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It is essential
to commence our journey

into the world of William Shakespeare
in Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was here that he was born,
spent his childhood,

fell in love, and raised his children.

Stratford was the place
to which he returned time and time again.

During his career, he bought land here
and the impressive house, New Place,

after gaining literary
and financial success in London.

This building, Holy Trinity Church
in Stratford-upon-Avon,

is the perfect place to start the delving
into the life of William Shakespeare.

He was baptized here on April the 26th,
1564, and he was buried here.

We don't know for certain,
but it is possible

that Shakespeare's birthday was
on the very same day

as the day he died,
April the 23rd, St George's Day.

This Holy Trinity Church goes back
to the early 13th century

and is the oldest building
in Stratford-upon-Avon.

But great changes had happened
within these walls in the few years

before Shakespeare's name was entered
into the baptismal register here.

The Church had lost its connection
with Rome.

This was the England of Elizabeth,

the England of the Reformation
initiated by Henry VIII.

Like many other families,

the Shakespeares were deeply affected
by this enforced change

in their religious practice.

Nothing was certain.

There were many shifts and changes
in the years after Henry VIII,

first to Protestant Edward VI,

then back to Catholicism with Mary
and then Elizabeth,

who was determined to rule
in the Protestant way.

Stratford, at the time
of Shakespeare's birth,

it was a town
of about 2,000 people,

it was a market town,
it served the neighborhood.

People would come from neighboring
villages to bring their produce.

Stratford is a town
that was predominantly agricultural,

and it's very ideally situated
for the Cotswolds.

So, the wool trade was
very, very prominent in Stratford.

Stratford-on-Avon
in the mid-16th century

was an unremarkable little town.

It was small,
a population of around 2,000,

and it was a struggle for the town
to maintain such a number.

Outbreaks of the plague were common here
as they were across the country.

The black death had come
to England 200 years before,

and everyone lived in daily fear
of a return of this deadly disease.

The plague was always, always
a concern in Stratford,

as it was in other towns as well.

Almost every year,
the plague would've hit Stratford.

The year Shakespeare was born

happened to be a particularly bad year
for the plague.

There's one very good example
in the parish register in front of me here

that is from July of 1564,

just three months or so
after Shakespeare himself is born.

The clerk who's recording
the burials for Stratford

has taken special care
to note in Latin.

"So here begins the plague."

And you can see from the list
of burials that follows,

a huge number of people are dying
in a very short period of time.

Almost 200 people, or about a seventh
of the population of Stratford,

so if you think that Shakespeare
would've been just a few months old,

what infant mortality would've been like
at the time.

He's sort of very lucky to have survived
that whole incident.

We know that on houses
on either side of the house

where they were living,
children born in the same year

as Shakespeare
had died from the plague.

So, he survived.

It was in this house
in Henley Street

that we believe
William Shakespeare was born.

He was the son of John Shakespeare
and Mary Arden.

Now, the Ardens were a very well
established family here in Warwickshire,

they trace their roots back
to before William the Conqueror.

And when William Shakespeare arrived,

his parents must've seen that
as a very great blessing indeed

because they'd already lost
two baby girls.

John Shakespeare,
William Shakespeare's father,

started very humbly in Stratford,
started as an apprentice glove-maker.

He became an ale taster,

he became somebody who checked
that bread was made properly

and then worked his way up to eventually
becoming the Mayor of Stratford.

When young William was 4,
this is when his father's made the mayor,

and he would've had
on the day he went

to any council meetings,
he would've had almost like a procession

from the front of the house,

down Henley Street
and along to the Town Hall.

So, that must've made a huge impression

on a very young William Shakespeare,

seeing his father dressed
in all his regalia,

parading down Henley Street.

He was always known
as a glove maker/whittawer.

Now, a whittawer is a tanner.

A tanner, but who's producing
really fine white leather,

and that ties in
with the sort of gloves

that John Shakespeare was making,
these are fashionable,

high-quality gloves
made for the well-to-do.

As a young boy,
William would've been in contact

with all kinds of people through
the trade connections of his father.

This could've given him
inspiration and language

for the colorful characters in his plays.

John Shakespeare had
a mysterious side,

which we can only guess at.

It is very possible that he was
a secret Roman Catholic.

Now, was this the reason
that he didn't attend church

and he received
a fine from the queen...

and that he had his name on a list
nailed to the church door?

Or was it because he'd been
exposed dealing illegally in wool,

so that he was nervous of stepping out
and being arrested?

See, this was the atmosphere of the time.

If you stretched the law
even a little bit, you were reported.

