1
00:00:10,591 --> 00:00:14,509
So I thought Craig said,
"Come do a TED Talk for my students,"

2
00:00:14,509 --> 00:00:16,070
and I thought, Why?

3
00:00:17,100 --> 00:00:18,399
I'm a professor.

4
00:00:18,399 --> 00:00:20,429
I get paid to talk for 50 minutes.

5
00:00:20,429 --> 00:00:23,340
How the hell am I only going to be able
to talk for 15 or 18?

6
00:00:23,340 --> 00:00:25,010
So I thought, "I'll give it a go."

7
00:00:25,010 --> 00:00:27,919
I said, "What should I do?"
He said, "Talk about Shakespeare."

8
00:00:27,919 --> 00:00:30,319
And I thought, "Why Shakespeare?
Why Shakespeare?"

9
00:00:30,319 --> 00:00:32,081
The only answer I could come up with

10
00:00:32,081 --> 00:00:35,859
was to plagiarize our gorgeous,
young Prime Minister

11
00:00:35,859 --> 00:00:38,471
and say, "Well, it's 2016."

12
00:00:38,801 --> 00:00:40,159
That's a start.

13
00:00:40,829 --> 00:00:42,910
And it's the easiest one

14
00:00:42,910 --> 00:00:46,800
because 400 years and 6 days ago,

15
00:00:46,800 --> 00:00:48,690
on April 23rd,

16
00:00:48,690 --> 00:00:50,391
Shakespeare died.

17
00:00:51,551 --> 00:00:53,159
Prince died this week.

18
00:00:53,159 --> 00:00:54,770
He's had a lot of press.

19
00:00:55,380 --> 00:00:58,159
Would he still have that press
400 years from now?

20
00:00:58,159 --> 00:00:59,368
I don't know.

21
00:00:59,368 --> 00:01:01,430
Will there be a press 400 years from now?

22
00:01:01,430 --> 00:01:02,889
Probably not.

23
00:01:03,479 --> 00:01:06,261
So why? Why after 400 years?

24
00:01:07,231 --> 00:01:13,409
In 2012, during the London Olympics,
lots of exciting things happened.

25
00:01:13,849 --> 00:01:17,992
One of them we probably all remember
is the lightning man, right?

26
00:01:17,992 --> 00:01:20,370
Usain Bolt repeated it again, right?

27
00:01:20,370 --> 00:01:22,483
Won all those sprint events.

28
00:01:22,823 --> 00:01:26,370
Hundreds of thousands of people
witnessed something else.

29
00:01:26,630 --> 00:01:30,730
Every Olympics match a sport with culture.

30
00:01:30,730 --> 00:01:33,666
And there's always a Cultural Olympiad.

31
00:01:33,666 --> 00:01:37,479
In 2012, in London,
they chose Shakespeare.

32
00:01:37,479 --> 00:01:39,441
There were over 100 productions

33
00:01:39,441 --> 00:01:43,840
between April the 23rd
and the end of the event in November.

34
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:47,281
Seventy of those took place
in the Globe Theatre.

35
00:01:47,521 --> 00:01:52,171
They represented countries,
over 40 countries from around the world,

36
00:01:52,171 --> 00:01:55,748
and they were in 37 different languages.

37
00:01:55,748 --> 00:01:57,140
Why?

38
00:01:57,140 --> 00:02:00,730
Most of those countries
had been colonized by the English.

39
00:02:01,150 --> 00:02:04,739
Having thrown off
all the shackles of colonization,

40
00:02:04,739 --> 00:02:07,340
why had they kept Shakespeare?

41
00:02:07,870 --> 00:02:11,889
And why did they want to listen
to Shakespeare in their own language?

42
00:02:11,889 --> 00:02:14,340
And why, when they came to London,

43
00:02:14,345 --> 00:02:20,139
did thousands of people living in London
whose origins were in those countries

44
00:02:20,139 --> 00:02:22,579
come to listen to Shakespeare

45
00:02:22,579 --> 00:02:26,259
in the language
into which they had been born?

46
00:02:26,889 --> 00:02:30,281
That's what I want to talk
to you about today:

47
00:02:31,141 --> 00:02:34,449
the power of listening to Shakespeare.

48
00:02:34,449 --> 00:02:37,658
That's why I don't want a text up there.

