>> rose: welcome to our program, tonight a charlie rose special edition: why shakespeare. in our premier episode, we explore the genius of william shakespeare and focus on one of his greatest plays "hamlet." the thing that astonishes all of actors who portray hamlet and director who try to take hamlet on is the way that he is infinitely protean. you can find things of almost every different direction, of ery different time perd, everyifferent psychology inside that character and we're l hamlet because hamlet takes on our appearance. takes on who we are and speaks

to us in any time. >> what a complex act it is to knowhat you are. to try to fulfill the expectations of your parents, to make your way in the world, to understand that you are no simply in the world to make it what you want but you're given a set of, in effect, commands that you can ask questions about them and question them but you can't escape them. you have to struggle with them. see where they lead you. hamlet is, of course, a tragic case of this "oh cursed spite that ever i was born" he says for himself. but that experience over the centuries has spoken to generations and generations. >> rose: a charlie rose special edition: why shakespeare? coming up.

captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts an hour upon the stage and then is heard

no more. it is a tale told by idiot full of sound and fury signify nothing. >> rose: welcome to our charlie rose special edition "why shakespeare?" we will hear from some of the most celebrated actors, directors and scholars wking together they'll he us understand the gens of shakespear, nearly 400 years after his death we're left wondering how could one person be so enduring and speak so eloquently to what it means to be human. shakespeare's grea rival wrote of him "he was not of an age but all time." lawrence olivier once called him "the nearest thing in incarnation to the eye of god." he was born in 1564 in the small

provincial english town of stratford upon avon. he moved to london in the late 15s and in a remarkably short period of time became perhaps the greate play write of all time. the names speak for themselves. "hamlet," ""king lear" othello, macbeth, romeo and juliet. these plays have been passed down through generations, they dazzle us with an appeal that transcends time and culture. tonight in our first episode of the charlie rose shakespeare series we start with conversations on the greatness and the anything ma. we'll talk to oskar eustis, a director of the new york public theater. barbara gaines, director of the the chicago shakespeare theater. we'll also hear from some other shakespeare devoe taes appearanr program. they include shakespeare scholar steven greenblatt and harold bloom, also the director of the royal shakespeare coany, michael boyd. we then conclude our evening looking at "hamlet." sir john gielgud, whose

portrayals were considered among the finest, described the part as summing up the process of living. helping us understand the play will be oskar eustis and steven greenblatt. with that, i'd like to welcome you to the first episode in our charlie rose shakespeare series we call "why shakespee? " iope you enjoy the conversation. >> good night. good night. parting is such sweet sorrow. if you say good night, then bit morrow. >> when somebody says to you "who was shakespeare" what do you say? >> he was the greatest writer in the history of the english language. he was the person who made the theater democratic andhat's what made him the greatest writer because you look at shakespeare... you look at him in context and what he did was

write for an audience and he had to simultaneously please illiterate ground lings, plse cambridge educated intellectuals please the aristocracy all at the same moment because the tudorcompromise had brought together an audience in that theater that was more diverse and mixed than any audience the western world has seen since the greeks. so we had to write plays that spoke to all of these people at the same time. and that's why, fro my point of view,hat audience called shakespeare's greatness into being. because by wring for all of them he was forced to expand the range human experience in those plays so they still touch us today. >> rose: so we need to think about the audience whene think about the writing? >> absolutely. beautiful example of this is we did a production of "measure for measure" that we toured to prisons and there's... >> rose: great idea. >> it was a fantastic production and there was one moment where isabella has just been propositioned by angelo and told

that she can save her broer's life who's going to be executed for fornication if she will sleep with the judge who has condemned him. and he tells her this and then leaves her devastated on the stage and she turned out to this audience-- this was a woman's prison on the west side here in manhattan-- and begins the soliloquy. she says "to whom should i complain?" and a woman in the audience shouted out "the police!" and then nicole, who played isabella delivered the next line directly to that woman. she said "if i should compla, who would believe me?" and the woman answered "no one, girl." and what you saw at that moment that these sol quill questions were actually call and response written in dialogue with that audience. this is not some art under glass. this is live theater at its finest and it makes it an incredibly communal art form. >> why have we not seen another shakespeare?

