a dentist is FFA in anyway a kind of normal place how do you feel there I there's an excitement to it there's a certainly excitement to it though it's funny I went to Glenn this year because if you win something they ask you to come back to next year and give it to wait someone else and that seems kind of a nice tradition so Claire and I went again and it was amazing how quickly the romance of that ceremony had worn off of the Academy Awards the first time it was incredibly exciting to justice you know to meet all these people people like sylvester stallone and and and i have cate blanchett sitting across the aisle you know sitting there on the aisle and there's Cate Blanchett and at some point us I went I said oh very nice to meet you and she said oh yes this is very intimate very I keep still but but but um what what struck me particularly was seeing them seeing Cate Blanchett or Kate Winslet or or particularly the actresses who are who are being looked at all the time to just walks with what grace and they would rise they would rise from their seats you know and move towards the exit but that they were it was just so professional but they they you could see they weren't particularly enjoying it but that it was part of their job it was their job to sell the film with their clothes with their makeup with their character that that was just part of the necessary job and so on and meeting these you know this takes hours hours and hours there is many press almost as there are view here today as many as that in Europe you you have to stand in front of this group of press and all you have bright cameras going by my baby Barry your eyes are really blinded by the end and then here you everyone's shouting at you it's very very Ellen it's quite it takes hours and by the time it's done when you get to the what I thought would there be parties and you'd meet other actors you'd be kind of wild one that Jack Nicholson would be there we'd end up going to some far and Harry Dean Stanton would sing Mexican songs for you and none of that happened none of it oh what a surprise yeah yeah it just you met a lot of from North fence because they are very important to the making of films but a lot of executives film executives and producers and and the conversation is pretty repetitive and it wasn't all that um I I mean being innocent I didn't know how to I saw that all the other actors probably went off to their private homes it's a I don't know if you know LA but it's not really a it people tend to have parties they have beautiful homes with pools and they so you have to be part of a social scene to meet people there isn't and there isn't a kind of open social scene with you great okay let's open the floor so we're going to have some questions now now we've got two roving mics okay so if you want to ask a question please put up a hand I'll point you out please wait for the mic okay because even if we can hear you many of the audience won't be able to hear you unless you speak into mic the second request please keep your questions short sharp to the point because I'm sure there's lots of people who will want to ask questions okay so a hand went up straight away there this person there and then we'll go to the end up there okay so this one first yeah thank you one of the one of the actresses working on the Shakespeare's weekend last weekend was from Holland and a May and she I didn't know about this group but she said there's a particular group of women or people working with the energy of Mary Magdalene so they're looking at her life and they're looking at the teachings about Mary Magdalene and and um trying to see you're doing that as a balance to what they perceive as a very masculine perception of how of how things should happen in the world I guess and and she was talking a lot about um the UM the womb is a very important center of for a woman as as important as the man's genitalia is to the man and how it was very different it's all very obvious stuff but it but it but she said them we need we need more leaders who work with this the idea that the the womb is magnetic it draws it with equal force to the way that men penetrate and pierce and push it pulls or draws um and this this for some reason just made it what I kind of knew that idea but the way she expressed it was very was very clear for me that said that the UM it's much easier to see the penetrating pushing piercing energy of the masculine in the world and and actually I have been but when I think about I've been drawn by the womb all my life it's a very magnetic energy it reminded me also funnily enough off on what we had to learn at the globe because when we first played at the globe we were also worried about not being heard that we were all speaking like this very loudly once more into the breach dear friends once more and it gets into a panicky thing can you hear me and you hear me and this is the kind of thing on the street if you hear someone speaking like that you've got all its trouble I think I'm going to go over here someone's lost their mind and so unconsciously that kind of masculine and we had a voice teacher who came and said you're all electrifying the audience but but their ears are closing as much as you're speaking loudly there is a closing because they can feel the panic of you and we had to learn a magnetic voice that drew the audience towards us at some times you know in the Shakespeare play say when Macduff's children are killed and he says all all my chicks or my cheek or my little one or my little one he has to say that in such a way that all of you can hear it but you mustn't for a moment think that he has any concern that he cares whether you're here because that would that would make it unbelievable that his kid had just been killed so that kind of womb-like voice also I think it just present in a lot of ways - for me that some of the greatest acting I like is mysterious but in our culture which is so obsessed with information known clarity that it has to be the masculine clarity that that's the powerful thing the clear message get the message out there and the wounds way of leading