49
00:02:38,288 --> 00:02:40,899
Because that would contradict me, right?

50
00:02:40,899 --> 00:02:44,189
And that's why I'm glad
we closed that book.

51
00:02:45,199 --> 00:02:49,078
When Shakespeare was first performed,
and for well over 200 years,

52
00:02:49,078 --> 00:02:51,017
when people wrote about going to plays,

53
00:02:51,017 --> 00:02:55,669
when they wrote about
going to a Shakespeare play or any play,

54
00:02:55,669 --> 00:02:57,338
they would write in their diary,

55
00:02:57,338 --> 00:02:59,568
they would write
in their commonplace book,

56
00:02:59,978 --> 00:03:05,207
"Last night I went, and I heard
Midsummer Night's Dream."

57
00:03:06,437 --> 00:03:10,617
"Last night I went, and I heard Hamlet."

58
00:03:11,237 --> 00:03:15,760
No one ever wrote,
until well into the 19th century,

59
00:03:15,760 --> 00:03:18,259
that they saw a play.

60
00:03:18,649 --> 00:03:21,359
Because a play is about voice,

61
00:03:21,829 --> 00:03:25,269
and no one understood that
more than Shakespeare did.

62
00:03:25,799 --> 00:03:31,918
We are there because it consoles us
to hear a human voice,

63
00:03:32,738 --> 00:03:39,231
because we want a voice to make
the sounds of joy and sorrow for us.

64
00:03:39,541 --> 00:03:44,139
Because what matters in life
is what we apprehend,

65
00:03:44,139 --> 00:03:45,689
what we seize,

66
00:03:46,359 --> 00:03:48,180
what seizes us -

67
00:03:48,590 --> 00:03:51,662
those things that make us terrified,

68
00:03:52,562 --> 00:03:55,111
and those things that make us joyful.

69
00:03:55,471 --> 00:04:00,818
And theater brings us those,
and Shakespeare, no more so.

70
00:04:01,608 --> 00:04:03,019
So it's curious -

71
00:04:03,509 --> 00:04:06,171
not tragic, just curious -

72
00:04:06,171 --> 00:04:08,721
that when students
come to me at university,

73
00:04:08,721 --> 00:04:12,540
the majority of them say,
"Oh, Shakespeare. I don't know.

74
00:04:12,710 --> 00:04:14,761
It was always so hard in high school."

75
00:04:14,761 --> 00:04:16,878
Some would say,
"Oh, I loved it. I loved it."

76
00:04:16,878 --> 00:04:18,717
I'd say, "What did you love about it?"

77
00:04:18,717 --> 00:04:21,459
"Oh, the movies. There are
such great Shakespeare movies."

78
00:04:21,459 --> 00:04:23,417
And I have to say, "Well, no, no, no, no.

79
00:04:23,417 --> 00:04:26,161
Shakespeare is not
about watching a movie."

80
00:04:26,161 --> 00:04:28,688
There has to be a person there,

81
00:04:29,608 --> 00:04:34,950
a person who is enduring the story for us

82
00:04:35,250 --> 00:04:37,649
so that in witnessing it,

83
00:04:39,189 --> 00:04:42,748
we can be grasped and grasp in turn

84
00:04:43,328 --> 00:04:46,748
the emotions that are being experienced.

85
00:04:47,028 --> 00:04:49,568
Don't be afraid of Shakespeare, right?

86
00:04:50,378 --> 00:04:52,010
Most of my students, many of you -

87
00:04:52,010 --> 00:04:54,449
one of the reasons I thought,
"Well, we'll do this,"

88
00:04:54,449 --> 00:04:57,180
is because Craig said
there'll be over 900 students here,

89
00:04:57,180 --> 00:04:59,999
and they're all going to be doing
Shakespeare at some point,

90
00:04:59,999 --> 00:05:01,380
holding their noses or not.

91
00:05:01,380 --> 00:05:02,718
I said, "What do they do?"

92
00:05:02,718 --> 00:05:04,107
"Well, the usual things:

93
00:05:04,107 --> 00:05:06,907
Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet,

94
00:05:07,497 --> 00:05:09,939
Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth."

95
00:05:09,939 --> 00:05:12,140
I thought, "Great.
We'll get there. We'll see.

96
00:05:12,140 --> 00:05:14,642
We'll talk about some of those."