>> my personal feeling is it's because the social conditions necessary to turn a great writer into the greatest writer have not recurred. whaps what happened for that couple of decades in liz bethan and early jacobian england was a society comeing into consciousness of itself, mixing together the different classes, trying to forge a unity out of the different classes and deman that a writer write their story, reflect themselves back to them and by doing that took a man who was always a great poet, one heck of a sonnet writer and that pressure turned him into a write thaer that carried the hopes and dreams and aspirations of england on his back. you see shakespeare is defining what it is to be english. he's helping the english create

their own identity. he's wedding together the different nationalities, the welshman, the scotsman the irish man and giving them a sense of being british, more than just a colltion of tribes. he's defining an english attitude towards royalty because ofourse, what all of english is struggling with is we can no longer believe in a divine right of kings. our own history proves that. so if we don't believe in the divine right of kings, what gives a king legitimacy? and that's the question th shakespeare is answering. >> rose: he constantly comes back to it. >> exactly! >> rose: what is the nature of a king's power. >>xactly. but also what gives him the right to utilize it. >> rose: exactly. >> and in tt little touch of harry in the night en king henry disguises himself and goes amonhis own soldiers and hears unvarnished and uncensored what they think of him with no ability to take retaliation or revenge but having to listen to them, you realize that's the thing that gives him the right to be king. if he actually takes on himself

the burden of his subjects, he owes them, he is responsible to them and that's what burns kinship. >> he that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he near so vile, this day shall gentle his condition and gentlemen in england now abed shall think themselves acursed they were not here and hold their man hoods cheap while those that fought with us upon . crispin's day! (cheers and applause) >> rose: how was he a genius? >> he could... that's a huge question. i think he sort of had the greatest... one of the things is he had the greatest range of human sympathy that the world has ever known. he wouldn't judge you, he just be you, it's the being, isn't it? >> would that will be empathy or do you specifically mean

sympathy? >> i mean empathy/syathy. he couldn't help himself even with a ruthless character like richard iii, murderer of children, right? he made us feel something for him that on the battle of bosworth field. we started to hurt for him and we hate ourselves for it because he coul't help it. >> rose: how did he do that? >> by making richard frightened. afraid of his own guilt and you saw the cracks appearing in this... what we thought was just a brutal cold murderer and now we see a tad of humanity. >> rose: do we see a bit of that in "macbeth" as well? >> we do. we see a lot of that. that's why it's so brilliant. here we see a cold blooded murderer who starts thinking about murdering the king instant thains youly. he knows it's horble and yet he takes us with him on the psychological journey oh, my gosh, my mother wouldn't b

happy with me, i don't know what my wife is going to say. my imagining is horrible. and we've all had horrible imaginings, haven't we? >> we have indeed. >> so that's the problem. all those criminals, all the people in his text are us. it's very hard to separate ourselves from any of shakespeare's characters. >> rose: so why do we think he was so wise? and abservant? >> if i knew that... >> rose: (laughs) >> you know, i don't know what the answer to that is all i know is the first folio, his actors, the people that knew him wrote in the preface he was a gentle and happy imitator of nature. and what he thought he wrote for we have scarce received a blot on his papers. therefore read it again and again and therefore if you do not like him you are in for

manifest nature. isn't that something? so i don't know. how did mozart do it? how did beethoven? i think there were mysteries here that we will never be able to solve and that's fine with me. it's happened. that's what mattered. whe does genius come from? i don't know. >> rose: do we have to assume akespeare was fascinated by state craft. the idea of state and relationships? obviously state and religion? but if youhink about kings and queens and wars they involve states. >> yes, i... >> it's not about the medical profession a it's not about the legal profeion per se. >> it's a brliant question. it's a brilliant question and i'm not a scholar in this regard but i'll just say a little bit about it is that of course shakespeare and elizabeth and

the church of england and protestant and catholics, when elizabeth was on the throne it was dangerous to be a catholic. what was shakespeare? you don't really know because the times wer raw. people went to jail and were beheaded because they were not what the queen or the king accepted. so they were very dangerous times and so i think that he was... it's interesting. he rarely wrote a churchman, shakespeare, who you really liked. you look at... >> rose: suggesting he didn't like church snen >> well, you could say that, but then he writes cramer in and cramer in gives the most beautiful speech about queen elizabeth at the end of henry viii that you've ever heard. let me say i think shakespeare wisely was skeptical of people in power. because he kindf thoht it corrupted, i think.