is mysterious it's not visible it's it's um it's a totally different way of thinking about moving people towards something to draw them towards it because this place that I want you to come to is a very very fertile creative place it's a protective place and so all those thoughts were just interesting to me as an artist okay so now it's a little bit difficult to talk about because it's so on the edge of lust and sexuality and not talking about that aspect of it they talk about if you talk about it with Sylvester Stallone at all so well I was very friendly his brother was great though did you see his brothers tweets afterwards who is this Mark Rylance he can't even comb his hair I went this year I almost took a comb and you know ok thanks a lot for that mark you're Christian up there and then we'll go up there afterwards [Music] that's a great question so relations to do know its interest in the comfort zone I've always been someone who's you put up a fence and I'll always be interested in what's on the other side of that fence and comfort is a certain fence isn't it a certain the comfort zone like the twilight zone it's not the Twilight zones the comfort zone I've always been I've always just I think it came from my mother I just have always been suspicious of it and so so I've always been interested in in not being comfortable I guess I know and I know in in in a theatre production things can get comfortable and they end it's not so good it's not it's not it's not so lively it's not so um spontaneous or fresh would you think I think when things get a bit comfortable it's fun it's not a positive word for me you know those tests when they say is yellow positive or negative for you community social what you comfortable isn't supposed to for me so I think I I think I've always felt like there's some it comes back to curiously acutely where how good question question sets you mind rolling it comes back to st. George the dragon and the maiden he doesn't he's on that horse because he has to ride out of town he's done finally made the Dragons not in the town it's out in the wilderness and it's in a cave talk about not being comfortable you have to go up to this dark cave the st. George part of you which is the only part of you that's going to find the soul maiden being the soul and this way I'm thinking about it now most stories of st. George heed Spears he kills the dragon with the spear doesn't he he destroys this dragon creature that's that I think is not necessarily the oldest take on that story there's another version and by killing the dragon he released he saves the maiden from this imprisonment by the dragon II creature and he takes the maiden back he kind of winds her but there's a lovely version where Saint George when he gets out there he has a little like ukulele or a guitar he sings a song and the vibrations of the song go into the cave and stir the Dragon and the dragon uncoils a bit and comes out of the cave which when you think about it you're not going to you've got to get that you've got to get that escargots out of the shell haven't you of you're going to eat it yeah so the dragon comes out and you keep singing and he lowers his spear not to kill the dragon but the dragon starts to come up the spear which is now shaking the shaking spear and as the dragon comes up it has four bodies it can walk on the earth it can swim in the water it can fly in the air and it breathes forth fire and as it comes up the spirit it sheds each of those four bodies of those four bodies in elemental thinking Renaissance thinking correspond to our physical nature our psychological nature our spiritual nature our divine nature fourfold it sheds each one of those as it comes up as he sings his song and lo and behold when it gets the top the dragon itself is the maiden the dragon is the maiden the maiden and sit him on his horse and then he turns and goes back to society as a as a man now as a spirit now connected to the soul this is a very interesting myth about where we find our soul our real souls love in life and it is outside the comfort zone in the wilderness and it's the spear and the dragon then become about the two forms of energy the energy that moves as fast as possible which is like in a straight line and is as fast as possible and the opposite which is the densest energy which moves in a spiral denser and denser and denser into a black hole so there you have the first kind of polar opposites how do you make a marriage or relationship between those two things in yourself and in nature that's what the maiden is about the maiden is the relationship between those two things but I guess in life in my rationalization about my distrust of comfort that mythology is interesting to me that I will find the soul in the thing I think is a dragon in my life that's where the soul will be and it won't be by killing that dragon thing so that dragon thing is - in a most obvious way to Kundalini natural energy of the senses which to many religions have told us to distrust and repress and kill in order to get this pure virgin maiden but this old version of that story says no it's through your senses it's through your senses in a careful you know interestingly with a song or harmony calming senses like Orpheus that you will reveal the maiden in yourself there's a very unusual answer to your question yeah but I hope it makes some sense yeah so I I guess you weren't expecting that answer but never mind there was a question here young lady there [Music] what initially because you set up the easily format menu to change what was like a simple command a good question yeah and I I'm very I don't mean to speak disrespectfully I've suddenly was aware that many of you a majority of you I love the man from Stratford very much and I don't need to be disrespectful to that man I don't really I think that it's a very very beautiful biography tale and story and history and possibly it's true I I got my mind changed partly because I went along to some a group called the Francis Bacon research trust and they never tried to convince me with Francis Bacon they just talked about the plays