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So I thought Craig said,
"Come do a TED Talk for my students,"

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

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I'm a professor.

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

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How the hell am I only going to be able
to talk for 15 or 18?"

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So I thought, "I'll give it a go."

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I said, "What should I do?"
He said, "Talk about Shakespeare."

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And I thought, "Why Shakespeare?
Why Shakespeare?"

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The only answer I could come up with

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was to plagiarize our gorgeous,
young Prime Minister

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and say, "Well, it's 2016."

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That's a start.

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And it's the easiest one

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because 400 years and 6 days ago,

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on April 23rd,

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Shakespeare died.

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Prince died this week.

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He's had a lot of press.

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Would he still have that press
400 years from now?

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I don't know.

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Will there be a press 400 years from now?

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Probably not.

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So why? Why after 400 years?

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In 2012, during the London Olympics,
lots of exciting things happened.

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One of them we probably all remember
is the lightning man, right?

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Usain Bolt repeated it again, right?

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Won all those sprint events.

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Hundreds of thousands of people
witnessed something else.

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Every Olympics match a sport with culture.

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And there's always a Cultural Olympiad.

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In 2012, in London,
they chose Shakespeare.

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There were over 100 productions

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between April the 23rd
and the end of the event in November.

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Seventy of those took place
in the Globe Theatre.

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They represented countries,
over 40 countries from around the world,

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and they were in 37 different languages.

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Why?

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Most of those countries
had been colonized by the English.

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Having thrown off
all the shackles of colonization,

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why had they kept Shakespeare?

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And why did they want to listen
to Shakespeare in their own language?

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And why, when they came to London,

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did thousands of people living in London
whose origins were in those countries

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come to listen to Shakespeare

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in the language
into which they had been born?

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That's what I want to talk
to you about today:

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the power of listening to Shakespeare.

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That's why I don't want a text up there.

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Because that would contradict me, right?

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And that's why I'm glad
we closed that book.

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When Shakespeare was first performed,
and for well over 200 years,

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when people wrote about going to plays,

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when they wrote about
going to a Shakespeare play or any play,

54
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they would write in their diary,

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they would write
in their commonplace book,

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"Last night I went, and I heard
Midsummer Night's Dream."

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"Last night I went, and I heard Hamlet."

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No one ever wrote,
until well into the 19th century,

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that they saw a play.

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Because a play is about voice,

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and no one understood that
more than Shakespeare did.

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We are there because it consoles us
to hear a human voice,

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because we want a voice to make
the sounds of joy and sorrow for us.

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Because what matters in life
is what we apprehend,

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what we seize,

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what seizes us -

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those things that make us terrified,

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and those things that make us joyful.

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And theater brings us those,
and Shakespeare, no more so.

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So it's curious -

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not tragic, just curious -

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that when students
come to me at university,

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the majority of them say,
"Oh, Shakespeare. I don't know.

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It was always so hard in high school."

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Some would say,
"Oh, I loved it. I loved it."

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I'd say, "What did you love about it?"

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"Oh, the movies. There are
such great Shakespeare movies."

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And I have to say, "Well, no, no, no, no.

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Shakespeare is not
about watching a movie."

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There has to be a person there,

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a person who is enduring the story for us

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so that in witnessing it,

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we can be grasped and grasp in turn

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the emotions that are being experienced.

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Don't be afraid of Shakespeare, right?

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Most of my students, many of you -

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one of the reasons I thought,
"Well, we'll do this,"

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is because Craig said
there'll be over 900 students here,

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and they're all going to be doing
Shakespeare at some point,

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holding their noses or not.

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I said, "What do they do?"

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

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Midsummer Night's Dream, Hamlet,

94
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Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth."

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

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We'll talk about some of those."

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But most of them probably also use
the No Fear Shakespeare cribs,

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that translate Shakespeare into English

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as if it wasn't English to begin with.

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And the Sparks Notes people
have made millions of dollars

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off the backs of No Fear Shakespeare

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when we shouldn't have feared him
to begin with, right?

103
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And Shakespeare
never made a penny in his life

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off of the printing of his plays.

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He could not have cared less.

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When the Folio came out,
seven years after his death,

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it came out because the surviving partners
of his company wanted to make a memorial.

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He never cared.

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There were hundreds
of editions of his works;

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he never made a penny on them.

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Because it wasn't about reading.

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And that's what I want to focus on now.

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I want to take a couple of scenes,
and I want to talk you through them,

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and I want to try to give you a sense

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of what you can apprehend
when you look and listen.

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And what I'm going to say to you now
and perhaps repeat in concluding -

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because I have no idea where I'm going;

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it will depend on what we hear
when we listen to these texts -

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Don't look for meaning.

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There isn't any.

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Don't look for a thesis.

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Don't hunt themes.

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Don't analyze metaphors.

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Don't worry about what
you're going to write your essay about.

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Just listen.

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And open yourself up as you listen.

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And be very responsive to what you feel.

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Because apprehension
is far more important than comprehension,

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and in Midsummer Night's Dream,

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one of Shakespeare's extraordinary
figures, the Duke Theseus,

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says precisely that
at the end of the play.