and it's hard it... okay. what is power? >> >> what do you think power is? seriously it's an interesting questi. what is power. >> rose: the ability to exercise your will but often people use power don't exercise their will or doesn't turn out the way they want it to be so they, in fact, have failed that exercise. >> control over yourself is what you're suggesting which i think is a brilliant thought, actually but other think power is money or power is... >> rose: fame. >> fame. or power is all of that. right. >> if it be you w stirs these daughters hearts against their father fool me not to bear it. touch me with nle anger water

drops stain a man's cheeks. no, y unnatural hags! >> rose: on balance, is he an interesting noon you? >> he's a fascinating man to me. >> rose: not in terms of what he wrote but in terms of him. if he didn't have the body of work would you look at him and say he was fascinating or we eluded to earlier say he lived a conventional life. >> what's fascinating about him... we can't strip the work away and throw it away. what's fascinating about shim precisely... >> rose: does not do this work. >> a careful life but an interesting life, a kaushgs, complicated one in relation to this absolutely i aystonishing body of work. it's the relationship between these two things that matters. this isn't the swashbuckling life that is fascinating in

itself. sir walter raleigh had one of those. but shakespeare has a remarkable life, a poignant and compelling life in relation to this astonishing thing that he did. >> rose: since shakespeare, who do you think has come close to the body of work and the genius >> i mean there are... >> name it? >> milton. keats. blake. words worth. but shakespeare is in a different category. shakes shakespeare niece the category that dante is in, that homer is in. what's fascinating is that this category we assume somehow is only for gods but this is a human being. >> elaborate on that. that's one point youdo want to make. this was not a good. th was a living, breathing human breathing from man. >> at the time he was 20, he had

three children, he had no job, no vocation, he didn't know what to do. his father's business had fallen apart, the family had lost its money, there w a religion that was... the family was associated with that was dangerous and persecuted. there was not a future for him. and he figured out how to have not only a future but how to express this extraordinary thing that's the remarkable story. >> rose: what does he teach you about love? >> i suppose he teaches you you can write brilliantly about love without ever fully having it. >> rose: (laughs) what does that say? >> it says that he longed for something deeply that he never fully auired, fully achieved in his life. >> rose: accept in his imagination. >> in his imagination and in delirious moments. but never as far as we can tell this is someone who's twin greatest body of loveoetry in our language but about relationships that cannot be

sustained. >> rose: but do you just enjoy it and recognize it for its brilliance or do you say it's something that i assimilated and made me understand about love and relationships? >> it starts with pleasure and maybe it ends with pleasure so that pleasure is crucial. but beyond pleasure there is the effect it has beyond your life. when you try to sort out your life, when we try to figure out deeply what it is that we care about in the real moments of our life that turns out this language, the language that shakespeare wrote gives us... >> rose: will give you accesso it. that's what it does. >> rose: and that's true of shakespeare but really of the whole range of radars that we have. that's what they are there for. >> rose: explain that to me. >> look, if you are looking for

sothing, is let's imagine a situation of terrible loss. i have three sons who i have and thankfully i've never experienced the loss of a child the way shakespeare experienced. it's shakespeare who gives you the language. the why should a rat have life and thou no breath at small the language to express these feelings that are otherwise inexpressable. this is what an artist does for us. >> rose: access our own feelings and giving you the capacity to comprehend. >> to comprehend and articulate. >> is this a dagger which i see before me? the handle toward my hand. come! let me clutch thee. i have thee not and yet i see

thee still. art thou not fatal vision sense to believe feeling as to sight? >> rose: you've thought about this a lot, i'm sure. why shakespeare? why... what makes shakespeare? why was shakespeare shakespeare? >> he was... as i say he was born into a time of extraordinary crisis. the passing of the middle ages of faith and the birth of a new age of skepticism, a mercantile age. he was born particularly in england at a time of a brutal and very, very fast revolution of the sacking of all the catholic churches, the removal of the virgin mary, the destruction of all images in

stratford. we have the church where shakespeare is buried, holy trinity, you can still see the scars of that decision to take away those graven images. and he was himself thrown fro a catholicackground and he managed to deal with crisis and not get into jail like thomas kidd, ben johnson. mostover his contemporaries got into terrible trouble. christopher marlowe got assassinated. one of the things that makes shakespeare shakespeare, he survived. and one the ways that he both survived and became so good was that unlike, say, christopher marlo or van johnson who couldn't keep the author out of it, couldn't keep the edorial out of their play, shakespeare hid the editorial in dialogue.

