All language subtitles for Shakespeare_ Rise of a Genius s01e03 - Finale (2023) 720p

By the time William Shakespeare
is 40 years old,

he's spent nearly
two decades in London.

He rarely goes back to Stratford
to see his wife, Anne,

and his now grown daughters.

Shakespeare is reaching
the end of his career,

but some of his greatest, darkest,

and most personal works
are yet to come.

Like any artist,

the things that are personal
are sometimes

the scariest voids
to touch in yourself,

and you don't know
whether you should touch them,

or whether you should go there.

Probably why his plays have
transcended throughout time

is that he did meet himself
with the worlds that he was creating

and that's what you always
hope as an artist,

is that you're going to find a way

to recognise something in yourself,

in a story
that you haven't met yet,

but there must have been
an element of what he was creating

which he must have thought,
"Phwoar..."

Like,
"How far is this going to go?"

SHOUTING

The plays Shakespeare left us
are not only works of genius,

but they also provide a collection
of clues as to who he was,

the struggles he faced,

and the forces that drove him.

He was living in a time

where everybody was
just swimming in muck, sex,

and, you know, violence,
and it was charged.

GUNSHOT

That narrative of Shakespeare
striding along,

becoming the man
he was always intended to be,

could not be
further from the truth.

The truth is, it was a blessing
for Shakespeare simply surviving.

Now, with the help of historians,
experts and actors,

we're going to piece
together the puzzle...

..and tell the life story
of William Shakespeare.

You cannot shrug your way
through it.

It's too... It's too big.

It's a story of ambition,
showmanship and tragedy.

How a glover's son
from Stratford-upon-Avon

became the greatest writer
who ever lived.

He doesn't restrict himself
to talking about human frailty.

He's saying, "Look at yourself,

"and look at the damage
that is done."

It's his understanding
of everything -

of love,

of anger, of jealousy,

of rage,

melancholy...

Who did it better?

Who has ever done it better?

I wish I'd met him.

Oh, I wish I'd met him.

In 1603, Shakespeare
is the Elizabethan equivalent

of a millionaire.

He co-owns the Globe Theatre

and he's recently bought
100 acres of land in Stratford,

and one of the biggest houses
in town for his family.

But, as he's grown older and richer,
his creativity has slowed.

Shakespeare wrote on the average
two plays a year.

Some years, like 1599,

he was enormously productive,
writing three plays

and drafting another,

and other years,
the productivity slowed down

for all kinds of reasons.

In the immediate
aftermath of Hamlet,

there's a lull in his productivity,

so whether it was exhaustion,

or patting himself on the back
for a job well done

the first year that the
Globe was up in operation,

or a loss of creative spark,

is impossible to know.

Shakespeare at this time
is very comfortably off,

but you get a sense of Shakespeare
here just sort of

slightly clinging on,

questioning his own artistry
and where he wants to go with it,

and potentially going
much deeper, much darker.

But Shakespeare's comfortable life
is about to be thrown into turmoil.

Because now comes the news
that after 44 years on the throne,

Queen Elizabeth I is dead.

We can't really
overestimate the impact.

The death of Gloriana is,
you know,

it portends a kind of
national eclipse.

She's provided a kind
of much-needed stability -

sort of held the nation together,

and that's suddenly threatened.

For Shakespeare,
her reign has provided

the conditions for his flourishing.

He'd been favoured
by the previous monarch,

but he might very well not be
favoured by the new monarch.

And so Shakespeare
needs to tread carefully.

In the wake of the Queen's death,
England's poets honour her

by writing gushing eulogies,

but Shakespeare, the country's
most famous playwright,

does nothing.

One of the things
that distinguishes Shakespeare

from his fellow playwrights is, er,

he wasn't inclined to write
a celebratory poem

honouring the death of the Queen.

You needed to have patronage
in order to thrive.

Shakespeare knows his close links
with Elizabeth

might hurt his chances with the new
monarch, King James VI of Scotland,

son of Elizabeth's sworn enemy,

Mary Queen of Scots, whose death
warrant Elizabeth once signed.