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He says, "One of the most interesting
things about life is this."

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He said, "Whenever we apprehend an effect,

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we want to comprehend a cause."

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And that's a problem,

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especially with theater

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and always with life.

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Something happens to us,
and we want to know why.

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Well, the cause doesn't matter.

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Who knows what the first cause
of anything is?

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Was it God the Creator or the Big Bang?

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They're beyond my comprehension, right?

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But in the moment of life,

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I apprehend constantly
what it is to be living,

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and to seek meaning in that

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rather than to simply swim

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in the luxuriousness
of my own soul and heart

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seems like an extraordinary
abandonment of the joy of living.

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So let's look at Shakespeare.

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We'll go through maybe just one scene.

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The screen here tells me
I've got nine-and-a-half minutes.

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We'll see what we can do.

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That'll give us enough for one.

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I'll give you a choice;
I've got a few ideas.

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Let's go for two
that are big ones out there.

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If you haven't encountered them yet,
you're going to in your high school years.

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Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet.

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Which one do you want?

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(Audience) Hamlet.
Romeo and Juliet. Hamlet.

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I think,

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I think Romeo and Juliet.

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Right? Wrong? Craig?

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If I can stay - oh boy,
I'm under nine minutes now.

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So if I can talk like the Bolt Man,

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if we can get through this scene,
maybe we do a bit of Hamlet,

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maybe finish with a moment from Hamlet.

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Here we go.

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What I'm going to do with Romeo and Juliet

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is go to the scene
where we first meet Juliet

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because it tells us something
about Shakespeare.

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Shakespeare's great at women.

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He's great at listening to women
and making us listen to women.

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And there's a reason for that.

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Because in his lifetime,
no woman was ever on the stage.

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No woman ever acted on the English stage

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until 1665.

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So men always played the parts of women,

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and not just boys.

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There were men in the company

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who spent their entire career
aging through female parts.

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So in this scene, we first meet Juliet.

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We have Juliet, and we have the Nurse,
and we have Lady Capulet.

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Three principal women from the play.

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We've not met Juliet yet;

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it's Act 1, scene 3.

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The Nurse is sitting,

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Lady Capulet we've met,
and she comes in and says,

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"Where's my daughter?"

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

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when the men were all fighting,
causing all that difficulty -

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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," -

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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

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about Juliet growing up,

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and Juliet's mother listens,

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knowing that she's about to tell
her daughter childhood is over.

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What's she feeling while she's listening?

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What does any parent feel?

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At that moment -

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commonly in tv ads -

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when you give your child
the keys to the car for the first time?

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When you leave them
at their university residence?

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When their probation officer
comes and takes them away?

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

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Whatever the point,

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where you realize,

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What happened to my child?

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How did I miss that?

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If we're listening,

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that's what's happening in that scene.

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Most productions miss that
because people are reading,

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and they ignore Lady Capulet.

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An extraordinary thing happens
when the Nurse is talking.

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They're trying to figure out
how old Juliet is,

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and her mother says, "Oh, you know,
I don't think she's 14 yet."

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And the Nurse is, "Oh, no, no.
It will be two weeks.

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I remember because my Susan,
my daughter, and her

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were born at the same time.

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My Susan, who God took from me

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because she was too good for me."

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The Nurse's daughter died
in her infancy, and Juliet lived.

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The Nurse says that, looking at Juliet,

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and Lady Capulet is looking at Juliet,

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and two daughters are dead.

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And if we're not listening, we miss that.

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The Nurse tells us, "My Susan died
almost 14 years ago."

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And Lady Capulet is thinking,

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"My child will be lost to me in two weeks

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when she marries Paris,

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and away she goes to live with him."

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And when the child I remember playing
just disappears, is gone.

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That's the crucial thing about listening.

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I've got two minutes.

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I'll very quickly tell you something
about Hamlet and then tie this up.

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

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when all the swordplay is going on
and the poisoning,

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and a dozen people
are going to be dead on stage,

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and it's going to be full of spectacle,

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and it turns into a real guy flick, right?

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There's a chick moment in there
that's powerful, and it's about mothers.

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

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The first of them is, "Hamlet,
let me wipe your brow.

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Take my napkin," she says,
"and wipe your brow. You look so tired."

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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.

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

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

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

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"Let me wipe thy brow,"

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

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

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on a cold day, will tighten up your jacket

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or call you at university and say,
"Is it snowing? Wear your mittens."

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When we don't listen in life,
we miss the small things.

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In literature, listening is crucial
to getting those things too.

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That's why Shakespeare matters.

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Not because we should read him,

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but because we should be listening to him.

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At the beginning of Hamlet,
there's a man who's all alone on stage,

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Francisco,

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

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

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as long as the director
wants to leave him there,

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say nothing.

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

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

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

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Open yourself up to me.

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

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unfold yourself when you read Shakespeare.

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Close the book,

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open yourself up,

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apprehend,

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and you won't worry about the meaning.

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Unfold,

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listen

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and allow life
and literature to touch you.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)