If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.
And it was the idea that you can do a play - like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever - and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life.
Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.
If I'm going to be honest with you, when I trained at school, I feel like I was training to be a chameleon. I want to be that versatile actor who can do anything - that's why you learn fifty different dialects, you do Shakespeare, you do commedia, you do it all so that if any job comes your way, you should be able to do it.
But as I grew up as a child, falling in love with the theater and Shakespeare, my heroes were Sir Laurence Olivier and Sir John Gielgud.
What is so weird is that young people who want to be 'celebrities' do not want to put in the hard work. They don't want to do the training, go to drama school, read Shakespeare, try different accents and study technique. They just want to be famous. It is not just in England; it's the same in America and all over Europe.
A Shakespeare could have arisen only on English soil. In the same way, your great dramatists and poets express the nature and essence of the Norwegian people, but they also express that which is universally valid for all mankind.
When I was prepping for my Broadway debut as Romeo, it really hit me that I had never done that. I had trained at drama school for three years in my late teens to early 20s, and I'd studied Shakespeare, of course, but I hadn't actually performed it. So to do something like Romeo for my first Broadway role was a challenge.
The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.
Our understanding of Shakespeare already depends largely on the vitality of Renaissance elements in our education. Each man must live in his own generation, as the saying is; but the generations are bound together by the golden links of the great tradition of civilization.
Shakespeare wrote great plays that we're still watching all these years later. Charlie Chaplin made great comedies and they are still as funny today as they ever were.
One of things I'd love to do one day is a Shakespeare with Trevor Nunn. I've done musicals with him, but never Shakespeare. There's no one better.
I did my English A level in England, and we studied Shakespeare. I had great, great high school teachers, and we parsed the text within an inch of its life.
When you can type a few words into a search engine and land on your topic - or when you can scan a Shakespeare play for specific words or symbols - what opportunities might you miss to expand your thinking in unexpected ways?
The 16th-century theatre witnessed the particularly English manifestation of 'the history play.' There can be no doubt that Shakespeare's presentations of 'Henry V' and 'Richard III' have been incalculably more influential than any more sober historical study.
A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.
First of all, Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest. He was from the first moment he actually wrote something for the stage, and he remains so.
Shakespeare was a dramatist of note who lived by writing things to quote.
I am Warhol. I am the No. 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh.
Italy during Shakespeare's time had citizens of all cultures and colors. To pretend that it did not is ignorance. And I don't waste my time on ignorance.
My parents would always take me to the theatre, and I was bored a lot of the time. Loads of Shakespeare, and I didn't know what the hell was going on. And then, when I was 13, we went to see 'The Cherry Orchard,' and it changed everything for me.
I don't think I have had a big break, although joining the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1986 opened up new horizons.
'As You Like It' was the first Shakespeare production I ever did.
I never publicise in advance what I'm going to be singing because I never quite know until I start. I often change my mind halfway through. I sometimes throw in stuff about politics or Shakespeare or do songs in Yiddish.
I couldn't believe verse was supposed to be hard. It was a snap for me. I loved Shakespeare.
Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.
I'm into parlor dramas. I'm into theatre. I'm trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage.
I have always considered it a beautiful metaphor that Cervantes had no fixed address in Spain. He is thus everywhere and nowhere. There are a number of sites connected with his life, but none attract hordes of travellers the way Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe Theatre in London draw Shakespeare aficionados.
Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?
Clarity is so important for Shakespeare.
New fathers, political prisoners, traumatised presidential aides, resolute schoolboys, MEPs addressing unfriendly chambers - we all find that Shakespeare has magically anticipated our precise circumstances. How he was possible, I still don't understand; but there isn't a day I'm not grateful that he speaks to me in my own language.
In many ways, 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' is modeled on Shakespeare's Henry V, which relied on a chorus to explain in words the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt that could never be captured on the Elizabethan stage.
A team is a team is a team. Shakespeare said that many times.
I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.
So, through all that early professional career I would occasionally do a musical, a pantomime or a play with songs. The next stop would be a Shakespeare, or an Ibsen, or a play by a brand new writer who had never done anything in the theater before.