We're familiar with...with
Shakespeare's shrewdness,

as well as with
his...subversive impulses,

and perhaps here
he's hedging his bets.

But, as King James arrives
in London from Scotland

to take the English crown,

it becomes clear
that England's new monarch

is very different from the last.

I think he was called
"The wisest fool in Christendom"

for two reasons.

One is, he had an intellect
so he wrote books -

he wrote books on witchcraft,
he wrote books on the

Divine Right of Kings.

And, of course, he commissioned the
authorised translation of the Bible,

but at the same time,
his judgment was pretty poor.

Coming to London
bringing his retinue -

people who were regarded as pretty
uncouth actually at the time.

He's very highly educated,
yet his great pastimes

are hunting and watching
horse racing at Newcastle,

and spends a vast amount of his time
with a very few close friends

in those places,
racing around chasing stags,

and not really ruling the country.

You know, people don't quite know
how to handle him.

The English nobles find him
unbelievably difficult

because he obviously has
a very strong Scottish accent

and they're constantly writing
letters to each other

complaining about the fact that they
can't understand a word he's saying.

But, more worryingly
for Shakespeare,

it seems King James doesn't share
Queen Elizabeth's love of theatre.

There are few things we know about
King James and theatre.

One is, he often fell asleep
at plays.

Imagine sitting in a tavern

in Spring of 1603,

talking about this monarch
coming down from Scotland.

"Played his court did you?

"Did you have a chance to get
a sense of whether he's going to

"smile at actors,
or shut us down completely?"

You can imagine, as they buy
another round thinking,

"This is not going to go well.

"Our good run is over.

"Time to think of other ways
to make a living."

Shakespeare's worst fears
are soon realised.

Once in power, James moves quickly
to assert his authority

and one of the first things he does

is ban theatrical performances
on Sundays -

the most lucrative day of the week
for Shakespeare's company.

When James bans
playing on the Sabbath,

it must have rung a few alarm bells

because it's...it's a sop
to the puritan hard liners

who fundamentally
opposed the theatre.

He's in a very uncertain place.

On 19th of May,

a letter from James' court
arrives at the Globe Theatre.

"James, by the grace of God,

"do license and authorise
these our servants

"William Shakespeare,

"Richard Burbage,

"and the rest of their associates

"freely to use and exercise
the art and faculty

"of playing for our solace
and pleasure."

From nowhere,
Shakespeare and his troop

have been given the job of
being King James'

personal theatre company.

William Shakespeare will now be
known as, "The King's Man."

It's a mark of favour -
it means a new day has begun

and it looks set fair for us.

For Shakespeare to be able to wear
the King's livery

must have been a kind of
head-spinning thing, really.

He wasn't a posh boy.

He was, er... He wasn't of noble
birth, or anything like that,

so finding himself in slightly more

elevated circles would have...
Yeah, you'd definitely feel that.

"I don't really belong here",
and "I shouldn't really be here",

or, "I'm bull-shitting", you
know, "I'm going to get found out."

So, no doubt Shakespeare's excited,
but also cautious.

But, as the King's
personal playwright,

Shakespeare is now expected to
write plays that support his regime.

It wasn't about
"I love drama" for King James.

It was, "I understand
the value of this company to me."

I think from James' point of view,
this was propaganda.

We've got to remember
that theatre at that time

was only one of two methods
of mass communication.

You have news print in books,
and you have theatre.

And that's all there is.

The state has got an interest
in making sure

that anybody who was performing was
actually performing in a way

that was suitable and convenient
for the monarchy.

But, even as
an employee of the King,

Shakespeare is going to test
the limits.

He was constitutionally
incapable of writing propaganda.

He steered clear of
simple, political allegiances.

Instead, Shakespeare writes about
what he's seeing in the streets -

London is poor, dirty
and overcrowded.

Violence against foreigners
is commonplace.

Immigrants from Europe - French,
Dutch and Flemish protestants

fleeing religious persecution.