97
00:05:15,382 --> 00:05:20,160
But most of them probably also use
the No Fear Shakespeare cribs,

98
00:05:20,160 --> 00:05:22,580
that translate Shakespeare into English

99
00:05:22,870 --> 00:05:25,300
as if it wasn't English to begin with.

100
00:05:25,300 --> 00:05:28,779
And the Sparks Notes people
have made millions of dollars

101
00:05:28,779 --> 00:05:32,249
off the backs of No Fear Shakespeare

102
00:05:33,539 --> 00:05:36,448
when we shouldn't have feared him
to begin with, right?

103
00:05:36,788 --> 00:05:39,300
And Shakespeare
never made a penny in his life

104
00:05:39,300 --> 00:05:41,077
off of the printing of his plays.

105
00:05:41,077 --> 00:05:43,680
He could not have cared less.

106
00:05:44,220 --> 00:05:47,711
When the Folio came out,
seven years after his death,

107
00:05:48,051 --> 00:05:54,669
it came out because the surviving partners
of his company wanted to make a memorial.

108
00:05:54,909 --> 00:05:56,510
He never cared.

109
00:05:57,270 --> 00:05:59,409
There were hundreds
of editions of his works;

110
00:05:59,409 --> 00:06:00,964
he never made a penny on them.

111
00:06:00,964 --> 00:06:03,289
Because it wasn't about reading.

112
00:06:03,289 --> 00:06:05,780
And that's what I want to focus on now.

113
00:06:05,780 --> 00:06:10,131
I want to take a couple of scenes,
and I want to talk you through them,

114
00:06:10,591 --> 00:06:13,040
and I want to try to give you a sense

115
00:06:13,040 --> 00:06:18,759
of what you can apprehend
when you look and listen.

116
00:06:18,759 --> 00:06:23,209
And what I'm going to say to you now
and perhaps repeat in concluding -

117
00:06:23,209 --> 00:06:26,719
because I have no idea where I'm going;

118
00:06:26,724 --> 00:06:30,719
it will depend on what we hear
when we listen to these texts -

119
00:06:31,659 --> 00:06:34,329
don't look for meaning.

120
00:06:34,719 --> 00:06:36,531
There isn't any.

121
00:06:37,411 --> 00:06:39,640
Don't look for a thesis.

122
00:06:39,980 --> 00:06:41,597
Don't hunt themes.

123
00:06:41,797 --> 00:06:43,970
Don't analyze metaphors.

124
00:06:44,120 --> 00:06:47,931
Don't worry about what
you're going to write your essay about.

125
00:06:48,271 --> 00:06:50,030
Just listen.

126
00:06:50,760 --> 00:06:53,420
And open yourself up as you listen.

127
00:06:54,670 --> 00:06:57,178
And be very responsive to what you feel.

128
00:06:57,658 --> 00:07:03,699
Because apprehension
is far more important than comprehension,

129
00:07:04,089 --> 00:07:05,761
and in Midsummer Night's Dream,

130
00:07:05,761 --> 00:07:09,099
one of Shakespeare's extraordinary
figures, the Duke Theseus,

131
00:07:09,099 --> 00:07:11,440
says precisely that
at the end of the play.

132
00:07:11,440 --> 00:07:14,510
He says, "One of the most interesting
things about life is this."

133
00:07:14,510 --> 00:07:18,209
He said, "Whenever we apprehend an effect,

134
00:07:19,279 --> 00:07:21,600
we want to comprehend a cause."

135
00:07:21,880 --> 00:07:23,528
And that's a problem,

136
00:07:23,528 --> 00:07:25,568
especially with theater

137
00:07:25,568 --> 00:07:27,609
and always with life.

138
00:07:27,609 --> 00:07:31,869
Something happens to us,
and we want to know why.

139
00:07:33,739 --> 00:07:35,640
Well, the cause doesn't matter.

140
00:07:36,310 --> 00:07:39,779
Who knows what the first cause
of anything is?

141
00:07:39,779 --> 00:07:44,040
Was it God the Creator or the Big Bang?

142
00:07:44,620 --> 00:07:47,969
They're beyond my comprehension, right?