I think it was this sense of turmoil

of not being certain how long Elizabeth's
reign was perhaps going to last.

And with the changes
that happened in previous reigns

with Mary and Edward
and Henry before them,

there was that element of uncertainty

and the state wanting
to control things much more closely.

So, John Shakespeare's name
appears on a list of...

On a recusancy list,

which is people who've failed
to take the Protestant communion.

We now know, of course,
Queen Elizabeth has a network

of spies throughout England.

If you're a wool merchant,
you pay taxes to the crown

on your transactions.

So, of course,
John Shakespeare isn't doing this,

so did the Wool Merchants Guild
get tipped off

by one of Queen Elizabeth's spies?

"Hey, there's this guy in Stratford,
John Shakespeare,

buying all this wool,
he's not in the Guild,

he's not paying taxes,
what are you gonna do about it?"

And, of course, what they did,
John Shakespeare was fined,

the wool he'd bought
which he hadn't actually sold on,

it was all confiscated,

and from that moment on,
John Shakespeare is heavily in debt.

John Shakespeare lost much
of his wealth and his property

because of the fines
imposed upon him.

But he didn't lose this house
in Henley Street.

Later on, things got better.

Because John was still held in good
opinion by the aldermen of Stratford,

he was granted
his own coat of arms in 1592

and was therefore back in business
for the rest of his life.

The town in Shakespeare's boyhood
had an important school,

King Edward School,
a foundation of King Edward VI.

It would've been
a normal education,

so perhaps it would be challenging
by our standards,

I mean, it was often said
that the Latin and Greek

that Shakespeare would've learnt or
any grammar school pupil would've learnt

would be the equivalent
to a university classics course today.

School starts at six o'clock in the
morning and they go through the whole day.

They would've started learning
simple alphabet

and the catechisms, sort of
the Lord's Prayer, things like that.

Moved on to more complex things,

starting with perhaps Aesop's Fables,
you'd learn your grammar as well,

perhaps some Seneca, Virgil.

So, all of the sort of classic authors

that we think of would've been very much
the foundation of that curriculum.

He would've read
Ovid's Metamorphoses,

for example, the great Latin classic,
he would've read Virgil's Aeneid.

It was an education
in oratory and rhetoric,

and that is reflected
in his plays, I think.

He would've learnt there to argue,

he would've learnt there to argue
on both sides of the case

and is brilliant at doing that
in the plays.

If you take a play
like Measure for Measure, for example,

where Claudio, the young Claudio,
is condemned to death,

there's a wonderful scene
where the Duke is disguised as a Friar,

is trying to persuade Claudio
to be "absolute for death," as he says.

And he's trying to persuade him
of the consolations of religion,

uh, that it's not all that bad to die,
after all.

But then a few hundred lines later,
there is a wonderful speech from Claudio

which puts exactly
the opposite point of view:

But to die and go we know not where,
to lie in cold obstruction and to rot.

Now, there's an example
of Shakespeare's dialectic skill,

the way that he can present
two totally opposing cases

within a single scene of a play.

Now, of course, Stratford is
synonymous with the name Shakespeare

and you can see memorials
to his legacy all over this town.

But, of course, William had no chance
of establishing himself

as an actor or a playwright here.

Although his father had a very prosperous
career in William's early years,

later he had huge financial problems,

and it was only by a very risky move
to London

that William was able once again
to restore the name of Shakespeare.

This is the cottage
of the Hathaway family.

We know that William Shakespeare
married Anne Hathaway in 1582,

when William was 18 and she was
some eight or nine years older.

But it is remarkable how little else
we know about her,

and we can only speculate
about their marriage.

We do know that they had
three children, there was Susanna,

the firstborn, and then the twins,
Hamnet and Judith.

Hamnet, who was to die
when he was 11 years old

from an outbreak of the plague.

But for a man
who wrote wonderful love sonnets

and who penned the greatest
love story ever, Romeo and Juliet,

it is remarkable how little
we know about his own love story.

It is my lady.

Oh, it is my love.

Oh, that she knew she were.

She speaks... yet she says nothing,
what of that?

Her eye discourses, I will answer it.

I am too bold.

'Tis not to me she speaks.

We do know that in August 1582,

Stratford enjoyed the benefits
of a bounteous harvest,

and it must've been at this time that
William and Anne had their lovers' tryst.

Perhaps on a summer's evening,
sitting on a set hay bale,

during the feasting to celebrate
the end of harvest,

William, still a teenager with his quick
and easy wit, charms Anne.

Maybe they had
a hand fasting ceremony,

it's an ancient tradition still existing
in Warwickshire at the time,

in which the couple shared vows

and then shared a bed
before the official church wedding.