Shakespeare works on a play
about the Catholic martyr

Sir Thomas More,

writing a speech in which More
implores a xenophobic London mob

to put themselves in the shoes
of the immigrant.

Shakespeare's really good
at appealing for compassion.

What it tells us is his concern
in the later part of his career

about empathy,

about other human beings,
and certainly,

it tells us something about
his knowledge of migration

because he encounters people
every day

from different parts of the world

in busy Southwark
while he's making theatre.

"Would you be pleased to find
a nation of such barbarous temper,

"that breaking out
in hideous violence

"would not afford you
an abode on earth?

"Whet their detested knives
against your throats,

"spurn you like dogs.

"What would you think
to be used thus?

"This is the stranger's case,

"and this your
mountainish inhumanity."

What's really beautiful
about this speech

is Shakespeare is asking us to think

about what it's like to be
in someone else's skin,

in someone else's shoes.

What would happen to you
if you had lost everything,

and had to leave England?

Where would you go,
and who would welcome you?

What would it feel like?

It's one of the most
beautiful speeches.

And this speech is the
only surviving example

of a play written
by Shakespeare's hand.

It shows rushed scrawls,

crossings out,

and a surprising lack of attention
to grammar.

I'm always fascinated by the
lack of punctuation in it,

and that it's almost as if
there's a certain amount

of almost stream of consciousness,

but stream of consciousness
with an argumentative

inclination to it

to this speech.

Because it is incredibly passionate.

It's edgy writing, and before
the new play can be staged,

it must be read and approved
by the Master of the Revels,

the King's censor.

The official censor says, "No way.

"You're not staging Thomas More
quelling a race riot.

"You're not doing it."

The King's censor bans the play,

fearing Shakespeare's descriptions
of riots in London

will provoke real unrest
in the streets.

It gives us a Shakespeare who's both

the kind of jobbing man
of the theatre,

and...and a real subversive
at this point.

Well, what Shakespeare had
to recognise was he was a servant

of the state - he was actually
sponsored by the state.

His income came through
the benevolence of the state.

He wasn't a free man,

and there was not freedom of speech
in the way we understand it today.

And so Shakespeare looks for
another way to write about

the cultural difference he's seeing,

and he finds inspiration
at the Royal Court.

Alienated from Catholic Europe,

England had begun making alliances
with North Africa

and the Ottoman Empire.

At court,
Shakespeare sees first-hand

representatives from worlds
very different to his own.

It's not unlikely that Shakespeare
was inspired by visitors

and delegations to London,
such as the Moroccan Ambassador.

They were in London for a few days.

A lot of people talked about it,

and were sort of in awe
of their difference,

their very obvious difference -
in the way in which they prayed

and ate,
and also how they dressed.

He's really interested in what
happens in a world

in which different cultures,
different religions,

different identities
are kind of combined.

He's quite taken by a sense
of feeling like an outsider

even when you are inside.

And so Shakespeare
writes a new play called Othello.

Radically for the time,

it places a North African character
as the main tragic hero.

Oh, now, forever!

Farewell the tranquil mind,

farewell content.

Othello is a Moorish general
in the Venetian Army,

who, at the start of the play,
marries a nobleman's daughter

called Desdemona
in a secret ceremony -

a beginning filled
with hope and romance.

But their happiness isn't to last

because next Shakespeare
introduces us

to the most evil character
he has ever created -

Iago.

You shall mark.

Heaven is my judge, not I,

for love and duty,

but seeming so
for my peculiar end,

I am not what I am.

Playing Othello is hard.

Othello is on the receiving end

of...

..the, erm, incredibly
manipulative Iago.

Iago acts as Othello's
closest confidante,

but really he's set out
to destroy him,

and, as the play goes on,
Iago fills Othello's head

with the lie that Desdemona
has been cheating.

But beware, my Lord, of jealousy.

Tis the green-eyed monster that
doth mock the meat it feeds on...

Why?

Why is this?

Thinks thou I'd make
a life of jealousy?