143
00:07:48,519 --> 00:07:50,529
But in the moment of life,

144
00:07:51,839 --> 00:07:56,730
I apprehend constantly
what it is to be living,

145
00:07:57,100 --> 00:07:59,041
and to seek meaning in that

146
00:07:59,041 --> 00:08:00,828
rather than to simply swim

147
00:08:00,828 --> 00:08:05,179
in the luxuriousness
of my own soul and heart

148
00:08:05,869 --> 00:08:11,101
seems like an extraordinary
abandonment of the joy of living.

149
00:08:11,101 --> 00:08:12,549
So let's look at Shakespeare.

150
00:08:12,549 --> 00:08:14,908
We'll go through maybe just one scene.

151
00:08:14,908 --> 00:08:17,621
The screen here tells me
I've got nine-and-a-half minutes.

152
00:08:17,621 --> 00:08:18,969
We'll see what we can do.

153
00:08:18,969 --> 00:08:20,500
That'll give us enough for one.

154
00:08:20,500 --> 00:08:22,600
I'll give you a choice;
I've got a few ideas.

155
00:08:22,600 --> 00:08:24,861
Let's go for two
that are big ones out there.

156
00:08:24,861 --> 00:08:28,618
If you haven't encountered them yet,
you're going to in your high school years.

157
00:08:28,618 --> 00:08:31,061
Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet.

158
00:08:31,061 --> 00:08:32,539
Which one do you want?

159
00:08:32,539 --> 00:08:36,710
(Audience) Hamlet.
Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet.

160
00:08:39,470 --> 00:08:40,631
I think,

161
00:08:40,631 --> 00:08:42,971
I think Romeo and Juliet.

162
00:08:42,971 --> 00:08:45,159
Right? Wrong? Craig?

163
00:08:47,089 --> 00:08:50,510
If I can stay - oh boy,
I'm under nine minutes now.

164
00:08:50,510 --> 00:08:53,800
So if I can talk like the Bolt Man,

165
00:08:53,800 --> 00:08:56,761
if we can get through this scene,
maybe we do a bit of Hamlet,

166
00:08:56,761 --> 00:08:58,640
maybe finish with a moment from Hamlet.

167
00:08:58,640 --> 00:08:59,931
Here we go.

168
00:08:59,931 --> 00:09:01,988
What I'm going to do with Romeo and Juliet

169
00:09:01,988 --> 00:09:04,090
is go to the scene
where we first meet Juliet

170
00:09:04,090 --> 00:09:07,062
because it tells us something
about Shakespeare.

171
00:09:07,062 --> 00:09:08,651
Shakespeare's great at women.

172
00:09:08,651 --> 00:09:11,748
He's great at listening to women
and making us listen to women.

173
00:09:11,748 --> 00:09:13,180
And there's a reason for that.

174
00:09:13,180 --> 00:09:17,010
Because in his lifetime,
no woman was ever on the stage.

175
00:09:17,010 --> 00:09:20,080
No woman ever acted on the English stage

176
00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:24,140
until 1665.

177
00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:27,499
So men always played the parts of women,

178
00:09:27,499 --> 00:09:29,010
and not just boys.

179
00:09:29,010 --> 00:09:30,401
There were men in the company

180
00:09:30,401 --> 00:09:33,309
who spent their entire career
aging through female parts.

181
00:09:33,309 --> 00:09:35,582
So in this scene, we first meet Juliet.

182
00:09:35,582 --> 00:09:41,131
We have Juliet, and we have the Nurse,
and we have Lady Capulet.

183
00:09:41,441 --> 00:09:44,114
Three principal women from the play.

184
00:09:44,524 --> 00:09:46,340
We've not met Juliet yet;

185
00:09:46,340 --> 00:09:48,241
it's Act 1, scene 3.

186
00:09:50,101 --> 00:09:51,631
The Nurse is sitting,

187
00:09:53,241 --> 00:09:57,740
Lady Capulet we've met,
and she comes in and says,

188
00:09:57,740 --> 00:09:59,560
"Where's my daughter?"

189
00:10:00,530 --> 00:10:03,599
We met Lady Capulet in Act 1, scene 1,

190
00:10:03,599 --> 00:10:06,899
when the men were all fighting,
causing all that difficulty -

191
00:10:06,899 --> 00:10:09,890
the Montagues and the Capulets
wrestling with one another,

192
00:10:09,890 --> 00:10:11,652
men drawing their swords,

193
00:10:11,652 --> 00:10:14,382
all demonstrating their masculinity.