and the truth lies like something out of the da vinci code. somewhere in betwn two characters. and and the play happen there is mysteriously but with clarity anwith great power and his ability to dramatize the split-- whher it's the split between being a country boy in stratford or... and the court in london, whether it's the split between catholic or protestant, whether it's the split, as i say, between the age of faith and the age of rationalism and mechanicalism, whether it's the split between the anglo-saxon and the latin of language power. he set them up, gets them talking to each other and he never judges either side. if there's a judge-- because if he did people would know what his editorial was and they could silence him.

the editorial if it there's is so wrapped up in the nature of his writing that it becomes good art. and that it's indivisible whereas a contemporary van johnson wrote easily but it was an essay. christopher marlowe wrote stunningly but it was a series of monologues. and j z is a brilliant highlymetry cal rhyming relevant passionate writer, their monologues. they're not... and their editorials. they're not capeable in the way that shakespeare was of creating this. it's not a hologram and somethg much mor profound in that. it's something that actually almost approaches the condition of le in betwe the opposites of shakespeare's both as a

person... i would say it's this duality in shakes here in is the fundamental d.n.a. of his great... >> neither the borrower nor a lender be for loan of the loses both itself and friend and borrowing dull it is edge of husbandry. this above all. this above all, to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day, how the cannes note false to any man. >> rose: how do you explain shakespeare? >> i can't explain him. after all these decades of teaching him i think the proper stance towards time awe. it is astonishing that it could have happened. you can trace any other writer to some source, you can talk about if you will societal

context. you can talk about history but shakespeare transcends any contexthat you try to find for him. he... the power of creation in him... i think i can even focus it. there's an excess in h. is there's an ovelowing not just of aning but of being. it's aere is newness which comes flowing out of him for which we have no precedent and, in the a deep sense, have had no success in spite of of the fact that he's been such an immense influence on all who came afterwards. he is, i suppose, the largest single miracle i know of not just in the history of human art bus in the history of human consciousness. i suppose that if you are a religious believer you might want to talk about moses and jesus and mohammed but as a secular figure this is as

astonishing a enomenon as any of the great religious founders have been. this is, indeed, the secular scripture. the complete plays of shakespeare or the complete works of akespeare. i think i remarked somewhere in a kind of wonder myself that hamlet has become the intellectual's christ and even though in the past i have been much condemned for saying that the worship of god is the end of three literary characters, yaw way, the gospel of mark's original jesus and mohammed's allah i think only shakespeare competes in his nine or ten strongest characters. these three literary characters which, of course, is a... is a blasphemous thing to say. but i am... at one point in the

book i only half jokingly-- since i'm a dinosaur now in academic terms-- i refer to myself as bloom brontosaurusment it'seen quoted against me by several reviewers but it seems like a perfectly valid se-designation. but, no i i cannot explain shakespeare. i can appreciate shakespeare. i can hope to help others to appreciate him more. i can hope to teach others to see that we must not condescend to him but he alwaysnows more than we do and he has more than anticipated our latest developments. if you push any idea you want to into shakespeare and it will not necessarily light up the play, but the play will light up the idea the power of mine, the power of consciousness.

the stuff of being in him is beyond par lem and if it's beyond parallel it's beyond explanation. now could i drink hot blood and do such bitter business as the day would quake to look on. >> let not ever the soul of nero enter this firm bosom. that may be cruel but unnatural. >> i come and sold in this be hypocrite. how in my words so ever he be shed. never my soul consent. >> rose: let me begin with

hamlet and ask what's the historical context? >> the historical context is that this play written 1599 or 1600 by shakespeare. it had been a "hamlet" play that had been a success. shakespeare often uses other people's materials, is sensitive to what is workingn the theater there'd been a play or two of them before that based on an old story, a story that had been told multiple times that goes back to a 12th century danish "chronicle." and shakespre takes this story-- which is a revenge story-- a buddy mystery, and he turns it into arguably the greatest single tragedy ever written and certainly a life changing work for him. his career pivots around... >> rose: what happens to his career? >> his career was already magnificent before then but... >> rose: he's unleashed a whole

series of... >> it initiates an unbelievable outpouring of work including plays like othello and macbeth and kink leer and there's something in shakespeare itself. he use more words in hamlet, including more words that had never appeared in print before, they must have been in the... at least to some extent in the culture then anyone has ever released in a single work. so it's written in a whole new language for him. an absolutely extraordinary outpouring of new relationship to his own language, to what it is that you can address an audience with and it changed everything. >> rose: are there parts of this that are... of this that might have unleashed this in him? was it any part of the subject matter that might have had se catharsis for him? >> well, speculatively we would say it can't be entirely an accident that his son's name was