To follow still the changes of the
moon with fresh suspicions? No!

In its simplest terms,

the play is about the damage
that jealousy can do.

Othello goes from...

..loving Desdemona till he's
beside himself with love for her.

He goes from that to hating her
so much it destroys him.

Driven into a frenzy
of jealous rage,

Othello murders Desdemona in her bed

in one of Shakespeare's
most disturbing scenes.

Out, Strumpet!

Weep'st thou for him to my face?

Banish me, my Lord, but kill me not.

Down, strumpet.

Kill me tomorrow.

Let me live tonight.

Othello is Shakespeare's
darkest work so far.

In the final scene,

a broken Othello finally
learns what Iago has done,

and in a master stroke,
Shakespeare refuses

to give the audience the closure
of understanding Iago's motivations.

Will you, I pray,
demand this demi-devil

why he hath thus
ensnared my soul and body?

Demand me nothing.

What you know, you know.

From this time forth.

I could say the genius of Othello

is that Shakespeare was going
to show and not tell,

and in the showing,
he was going to leave open

to his play-goers the why,

and those both torture and tease us
into returning to these plays.

People often like to locate
the racism of the play in Iago

and that that's what motivates him.

I actually don't even know
if Iago is racist,

and that's what is so scary
about him.

It's because he's basically
drawing on people's vulnerabilities.

Othello isn't the person who feels
the greatest amount of jealousy.

Iago is.

I think the genius of the play
is that, after 400 years,

it's still uncomfortable to watch.

We're still dealing with
those themes.

Othello is a success,

becoming one of Shakespeare's
most popular plays.

Unlike London's other playwrights,

Shakespeare has avoided writing
propaganda for King James,

but he's about to have no choice.

In November, 1605,

a Catholic called Guy Fawkes
is arrested

whilst planting enough gunpowder
under the Houses of Parliament

to destroy one square mile
of the city.

It's a Catholic plot to assassinate
the Protestant King James.

Things would never be the same.

This was a large-scale
terrorist attack

meant to decapitate the
political leadership of the realm.

These men decided they were going
to change everything

by wiping out

king and court,
and restoring Catholicism.

James responds ruthlessly.

He forces his Catholic subjects
to swear allegiance to him

and deny the authority of the Pope

and he makes church-going
compulsory.

Catholics aren't allowed
to move more than seven miles

from their houses,
and they have to attend church,

and the parish authorities have
to write lists of

who doesn't attend church
for whatever reason,

and they become stamped
with the name Recusant,

and that is a very dangerous
situation to be in.

Guy Fawkes is executed.

And, as fear sweeps the country,

Shakespeare begins to realise
that he and his family

back home in Stratford
are in danger.

What's lesser known about this plot

is much of it
was plotted and planned

in and around Stratford.

It's a very Catholic
part of the world -

his neighbours, the blacksmith,
cobbler, all known Catholics.

There are known to be at least
30 Catholic families,

and probably many more
who are hiding their beliefs.

It isn't known
if Shakespeare was a Catholic,

but his connections
to the faith run deep.

Years earlier, two of his relations,
known Catholics,

were sentenced to death for plotting
against Queen Elizabeth.

For the rest of his life,
I think he would have been

haunted by the ghost of these
Catholic relatives

who had been executed,

and he would have been careful
all the time that the

reputation of these relatives
didn't come back to haunt him.

Probably nobody in England
was as proximate both to London

and the Midlands' Catholic plot
as Shakespeare was.

This is deeply troubling.

And soon, Shakespeare receives
bad news from Stratford.

His daughter,
22-year-old Susanna,

has been named a Recusant -
someone who doesn't attend church,

and is under suspicion
of having Catholic sympathies.

This is a woman, like her father,

who is very headstrong,
knows her own mind,

and will not be pushed
into conformity.

But she is taking a really big risk.

If Susanna is found
having these sympathies,

there are dire consequences.

She's very vulnerable,

and, of course, this is a moment
at which her father is not there.