in such a wonderful way because because they talked about the Renaissance they talked about the hermetic learning um Kabbalah alchemy um elemental stuff like I've just been talking about all this Renaissance learning that was from from Plato and from the ancients that was flooding in at that time and and it helped me so much in playing Romeo on playing Hamlet at that time I was playing Romeo for example this was why I went along to the meeting I met two fellas in the dark car park out in the wilderness again after a performance of Romeo and Juliet and and they said oh we're going along to this I said did you'd like it oh yeah they liked it that alchemy is so wonderful in it they said and I thought alchemy was just a kind of trick way to pretend that you can make gold I had knew nothing about young and about alchemy being a way of describing the processes of change in the psyche and the soul and they so yeah it's wonderful because he talks first of all Romeo about having the soul of lead and then when he's in the orchard the the trees are silver topped and that makes us aware that our chemically the poet is thinking this is a mercurial moment this is a the massive change silver and then at the end the the parents make gold statues out of the tomb and that's because their love has been an act of pure service has been golden in alchemy that's the it's the idea of service or wholeness and I thought all I didn't realize that that confirms feelings I had about Romeo being very depressed at the beginning that's just not that's not just me playing Hamlet in the evening and then coming playing Romeo on Hamlet cleaning Romeo up there is something about that in the play and I saw that the the balcony scene could be very mercurial and silver and quick and that this golden thing was not necessarily cynical at the end of the play so out of where'd you learn this they said the Francis Bacon research trust come tomorrow if you want so I just went along and and learned a lot of stuff one of the difficulties with the Stratford biography is because there is so little if any evidence of education or book learning or foreign travel or foreign languages to look to say that there's our chemical or cabbalistic knowledge in the blades causes a problem for the biography because it's another thing you think well how did he get that knowledge but if you're looking at the place from the eyes of Francis Bacon you've got no problem with that because Francis Bacon was this genius of the time here they are did age 17 take a picture of himself and writes around in Latin if only I could paint the mind of this person so so suddenly foreign travel and all this infinite knowledge is available in that biography so you see how I bought biography forms a kind of window or a door into the plays each of you each of us will have a biographical story for the author none not one is it better than the other but each one makes a particular shape and and confines the possible meanings of the plays to one thing you see so I just got interested and this stuff was helpful to me and after a while I remember waking up one morning near straps and thinking I'm not sure I see Shakespeare's face I'm not sure who I see writing these plays I I think I'm starting to see Francis Bacon is involved I don't I really don't know who did it still to this day but I it certainly seems very very unlikely that people like Francis Bacon and the Earl of Oxford weren't involved in somewhere or other the man from Stratford result was obviously involved okay now I think we've got time only for one more question if I was someone I know the questions are very short the answers were very long I like lots of different forms of theatre none have come to a feeling partly the authorship question has helped me this of enjoying I'm not really a monotheistic what I like to either all the way there were lots of gods and lots of different ways of doing theatre and it seems it would be a horrible thing if every production was how I like it this would be it would get very tedious and be horrible so I I don't I I seen some marvelous I've had marvelous experiences in the theatre that have been very director led Robert the pods I don't think as much of a collaborator I think he's probably very decisive about what he wants and um there are many different forms I suppose for my money I I enjoy acting and the play between actors and if I go to something that is being presented rather than play it's a bit like going to I don't know the football match that's being played tonight between is it man United a man City claim tonight or something or a tennis match and and rather than an actual match they've rehearsed for six weeks Syrena and and Conte lets perfect practice for six weeks a really great tennis match I'll hit it there oh I was going the wrong way on I missed it I missed the Senate for 1.2 you 15-love and then and it's all acting up very well but it's presented I don't want to presented I want to actually have it played like a sports match I know that's kind of ridiculous because it is rehearsals but I want it I want it to be played with us in the same room I want to be in the same room and so sometimes the very director led theater that stuff is all controlled by the lights and the microphones and there isn't so much chance for the actors to evolve in the moment and have spontaneous import a spontaneous thoughts in the moment you know I think one of the that that's one of the things about the authorship question I I don't feel the the author was forced to be anonymous I feel the author chose to be anonymous because I think at that time there was there wasn't just science as a way of learning things there was divine inspiration as well they understood that that our minds are feminine as well as masculine that our minds are receptive and that you get you can you can get inspired you then have to maybe check it with science the science of the senses check and see is this right is this true but there's a balance of the two things and under and really the greater of the two in a way is the inspired moment would Federer now at what age is he 