hamlet which is not only very close to hamlet but interchangeable in the records with the name hamlet, sometimes spelled either way. his son had died in 1596 at 11 years old and his father was also-- depending on when the play first drafted-- dead or dying. so there probably are in his own immediate life things that are disturbing him that he wants to come to terms with. >> rose: and where did he put hit in the context of elizabethan world? >> what happens-- at least one of the pieces that's fascinated for me-- this is a play about, as shakespeare calls it, about a ghost. a ghost coming to his son and demaing revenge. that the curious thing about that act is that from about 50 years before shakeeare wrote this play his culture had

changed the rules governing the relationship between the living and the dead. protestantism said "there are no ghoststhere e only demons that come fr the other world. ghosts are a remnant of the soup station of purgatory" the idea of purgatory. catholic soup station forbidden and they said you can no longer pray to the dead or for the dead, you can't pray for the remission of pain and, in fact, the... they make a very simple change in the burial service in the years before shakespeare writes the play. they change theords from "we commit thee to the earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" "we commit him to the earth." in other words, you're no longer speaking to a "thee" you're speaking... because the person no longer exists, is dead, and it's just someone who is now in the earth. and that change should mak it,

in effect, impossible for a ghost to come back to demand revenge. unless a ghost is not a ghost at all but a demon. now what's amazing about shakespeare's play, of course, is that that's precisely the question that hamlet asks himself. wh is this? am i encountering the demon who's trying to lead me astray. can i test this ghost. can i find out whether it actually is a ghost. that is to say, a... somehow a returner from the other world which could only be this now forbidden world of a middle statbetween heaven and hell. >> rose: who do you think the ghost represents? >> the ghost is... what the ghost is, says you're... your father's spirit, hamlet. but what it means to be the father's spirit is tied up with centrally in the play with what the ghost tells hamlet he wants

hamlet to do. "remember me." >> rose: revenge. >> so the ghost says revenge but the ghost repeats again and again "remember me." so in answer to your question, i would say the ghost is first and foremost about rembrance of the dead. what it is, what kind of life the dead have. not simply... that's why these relious issues, though they're fascinating as far as the surround of the pla, you don't need to know this to encounter this play and to feel in the your bones, all you need to know is something about what it is to remember. what it is to remember especiallyere, people are gone. and what kind of negotiation we have with the people who are gone. what claims to they have to make on us. >> this is a clip from richard burton's hamlet in the encounter

i am hie father's spirit. doomed for a certain term to walk the night a for the day confirmed to fast in fires. till the foul crimes done in my ys of nature are burned apurged away. but that i am forbid to tell the secrets of my prison house, i could tell a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freezing thy young blood, make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres. thy noted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end. like quills upon the fretful porpentine, but this eternal playson must not be to ears of flesh and blood list, list, oh, list! if thou did ever thy dear father love... >> oh, god! >> revenge his foul and most

unnatural murder. >> murder! murder >> murder most foul as the best it is. >> mace me to know that i with wings as swift as meditation of the thoughts of love may sweep to my revenge! >> of course, he doesn't sweep tois revenge. there's five as in which he thinks he's going act and what we see is a brooding meditating tortured consciousness that only ends in the chaos and mayhem of the scene at the end of accident crazy activity and the murder and mayhem in the danish court. >> rose: do you any rohdeian interpretations of this? >> there certainly is a deep problem of memory, not simply memory of the father but the disturbance of the memory of the mother, the living nor the relationship with the dead father and now the relationship with the uncle. you don't need freud to tell you that that is a disturbance because hamlet tells you it's a

disturbance. "don't let him put his reachy fingers on you. don't plant reachy kisses on your lips" he says about... says to his mother about the uncle. he's obsessed with the mother's sexual life d as i say there the play itself this is not an imposition. >> rose: plon i can't say, why does he get... who is he and why does he get the great line. >> the great line being to yourself be true? >> rose: above all, to thine own self be true. >> it's not clear. you would go two ways with this and you can play this in... at least two ws. one a polonius is a nattering old fool and if you play it that way, polonius is a nattering old foolou emphasize the fact that most of these chestnuts-- to thine own sell bf true maybe foremost among them-- a good things to say but they don't correspond to living experience, let alone the livingxperience