It's interesting to contemplate
Susanna's choices at this time,

and the pressures she's
getting from family, from community.

So, I assure you that it was
a crisis for everyone involved.

And so Shakespeare
begins to write a play

with the aim of getting
King James on his side.

The play, called Macbeth,

is about the killing of a king
and its dark consequences.

Shakespeare fills the play
with references to King James'

interest in the supernatural.

Well, James wrote about witchcraft -
he was obsessed about it.

The witches were not just old women
that were mouthing sort of

uncouth statements -
the witches are, to him,

a threat to the stability
of the regime,

and the reason why Shakespeare
is writing about witchcraft

is he's trying to flatter King
James' interest in this subject.

By the end of 1606,

Shakespeare is ready to perform
Macbeth to King James.

And in the first scenes,

a coven of witches
tell Macbeth of a prophecy -

that he is destined to be king.

Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis.

All hail, Macbeth!

Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor.

All hail, Macbeth,
that shalt be King hereafter.

Macbeth is seduced
by the witches' prophecy,

but he knows he has
to kill the king to fulfil it.

As he wrestles with his conscience,

Shakespeare takes us
into the mind of a murderer.

Is this a dagger
which I see before me?

A handle toward my hand?

Come, let me touch thee.

I have thee not...

..and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision,
sensible to feeling as to sight?

Or art thou but a dagger
of the mind,

a false creation proceeding
from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee.

Yet...

In form as palpable as this
which I now draw.

Thou marshall'st me
the way that I was going,

and such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools
o' the other senses.

The thing with Macbeth,

for me it's not so much ambition...

..but it's the guilt.

It's the guilt that makes it
so almost unbearable to watch,

and, you know, God knows
where the guilt comes from,

from Shakespeare and into this,

but it's the guilt
that's Macbeth for me.

Goaded by his ambitious wife,

Macbeth finally murders the king.

My husband!

I have done the deed.

It's a sorry sight.

A foolish thought,
to say a sorry sight.

Consider it not so deeply.

But wherefore could not
I pronounce "Amen"?

I had most need of blessing,

but "Amen" stuck in my throat.

These deeds must not be
thought after these ways,

so it will make us mad.

Go get some water and wash
this filthy witness from your hands.

Why did you bring the daggers
from the place? They must lie there!

Macbeth is, you know,

I think it's important to say
that Macbeth is, very simply,

a play about murdering the king.

My hands are of your colour.

But I also think
it's sort of about murdering God.

WAILING

Soul depart...

I think what you're seeing there
is what it means

to murder the king
as a representative of God.

..and grieve his heart.

And after the murder
all sorts of weirdness,

so the horses eat each other,

and good men's lives
are said to perish

before the flowers in their hats,

so there's this weird almost
Salvador Dali kind of

surreal, um, er, disordered,

deranged world.

Having murdered the king
and assumed the throne,

the Macbeths struggle to hold their
grip on power and their sanity.

Here's the smell of the blood.

Still!

The consequences
for them after the murder,

everything starts to break apart

and break apart and break apart,

and then, you know,
you get that great cry.

Shakespeare writes it as,
"Oh, oh, oh."

SHE BEGINS TO WAIL

That intensity of the
performance...is not easy.

I think that's the breaking of her.

She completely goes to pieces
and er, loses the plot.

To bed.

To bed, to bed.

The tormented Lady Macbeth
kills herself.

Wherefore was that cry?
The Queen...

..my Lord...

..is dead.

She should have died hereafter.

There would have been
a time for such a word,

tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

Creeps in this petty pace

from day to day

to the last syllable
of recorded time.

And all our yesterdays
have lighted fools.

The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
is an amazing speech.

It's a speech which endlessly
repeats the same thing actually,

and Shakespeare could do that
and make that powerful, you know.

It repeats the same thing
because...

..because it's reached
a kind of...

..a sense that life is totally
emptied out, it's evacuated.

At this point, Shakespeare seems
to be brooding over

unsavoury and terrible things,

you know,
there is a pervasive darkness.