37 38 gets a tennis shot back you think well that's it's humanly impossible when when someone sings a great song that's really beyond the soap something was coming through that person they were inspired or or a great bit of cooking oil you know we've all done things ourselves where you've done to me how did that happen that was amazing I remember coming out in Wolf Hall where we were shooting arrows at a target remember Henry five and a few of us and I came out of after a lunch break and and took an arrow and hit it right in the bullseye and looked round at Henry the eighth and the others you know they were hot huh but you get touched with grace and I think that's what the author that's the author was saying I'm not just a journeyman writer this was this was Shakespeare the goddess Athena coming through coming through me and I was able to write it down and know things but this was an inspired thing curious I'm sounding like a strat for diem now because that's something they often talk about Gandhi but it was all done by human nation sorry not a long answer okay sit down please thank you okay so thank you so much for that mark thank you for no no I mean this it honestly giving so much of yourself that you you know you took so so long over those really great answers I can't say it without a sounding like I'm insulting you so we move on same so much now before we end can I just bring your attention to something else that's happening next week is a talk by our own professor Akram Khan who's up there hiya Graham and he's also up here so that's a journey through mass matter and metaphysics which should be very interesting and you will see that's happening on the 11th of May Phegley please join us outside we have some drinks and some canapés and so on and so forth so you're welcome to stay there and until ask me if you have questions that have an answer to ask me questions out there 2:00 a.m. okay but yeah get a drink and something to eat what get a drink process of your answer yeah yeah need to do that how old drink but to and I to end it would be nice mark if you would see yourself with perhaps a little bit of Shakespeare yes your stand up there so this is on so this is a this is a speech from richard ii and he he is and and he um so as you as you will remember he has been deposed by Bolingbroke and he has been put in prison and the the author has him on his own in prison with you the audience and shortly after this this speech which i'm going to speak with you gods come in here's music and gods come in and kill him so this is a speech i was doing last weekend by his five to I I have been studying how I may compare this prison where I live on to the world and for because the world is populous and here is not a creature but myself I cannot do it yet I'll hammer it out my brain I'll prove the female to my soul my soul the father and these two beget a generation of still breeding thoughts and these same thoughts people this little world in humors like the people of this world from no thought is contented the better sort has thoughts of things divine are intermixed with scruples and to set the word itself against the word as thus come little ones and then again it is hard to come as for a camel to thread the posture of a needles eye thoughts tending to ambition they do plot unlikely wonders how these vain weak nails of mine may tear a passage through this hard world my ragged prison walls and for they cannot die in their own pride thoughts tending to content flatter themselves that they are not the first of fortune slaves nor shall not be the last like silly beggars who sitting in the stocks refuge their shame that many have and the others must sit there and then this thought if I'm the kind of ease barring their own misfortunes on the backs of such as as had before endured the like thus play I in one person many people and none contented sometimes am i king then treason makes me wish myself a beggar and so I am then crushing penury persuades me hmm I was better when he King then I like King to gain and by-and-by think I'm unkind by Bolingbroke and straight I am nothing but would air I be nor I nor any man that but man is with nothing shall be pleased till he be eased with being nothing good way to end [Applause] okay ladies and gentiemen got you oh no no I can't you feel I can feel it because my house scattered my mind is how mercurial and on the you know to all other places and it will answer questions how necessary and thank God there is such a profession is acting for someone like me that when I'm given lines like that suddenly I just I move into a different place then you can really see what what it means to me and how much I just feel more alive when I'm given the confines of a play and the character in a situation like that but otherwise they I don't have the normal kind of boundaries of imagination but it's very very interesting tonight this this thing of talking a lot about myself and then stepping into a character and suddenly feeling almost more here than when I was actually just here in an odd way isn't it I go to plays and I can't I can't believe people are doing it I think well look that's why I did it in that way it's all about your career develop it was brilliant ladies and gentlemen please could you get up I'm trying to find the right way of saying this if you have questions for mark and you want to hang about please do so outside while you have while you're having a drink hey you Markham I'm beyond certain where I've got my own hand right and so we have to take a few photographs out here so if you could take yourselves outside get a drink on tour before you go one last who now [Applause] you

Channel: Brunel University London

Views: 143,470

Keywords: Brunel University, Brunel, University, Uni, Education, Student, Students, Undergraduate, Postgraduate, London, West London, Higher Education, Campus, Courses, Course, Study, Research, Uxbridge, Middlesex, UK, Mark Rylance, Sir Mark Rylance, Tales of Shakespeare, stage and screen, Shakespeare

Id: IrZH9WmpOrw

Length: 104min 0sec (6240 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2017