194
00:10:14,682 --> 00:10:17,811
Excruciatingly funny.

195
00:10:18,561 --> 00:10:22,320
And Lady Capulet knows that,
and she mocks her husband.

196
00:10:22,630 --> 00:10:26,890
She says to him, "Why bother
getting your sword out, old man?

197
00:10:27,800 --> 00:10:29,801
There's no point to it."

198
00:10:30,771 --> 00:10:33,010
She's a strong woman.

199
00:10:33,910 --> 00:10:37,999
So she comes in, and she says,
"Where's my daughter?"

200
00:10:39,349 --> 00:10:42,677
And the Nurse says, "Oh,
by my maiden head these last 12 years,"

201
00:10:42,677 --> 00:10:46,728
she says, "I called her; she didn't come."

202
00:10:46,728 --> 00:10:49,989
She says, "I swear by my virginity at 12,
I've been calling her.

203
00:10:49,989 --> 00:10:51,309
I don't know where she is,"

204
00:10:51,319 --> 00:10:53,529
and then she gets up,
and she says, "Juliet," -

205
00:10:53,529 --> 00:10:56,249
No, no, I don't want that.
I don't want anything up there.

206
00:10:56,249 --> 00:10:58,558
Can we just kill that? Is it impossible?

207
00:10:58,918 --> 00:11:01,770
How do I kill those screens? Great -

208
00:11:03,180 --> 00:11:05,578
And she starts calling her:

209
00:11:05,578 --> 00:11:11,690
"Ladybird. My dear one. Where are you?"

210
00:11:12,490 --> 00:11:14,099
In most productions,

211
00:11:14,099 --> 00:11:16,707
Juliet's on the balcony
or she's not on stage,

212
00:11:16,707 --> 00:11:18,739
because the text says, "Enter Juliet."

213
00:11:18,739 --> 00:11:21,687
It's always, in the original printings,

214
00:11:22,167 --> 00:11:24,563
they say, "Enter,"
when the character speaks.

215
00:11:24,563 --> 00:11:26,377
She's already there.

216
00:11:26,857 --> 00:11:30,170
Everything the Nurse is saying,
if you listen - right? -

217
00:11:30,170 --> 00:11:32,719
is what you do when you're playing
with a small child.

218
00:11:32,719 --> 00:11:34,318
You must have all done that,

219
00:11:34,318 --> 00:11:37,848
or an aunt or an uncle or parent
has done that with you.

220
00:11:38,248 --> 00:11:40,777
Joey, Joey, where are you, Joey?

221
00:11:40,777 --> 00:11:43,270
My goodness, Joey.
When are you going to come?

222
00:11:43,270 --> 00:11:45,777
My, what am I going to do with you, Joey?

223
00:11:45,777 --> 00:11:47,988
And where's Joey the whole time?

224
00:11:48,708 --> 00:11:53,409
Right there. Right behind you,
and you pretend you don't see him.

225
00:11:53,409 --> 00:11:54,597
That's where Juliet is

226
00:11:54,597 --> 00:11:57,704
if we really are listening
to what the Nurse is doing there.

227
00:11:57,704 --> 00:12:02,870
"Ladybird. My dear one. Where are you?"

228
00:12:03,780 --> 00:12:06,448
And Lady Capulet is standing, watching.

229
00:12:06,898 --> 00:12:10,849
And eventually Juliet says, 
"Here I am. Who wants me?" -

230
00:12:11,289 --> 00:12:13,118
playing with the Nurse.

231
00:12:13,448 --> 00:12:15,480
The Nurse says, "Your mother."

232
00:12:18,300 --> 00:12:21,069
And Lady Capulet says to the Nurse,

233
00:12:21,069 --> 00:12:22,370
"Will you give us a minute?

234
00:12:22,370 --> 00:12:24,531
There's something
I need to tell my daughter."

235
00:12:24,531 --> 00:12:26,500
And the Nurse begins to leave,

236
00:12:28,030 --> 00:12:32,119
and Lady Capulet says,
"No, come back. Please, come back."