Life is but a walking shadow.

A poor player
that struts and frets his hour

up on the stage,

and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot

full of sound and fury...

..signifying...nothing.

This is our greatest playwright,

perhaps our greatest writer,

and speaking as if his
achievement is...is nothing,

as if the success is empty,
that it's fruitless.

The story ends
with both the Macbeths dead,

the natural order is restored,

as a rightful new king takes power.

So he's trying to say if you start
something that is

the threat to the monarchy, or
the threat to the king of the day,

just think of the consequences
that could follow.

APPLAUSE GATHERS ENTHUSIASM

Macbeth secures
Shakespeare's position at court

and quashes any concerns
about his loyalty.

Around this time,
Shakespeare's daughter's name

disappears from the list of
recusants.

Susanna is safe
from further inquisition.

Whether Shakespeare had any sway
over her fate, we'll never know...

..but, no doubt,

that was quite terrifying.

Shakespeare had come close
to losing a daughter

and he wasn't with his family
when they needed him.

So now, after two decades
putting career first,

and with London once more
in the grip of plague,

Shakespeare, it's believed,

finds himself
drawn back home to Stratford.

Anne must have felt
such mixed feelings

having William back home.

I think she's emotionally
really hurt.

This must have been a very
strange atmosphere for everyone.

This life that they've had
to lead apart from each other.

He finds his family has moved on.

So, he's thinking
about forgiveness,

and thinking about,
is forgiveness even possible

if you have been so distant
for a really long time?

He did it by his own accord

and went to London
and established himself

and abandoned his family
to do so

and...and...and
sacrificed possibly everything.

And you can imagine after
ten years, 15 years doing that,

there is a time where ambition,
if not stopped,

are questioned, you know. Was it
worth it? Why am I doing this?

And then you maybe see that
in his later plays.

It's around this time
that Shakespeare writes

a play about ageing,
fathers, family,

and forgiveness.

He calls it King Lear.

So, there's an interesting
strain of self hatred

and shame at this
point in his career

and Shakespeare, of course,
is the father of daughters,

and daughters start to come more and
more into his drama at this time.

King Lear's themes
are really varied,

and yet at the heart of it,

it's about a father
who has wronged his own daughter.

Tell me..

..my daughters...

..which of you shall we say...

..doth love us most?

The play opens with King Lear
demanding a declaration of love

from his three daughters
for a share of his kingdom.

When the youngest, Cordelia,
refuses, he banishes her.

I love Your Majesty
according to my bond.

No more, nor less.

But goes thy heart with this?

Aye, my good Lord.

So young and so untender?

So young, my Lord,

and true.

Let it be so.

Thy truth then be thy dower!

For by the sacred radiance
of the sun,

the mysteries of Hecate
and the night,

by all the operation of the orbs,

from whom we do exist
and cease to be,

here I disclaim
all my paternal care,

and as a stranger to my heart and me

hold thee from this for ever.

When you get into it, it's really,
it's a very hard play

because it is...
I mean, it's about rejection.

On it's deepest level,
it's about rejection.

The centre of it is
a father-daughter relationship,

I mean, it's like any kind of
father-daughter relationship,

but at some point, you know,
your kids have got to leave...

..leave the nest and, er, take
with them what you've taught them,

but also you learn
from your child too.

It's very, very personal,

even though it's allegorical in
terms of it's related to a kingdom

but it's actually related...
A kingdom is a family,

and it's related to his inability
to deal with his own family,

and he's got it wrong.
He's got it wrong big time,

and I think Shakespeare's also
beating himself up in Lear -

he actually is beating himself up.

He's saying,
"I've made such stupid errors."

Lear's older daughters fail to live
up to their grand shows of love,

and cast him out into a wild storm.

He descends into madness.

This tempest in my mind,

that from my senses
take all feeling else,

in such a night to shut me out.

So he's lost.

Shakespeare's lost.

It's like the artist and his life,

they kind of meet like that -
they bash together

in a sort of head-on collision.

