I love e-books. I can carry the complete works of William Shakespeare around with me all the time. Just think about that. Whether I'm on an airplane or wherever. Being able to have a library in your back pocket basically is something I support.
When I was 18 years old I went to Shakespeare Company, the school, and I wrote a poem about my leaves - I felt like a tree that had no leaves. That is the life at 18.
If you grow up in Britain, you just do Shakespeare. If you go and work in a theater once or twice or three times in your life, you're going to end up doing a Shakespeare, because he's obviously such a brilliant, brilliant writer.
We read too much Shakespeare at school, and view our parliamentary politics as dynastic drama, in which an impatient crown prince frets at his long subordination and begins to scheme for the throne he knows he merits, was promised and has earned.
I'm a pro! No, what I mean is I have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. I have been all over the place. I have studied theatre for seven years.
If you're going to do Shakespeare, do Shakespeare. There's a reason why he's been performed for hundreds of years. His words affect people on a very deep level. He's the true humanist. That all comes through his text, his words.
I started out doing theater in New York. I used to go to Shakespeare in the Park a lot.
I considered several names, but Titania, a character from Shakespeare's 'Midsummer Night's Dream', was best able to portray the image I wanted for what is a fantastically elegant and sexy yacht.
What Shakespeare was able to do in English he would certainly not have done in French.
Human brains - in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness - are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evolving with the pace of change.
I got my Actors' Equity card officially by playing Nana the dog in 'Peter Pan' at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. That was the first show I did as a full-fledged, dues-paying member; I earned points in my MFA program, then went into the company after I graduated.
Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.
Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays.
I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.
I'm an infant with Shakespeare; I'm kind of learning how to walk. I am trying to decipher the code, you know? I do my research. And I get a clear understanding of what the language is. It is a tremendous process I have to go through as I am sure all actors do, finding the gems hidden in his language.
In writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars,' I had the freedom to go beyond the original script and add asides, soliloquys and even new scenes. The main characters all get a soliloquy or two - or in Luke's case, several.
Shakespeare wrote all there is that we need to know about dementia in 'King Lear.'
Homer, Vergil, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Proust - not exactly authors one expects to whiz through or take lightly, but like all works of genius, they are meant to be read out loud and loved.
By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag.
I think my strength is always been in being very natural. I think Shakespeare and things like that would be more a stretch for me.
In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.
I think that if Shakespeare had had access to CGI, he would have used it. Imagine Lear conjuring the storm and the lightning.
I do believe, and I will always believe, that Shakespeare on film is really something that should be tried more often because it is an opportunity to take the humanity that Shakespeare writes into characters and express it.
I got an M.F.A. in acting from NYU, and part of our training is to learn how to use swords in combat situations in a performance and Shakespeare plays where you have to fight.
I am not Shakespeare or Hemingway, but I have written stories on tennis that were brilliant.
Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.
Keeping young people away from Shakespeare is like removing a link to their humanness.
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
What is taught in schools generally in the West Indies is that if something is your thing, it's better than anybody else's because it's yours. It's extremely provincial and also damaging. You prevent people from learning things. The biggest absurdity would be, 'Don't read Shakespeare because he was white.'
After a few drinks, my mom would recite her lines as Portia in 'The Merchant of Venice' from her high school play. But I first discovered Shakespeare properly when I was about five. I used to look for the most complicated books I could find and pretend to be reading them. I wanted people to think I was smart.
I trained in Shakespeare, and that's all comedy, even when it's tragedy.
No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil.
Why is the public so interested in movies about the wealthy? My answer is that Shakespeare wrote about kings. That's where the action is. And it's the classic, cathartic thing. You get to indulge in a lifestyle you're not part of, a tragic error leads to a downfall, and you get to say, 'Thank God I'm not him.'
I'm sure if Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be doing classic guitar solos on YouTube.
I kept writing not because I felt I was so good, but because I felt they were so bad, including Shakespeare, all those. The stilted formalism, like chewing cardboard.
I believe that writers have a responsibility to evolve the language, whether by introducing new words or new usages. Shakespeare alone is responsible for something like 3400 words and phrases.