237
00:12:34,889 --> 00:12:37,669
And what she needs to tell Juliet is,

238
00:12:37,669 --> 00:12:41,620
"Your father has decided
that you're going to be married now,

239
00:12:42,180 --> 00:12:46,299
and you're going to meet tonight
the man you're going to marry."

240
00:12:46,829 --> 00:12:51,599
Now, what's crucial in this scene,
if we are listening and looking,

241
00:12:51,599 --> 00:12:53,682
is what Lady Capulet's doing.

242
00:12:53,682 --> 00:12:55,421
Because always in Shakespeare

243
00:12:55,421 --> 00:12:59,080
in crucial scenes
when he wants us to listen,

244
00:12:59,080 --> 00:13:01,801
there's a listener on stage,

245
00:13:01,801 --> 00:13:03,907
and here it's Lady Capulet,

246
00:13:04,327 --> 00:13:08,660
listening while her daughter
plays with the Nurse,

247
00:13:08,660 --> 00:13:11,881
and then the Nurse tells a long story,

248
00:13:12,971 --> 00:13:14,870
a comic story

249
00:13:15,790 --> 00:13:17,850
about Juliet growing up,

250
00:13:18,470 --> 00:13:20,444
and Juliet's mother listens,

251
00:13:22,460 --> 00:13:29,009
knowing that she's about to tell
her daughter childhood is over.

252
00:13:30,929 --> 00:13:33,419
What's she feeling while she's listening?

253
00:13:33,419 --> 00:13:35,910
What does any parent feel?

254
00:13:38,670 --> 00:13:39,791
At that moment -

255
00:13:39,791 --> 00:13:41,621
commonly in tv adds -

256
00:13:42,041 --> 00:13:45,710
when you give your child
the keys to the car for the first time?

257
00:13:47,250 --> 00:13:51,501
When you leave them
at their university residence?

258
00:13:54,251 --> 00:13:57,304
When their probation officer
comes and takes them away?

259
00:13:57,304 --> 00:13:58,453
(Laughter)

260
00:13:58,453 --> 00:13:59,988
Whatever the point,

261
00:13:59,988 --> 00:14:01,956
where you realize,

262
00:14:03,126 --> 00:14:05,100
What happened to my child?

263
00:14:06,750 --> 00:14:08,407
How did I miss that?

264
00:14:08,967 --> 00:14:10,410
If we're listening,

265
00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:13,739
that's what's happening in that scene.

266
00:14:13,739 --> 00:14:18,260
Most productions miss that
because people are reading,

267
00:14:18,260 --> 00:14:20,169
and they ignore Lady Capulet.

268
00:14:20,169 --> 00:14:23,589
An extraordinary thing happens
when the Nurse is talking.

269
00:14:23,989 --> 00:14:26,599
They're trying to figure out
how old Juliet is,

270
00:14:26,599 --> 00:14:30,218
and her mother says, "Oh, you know,
I don't think she's 14 yet."

271
00:14:30,218 --> 00:14:32,699
And the Nurse is, "Oh, no, no.
It will be two weeks.

272
00:14:32,699 --> 00:14:36,160
I remember because my Susan,
my daughter, and her

273
00:14:36,160 --> 00:14:38,288
were born at the same time.

274
00:14:38,288 --> 00:14:42,909
My Susan, who God took from me

275
00:14:42,909 --> 00:14:45,550
because she was too good for me."

276
00:14:45,550 --> 00:14:51,719
The Nurse's daughter died
in her infancy, and Juliet lived.

277
00:14:52,849 --> 00:14:55,910
The Nurse says that, looking at Juliet,

278
00:14:56,170 --> 00:14:58,951
and Lady Capulet is looking at Juliet,

279
00:15:00,211 --> 00:15:02,238
and two daughters are dead.

280
00:15:02,868 --> 00:15:05,140
And if we're not listening, we miss that.

281
00:15:06,100 --> 00:15:11,671
The Nurse tells us, "My Susan died
almost 14 years ago."

282
00:15:12,041 --> 00:15:14,050
And Lady Capulet is thinking,

283
00:15:14,430 --> 00:15:20,273
"My child will be lost to me in two weeks

284
00:15:20,893 --> 00:15:22,817
when she marries Paris,

285
00:15:22,817 --> 00:15:25,750
and away she goes to live with him."

286
00:15:26,850 --> 00:15:33,426
And when the child I remember playing
just disappears, is gone.