I don't think he expected it.

I think he was just getting on
with his job,

just being down in London,
enjoying himself working,

and then the family back home
and, you know,

it's like the commuter, you know?

But...

..you know, he...he feels
he's screwed it up.

To a certain extent, he did.

Because he's been too ambitious,
he's been too busy,

and I understand that -
I've done that in my time, you know.

I've... I've allowed my career to
take precedence sometime over my...

..my personal relationships.
I have.

Cordelia returns
to rescue her father,

and in one of Shakespeare's
most moving scenes,

Lear and his daughter
are reunited.

Do not laugh at me...

..for as I am a man

I think this lady...

..to be my child.

Cordelia.

And so I am.

I am.

Be your tears wet?

Yes, faith.

I know you do not love me.

For your sisters have,
as I do remember, done me wrong.

You have some cause.
They have not.

No cause.

No cause.

You must bear with me.

Pray you now, forget and forgive.

I'm old.

I'm foolish.

That intimate relationship

is the thing that they both
learn from each other in that,

and King Lear
is awoken to an innocence

and a way of looking
at the world afresh...

..in a way that
he maybe wasn't able to.

Shakespeare's asking for forgiveness

and from his own family,
and saying, "It's possible",

You know,
"I can... We can come together".

You know,
there's hope in that scene.

But this is not where Shakespeare
decides to end the play.

In the ensuing civil war
between the sisters,

Cordelia is defeated,
and ultimately executed.

Shakespeare's punishing himself.

Part of the punishment is to lose
that what you love most dear.

There's nothing more horrible
than losing what we love most dear,

and Shakespeare says,
"That's where I've got to go."

HE WAILS

Lear carries his dead daughter
in his arms,

howling with grief.

So, after all the raving,
after all the self assertion,

you get that broken contrition
and truthfulness and humility.

In the end, the home life,
the life at home,

maybe it taught him a lesson.

But, just as Shakespeare's thoughts
turned to his family,

his career in London
once again pulls him away.

For years, Shakespeare has dreamed
of building an indoor theatre

within London's city walls,

in upmarket Blackfriars.

Now he receives news that rules
banning this have been eased.

Finally, Shakespeare has the chance

to turn theatre
into a respected art form.

Whatever he intended in that moment,

I can't presume
to enter into his mind,

but even after turning back
to Stratford and to family life

his energy is such,
his intelligence is such,

his curiosity is such,

his sense of the
technical possibilities

of whatever he turns his hand to

is such that he feels
he's still got more to give.

And so Shakespeare returns to London
to create his final works,

and at Blackfriars,
he and the King's Men

open England's first-ever
indoor playhouse of it's kind.

I imagine for Shakespeare,
the opening of Blackfriars

is a real high point for him.

You can play around a lot more
than you can when you need daylight

and it's raining on you,

so you can have effects,
you can have more scenery,

you can make your plays
more complicated.

If you imagine this much more
intimate space -

you're very close to the actors,

there's candlelight,
it's very mysterious.

In fact, they had longer intervals

as you needed to trim
all the candles,

otherwise the wax would drip
on all your fine clothes,

so that's a very
important thing to do.

So, Blackfriars is
a really wonderful opportunity

for him to really push his writing,

push the boundaries
of what he's been able to do.

For his new theatre,

Shakespeare writes an ambitious
new play called The Tempest.

SHOUTING

I believe in The Tempest
he's experimenting, and

running wild because he can,
because now

he was so technically
on top of what he was doing

that he could just
do very weird improvisations.

The play centres around
a sorcerer called Prospero.

Exiled to a desert island,

Prospero conjures a storm
to shipwreck his enemies,

leaving them at his mercy.

He's so on top of
his particular art, craft

that he can...
He can push it anywhere he likes.

In The Tempest,
Shakespeare experiments

not only with spectacle,
but also with language.

You know, he's improvising within
the strict confines of the

Iambic pentameter

and in some of them,
the lines are so convoluted

and so difficult to get
the understanding of it out.