of hamlet who doesn't even know what his true self is and can't figure out what his relationship is to himself. the whole play is about the fact that it's impossible to put these things together. so i tend to be on that side of things but you could also play it-- and i think maybe shakespeare's contemporaries found it interesting as a set of perfectly good advice, though it may not be good advice you can all live by. >> when you teach shakespeare at harvard, what do you want your students to come away with. >> i want them first and foremost to experience the play as fully and pleasurably as they can. not something that is a nugget that they can carry away but to open themselves to the play and let it it work on them. let it speak to them. let it speak to themn the deep and powerful way it can. so first and foremost for me it's not a lesson about inferiority or theedipus complex or anything of the kind.

it's about what it is to be a human being to wonder who you are in the case of my students and hamless when you're at the early stage of your life when you're trying to sort out who you are and what your destiny will be. this is a play that famously speaks to people many of the age of my students. >> rose: speaks to them in terms of how the pathway to finding that out? >> well, the pathwayto finding it out and the difficulty of finding it out. what a struggle it is. what a complex act it is to know who you are. to fulfill the expectations of your parents to make your way in the world, to understand that you are not simply in the world to make what it you want but you're given a set of commands and you can ask questions about them and question them but you can't escape them, you have

to-to-struggle with them and see where they lead you and hamlet, is, of course, a tragic case of this. o oh cursed spite that ever i was born. the time is out of joint he says for himself. but that experience over the spt nerations of notust students but to readers and audiences of all ages. >> rose: i think the deepestnd hardest questions is to be able to find that thing that is the perfect marriage of your dreams and competence and passion. >> what a piece of work is a man he says. >> rose: what a piece of work is a man. >> but for him it has fallen apart and the play, of course, is about someone of immense gifts who cannot do what you've just described and find the core of himself and find a way through but who winds up dead.

>> rose: tell me the story of hamlet. why do this play in terms of the narrative what you have, i believe, that the essential thing that's made "hamlet" last all these years is a young man who hooz feelings of alienation, of despair, of grief, of anger, of cynicism, that he does not know how to place in the world. he is seeking for how to commit an action, how to take his place in the world and he's living in a world in which to his eye

there is no viable ethical authentic way to participate in the world. and he sleeps up against for five acts and that experience, i think, is so common to us that we've been able to read it over the centuries through a million different historical lenses, theoretical lenses and yet still find... >> rose: and he's tragic because he doesn't know how to do that or is he tragic for some bigger and deeper sfln as a tragic figure? >> tragedy's a tough term. and i wouldn't want to try and straight jacket poor hamlet too much by aristotle's categories. >> rose: right, right. >> but what i would say is that the tragedy is his inability to find a place to be effective in the world. and because he can't find that we end up essentially denmark destroyed by the end ofthis play. the country that he loves... >>ose: he cannot find a place to stand.

>> this first scene is claudius and gertrude ask hamlet to stay in denmark. >> good hamlet, cast thy nighted color off and let thine eye look like a friend on denmark. do not forever with thigh veiled lids seek for thy noebl father in the dust. thou know it is common, all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity. >> ay, madam, it is common. >> i it be, whyeems it so particular with thee? >> seems, madam! nay, it is. i know not "seems." 'tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black together with all forms, molds, shows of grief that can denote me truly.

these indeed seem, for they are actions that a man might play. but i have that within which past passth show, these but the trappings and the suits of w. >> rose: magnificent. magnificent. >> it's also in a way that little speech of hamlet's defines who he is i know not "seems" these are actions a man might play but i have within which passeth show. hamlet has an interior being which he cannot express externally. he h a sense of authenticity, of emotion, of feeling, of spiritual state that he doesn't know how to put into action. >> rose: the next scene we're going to show is, obviously, the... to be or not to be.

>> to be or not to be, that is the qstion. whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them. to die. to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh iry to. tis a consummation devoutly to

be wished. to die, to sleep, to sleep. >> rose: you can literally see the camera trying to go into ivier's he. >> rose: yeah. >> the choice of the voiceover is so radical for the time. but it's also... it's actually a powerful response to the film as medium. the soliloquy is duractive and die logic with the audience, the film isn't. so the voiceover gives us that interiority of hamlet that olivier felt fresh and new at the time. >> rose: is hamlet... is he sympathetic as a character? >> he's both sympathetic and frustrating. one of my great teachers, leon katz, said to me when i asked him once if a character was likable he said "our connection to characters is anid connection not a superego connection.

and what he made is that we don't connect to whether characters are pleasant, we connect them if we understand what they want, if they understand what theyeel, if we connect to them on a visceral level. doesn't matter if they're pleasant or if we like them. and for me and millions of other people ham set will a character we're incredibly identifiable with. he's a whini, petulant, nasty boy but we understand him so we connect. >> rose: the next clip is hamlet lashes out at ophelia for her betrayal. act three, scene one. >> i did love you once. >> indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. >> well, you should not have believe med for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock that we shall relish of it. i loved you not. >> i was the more deceived.