287
00:15:33,936 --> 00:15:36,819
That's the crucial thing about listening.

288
00:15:36,819 --> 00:15:38,008
I've got two minutes.

289
00:15:38,008 --> 00:15:41,729
I'll very quickly tell you something
about Hamlet and then tie this up.

290
00:15:42,169 --> 00:15:43,979
At the end of Hamlet,

291
00:15:44,689 --> 00:15:47,800
when all the swordplay is going on
and the poisoning,

292
00:15:47,800 --> 00:15:50,089
and a dozen people
are going to be dead on stage,

293
00:15:50,089 --> 00:15:51,969
and it's going to be full of spectacle,

294
00:15:51,969 --> 00:15:54,888
and it turns into a real guy flick, right?

295
00:15:54,888 --> 00:15:59,219
There's a chick moment in there
that's powerful, and it's about mothers.

296
00:16:00,089 --> 00:16:03,580
Gertrude says nothing but three lines.

297
00:16:04,210 --> 00:16:10,739
The first of them is, "Hamlet,
let me wipe your brow.

298
00:16:11,209 --> 00:16:15,443
Take my napkin," she says,
"and wipe your brow. You look so tired."

299
00:16:15,983 --> 00:16:19,608
At the start of the play, she'd wanted
to touch him, and he wouldn't let her.

300
00:16:19,608 --> 00:16:20,970
He never lets her touch him;

301
00:16:20,970 --> 00:16:24,311
he pulls away because he's angry at her
for marrying his uncle, right?

302
00:16:24,311 --> 00:16:27,769
Shakespeare gives her
as her second-last line,

303
00:16:28,259 --> 00:16:30,569
"Let me wipe thy brow,"

304
00:16:30,999 --> 00:16:35,212
and she takes her handkerchief
and wipes the sweat off her son's brow,

305
00:16:35,212 --> 00:16:39,611
just the way your mother,
even when you're 62 like me,

306
00:16:40,021 --> 00:16:44,180
on a cold day, will tighten up your jacket

307
00:16:44,180 --> 00:16:50,340
or call you at university and say,
"Is it snowing? Wear your mittens."

308
00:16:51,920 --> 00:16:56,979
When we don't listen in life,
we miss the small things.

309
00:16:56,979 --> 00:17:01,948
In literature, listening is crucial
to getting those things too.

310
00:17:01,948 --> 00:17:04,929
That's why Shakespeare matters.

311
00:17:04,929 --> 00:17:07,670
Not because we should read him,

312
00:17:08,060 --> 00:17:11,130
but because we should be listening to him.

313
00:17:11,620 --> 00:17:16,027
At the beginning of Hamlet,
there's a man who's all alone on stage,

314
00:17:16,027 --> 00:17:17,101
Francisco,

315
00:17:17,101 --> 00:17:19,479
waiting to be relieved by Bernardo.

316
00:17:19,479 --> 00:17:21,188
He can be out there alone

317
00:17:21,188 --> 00:17:23,880
as long as the director
wants to leave him there,

318
00:17:23,880 --> 00:17:25,238
say nothing.

319
00:17:25,238 --> 00:17:30,287
Bernardo comes, and Bernardo says,
"Who's there?" because it's dark.

320
00:17:30,287 --> 00:17:33,048
And Francisco says, "Nay.

321
00:17:33,918 --> 00:17:38,449
[Answer me. Stand]
and unfold yourself," he says.

322
00:17:38,970 --> 00:17:40,708
Open yourself up to me.

323
00:17:40,708 --> 00:17:41,979
And I say to you,

324
00:17:41,979 --> 00:17:46,989
unfold yourself when you read Shakespeare.

325
00:17:46,989 --> 00:17:49,254
Close the book,

326
00:17:49,254 --> 00:17:50,709
open yourself up,

327
00:17:50,709 --> 00:17:52,277
apprehend,

328
00:17:53,017 --> 00:17:55,698
and you won't worry about the meaning.

329
00:17:56,028 --> 00:17:57,323
Unfold,

330
00:17:57,533 --> 00:17:58,808
listen

331
00:17:58,948 --> 00:18:02,949
and allow life
and literature to touch you.

332
00:18:03,509 --> 00:18:04,609
Thank you.

333
00:18:04,609 --> 00:18:06,639
(Applause)