A devil, a born devil.

On whose nature
nurture can never stick,

on whom my pains humanely taken

all, all lost, quite lost.

I will plague them all
even to roaring.

But at the same time, it's...

Some of the... Some of those
speeches in The Tempest

are so unbelievably beautiful.

But, as Shakespeare writes about
a magical faraway island,

he describes a world filled
with the nature and imagery

of his Warwickshire home.

He's been in London for a long time

and so much of it is...is Stratford.

It's so fantastical,
but at the same time

so incredibly local

to his...his,
his place of birth.

Ye elves of hills, brooks,
standing lakes and groves,

and ye that on the sands
with printless foot

do chase the ebbing Neptune

and then do fly him
when he comes back.

Descriptions of that river,

and being by that river
that was flowing

that Shakespeare knew
very, very well,

and the low...the low-lying mist.

In The Tempest, you almost feel him
yearning for that environment.

The play very much has a sort
of end of life feeling about it,

end of creativity,

and the moment when Prospera,
Prospero breaks his or her staff

and throws it away

and...and there is an incre...

..and basically says,
"I'm retiring. I'm going," you know.

"I'm not doing this any more."

Towards the end of the play,
Prospero stops using his magic

and announces that
the performance is over.

Our revels now are ended.

These our actors, as
I foretold you, were all spirits,

melted into air,

into thin air.

And, like the baseless fabric
of this vision,

the cloud-capp'd towers,
the gorgeous places,

the solemn temples.

The great globe itself, yea,

and all which it inherit

shall dissolve.

And, like this insubstantial
pageant faded,

leave not a rack behind.

We are such stuff
as dreams are made on

and our little life
is rounded with a sleep.

I always found that
an incredibly sad moment -

you do feel, possibly,

it's Shakespeare saying,
"I can't do this any more."

It...it definitely has that feeling.
Definitely.

And Shakespeare closes the play
with the following lines,

"As you from crimes
would pardoned be,

"let your indulgence set me free."

DOG BARKS

Fire!

Fire!

DOGS BARK

SHOUTING

Fire!

PANICKED SHOUTING

Get out! Get out!

On 29th June, 1613,

a canon fired during a performance
at The Globe causes a fire.

The theatre,
made almost entirely of wood,

is reduced to ashes in just an hour.

The Globe in flames.

It's an extraordinary death,

an extraordinary extinction of,
as it must seem,

possibility itself.

His actors
would have been heartbroken.

At that moment, the company
had to decide what their future was.

His company are determined
to rebuild The Globe immediately,

bigger and better than ever before.

But Shakespeare
sees the fire differently.

It's time to go home.

The family, I can only imagine.
Gosh, the pride and the awe,

and maybe an understanding of,
"Oh, that's what he was doing!"

And he's long gone,
but he still remains.

And thank God for them

cos without them, we wouldn't have
what we know as Bill Shakespeare.

His greatness is
he always tells the truth.

And in terms of love,

who we love and why we love,

and I think he touches on all
those subjects like nobody else.

In the same way Mozart
does in his music,

Shakespeare does it in language,

and, to me,
there's no getting round him.

The magic of him is that
he's so modern in his thinking

and that makes me realise that the
past isn't very long ago really -

the attitudes, the griefs,

the pains, the experiences.

They might be in
a slightly different context,

with horses and carts
instead of cars,

but the basic fundamentals of human
experience are essentially the same

and he really makes you feel it.

Plays aren't abstracted
from their own times,

or from the life of the man
who wrote them, there's something

about that - the energy of that,

that has massive, you know,
to date,

inexhaustible after-life -

it expresses something
that continues to be true.

The fact is, we have the work.

It's intensely poetic at times.

Beautifully, powerfully,
magnificently poetic,

but at the same time,
it's very accessible.

Look for something
that you're concerned about,

you'll find it in Shakespeare,

and you'll find a comment about it,

and you'll find it
expressed in such a way

that it might make a difference
to you for the rest of your life.

Hope so.