>> get thee to a nunnery. why would thou be a breeder of sinners. i am myself indifrnts at honest. but yet i could accuse of such things that i were better my mother had not borne me. i am very proud, have vengable, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than i have thought to put them in, imagination to give them shape or time to act them in. what such fellows as i do crawling between earth and heaven are arrant knaves all, believe none of us. go thy way to a nunnery. where's your snaert >> at home, my lord. >> let doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool

nowhere but in his own house. farewell. >> oh, help him, you sweet heavens! >> if thou dost marry i'll give thee this is plague for thy dowry, be how the as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, how the shalt not escape callumny, get thee to a nunnery go. farewell, or if how the wilt need marry, marry a fool for wise men know well enough what monstersou meake ak tm. t to a nunnery go, and quickly, too! farewell! >> rose: what's going on between the two of them? hamlet and ophelia. >> you can look at this in two almost contradictory ways. someone that hamlet is expressing towards ophelia all of his disgust towards women and that disgust towards women's

behavior and sexuality has been aroused by his mother's behavior and he is projecting it on ophelia and slathering her with the disdain he feels for all woman kind. at the same time the text is absolutely clear that he recognizes that ophelia is being used as a pawn and she has agreed to stage this scene with him and to be observed by polonius and claudius to try to find out the secret of hamlet. so at that int, the betrayal that he feels by ophelia is not just a generalized betrayal by the entire sex, it's also a specific betrayal by his girlfriend. and the fact that shakespeare gives you both of those possibilities to play with is part of what makes him the greatest playwright. >> rose: take a look. this is a scene... act five, scene one, the graveyard scene wareham let is holdingor yick's skull.

>> alas, poor yorick. i knew him, horatio. a fellow ofnfinite jest, of most excellent fancy. he hath borne me on his back a thousand times. and now how abhored i my imagination is is. my gorge rims at it. here hung those lips that i have kissed i know not how of the. where be your jibes now? your songs, your gambols? your flashes of merriment that re wont to set the table on a roar? not one now to mock your own grinning. quite chap-fallen. now, get you to my lady's chamber and tl her, let her paint an inch thick to this favor she must come.

make her laugh at that. >> rose: >> fantastic. >> just think. at the end of this play no matter how much shakespeare cut it or anybody cuts it you've been in the theater for hours. you've watched all of this action, sword fight ansdz murders and hamlet flees abroad and there are plots and then everything slows and there's hamlet looking at that this come lum of characters that he's never mentioned before and meditating on mortality. it's an extraordinarily bold thing for a writer to do and what i think it takes us on hamlet's journey at tha point understanding that whether he actually sees his own death coming or not he's undersnding something about death. >> rose: he did fear death. or not? >> he, hamlet sft >>. >> rose: yes. >> he certainly says he's afraid of death.

that's the content of "to be or not to be." >> rose: right. >> undiscovered country from whose borne no travel retur. but by the end if there's professor dmens e fall of a sparrow, readiness is all. by the end he's come to accept something about that. >> re: rind us what his journey was from the beginning scene we saw to where he ends up. is it approaching madness? >> is hamlet feigning madness in order to allay the suspicions of the king? is he actually going mad? shakespeare doesn't give us instructions chon of those it is and that's part of the greatness of it and because like most human ings he's not entirely conscious of what he's doing. he, however, is in this mad like state in the court until finally

confronting his mother with what he viewss her crimes and her complicity and his father's death he kills polonius thinking he's killing his stepfather d claudius, his stepfather, exiles him, sends him off to england, gives instructions to his two friends rosen rosen krantz and guilden stern to pass to the king of england that hamlet is to be murdered. hamlet instead sends them off to be murdered, comes back to england, arrives first in this graveyard and tn throws himself on ophelia's grave and heads towards that final fatal dual. >> rose: thank you for coming. captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org y