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