Oh, me.

She speaks.

O, speak again, bright angel.

Oh, Romeo, Romeo,

wherefore art thou, Romeo?

The legal age to marry is 21.

So, if you imagine you're a young man,
you've served your apprenticeship,

you're in your early 20's,
you then have to get yourself a job.

And so the logical thing is,
you're not marrying

and you're not marrying girls
from the villages until your mid-20's.

So, here we have
young William Shakespeare,

who's only 18 and he's underage.

I'm sure she would've had
young farmers queuing up to marry her.

So, what's this young William Shakespeare
got going for him at this point in time?

Romeo, doff thy name.

And for that name which is no part
of thee, take all myself.

I take thee at thy word. Call me but love
and I'll be new baptized.

Whatever the details were,
we know for certain

that Anne became pregnant
and an official church ceremony

had to be rushed through
before a noticeable bump developed.

There was a hurried dash
to Bishop's Court in Worcester

to enable the marriage to proceed,

and the huge sum of 40 pounds was paid
as surety for a marriage bond

to be paid
if the marriage were to prove invalid.

We know that William Shakespeare
married Anne Hathaway in 1582

when they had their first child,
Susanna, in the year after.

But the years 1585 to 1592

are a time of intense frustration
for Shakespeare historians.

We know practically nothing at all
about that elusive seven-year period.

And consequently,
we have no idea how and why

he first began his career upon the stage.

Many theories have been advanced.

Some say that he headed off
for Lancashire, the Catholic stronghold,

an earlier biographer said that he became
a school teacher in the country.

I think it's perfectly possible
that he was kept on at Stratford school

as an usher, they were called,
the assistant schoolmaster.

He was obviously
a very talented, clever boy.

I think it's quite possible
that he did some teaching here.

Or perhaps he joined
a traveling group of players,

many of which came
through Stratford to perform,

and this is where he found his calling.

We know that in 1587,
the Queen's Men came to Stratford.

These were a group of traveling players

backed by Queen Elizabeth I's government

who performed around the country

what was essentially propaganda
to support her reign.

The Queen's Men weren't a touring company
in the modern sense of the word,

no, they were more of a variety act.

Acrobatic performances
and comic routines alongside the plays,

but it is the list of those plays and
the fact that they were here in Stratford

which is the interesting point.

We know from old records
that they put on the story of Richard III,

the story of King Lear,
the famous victories of Henry V,

and don't they sound familiar?

Is it possible
that Shakespeare did join that company

and was inspired to write his own version
of the stories of the plays

that they were producing?

Omit no happy hour that may
give furtherance to our expedition.

For we have now
no thought in us but France,

save those to God
that run before our business.

Therefore,
let every man now task his thought

that this fair action may
on foot be brought.

We know that two of the Queen's
Men went and performed in Elsinore,

famously the setting for Hamlet.

I have heard that guilty creatures
sitting at a play have,

by the very cunning of the scene,

been struck so to the soul that presently
they have proclaimed their malefactions.

For murder, though it have no tongue,
shall speak with most miraculous organ.

Another of the Queen's Men,
William Knell,

was killed in a brawl
outside a tavern in Oxford

just before the company came to Stratford.

I seize you!

There was a fight and one of
the actors was actually stabbed to death.

And there is a belief that possibly
William Shakespeare stepped in

to that role and then carried on
and eventually got to London that way.

It is possible,

but unless some late 16th-century
document turns up in some old drawer,

we sadly will have no hard evidence
to support this or any other theory.

At some point he makes
that decision to move to London.

We know in Henley Street there was
a stable owned by the Greenaways,

and he would've hired his horse
or had his horse stabled there,

and then made that journey to London.

Whether Shakespeare arrived
in London as part of a troupe

or followed them on his own,

this was a momentous undertaking for him.

It would mark the dawn
of an unparalleled talent

as the author of a body of work
that would be unsurpassed

and would influence generations to come.

The London that Shakespeare found

was a dynamic mix of people
involved in various trades:

Shipping, makers and bakers,
lawyers and priests,

and a court at Whitehall
with Queen Elizabeth at its head.

London was about 100 times bigger
than Stratford.

It was a town of about 200,000 people,
a city, of course.

It was a walled city with numerous
churches, over 300 churches,

a cosmopolitan place, of course,
being on the Thames,

it was a place
where travelers would come and go,

bringing their goods from abroad.

It was a bustling, thriving, busy,
in some ways rather sordid place.

It was just beginning to have
a theatrical community

that begins
during Shakespeare's lifetime.

Shakespeare had arrived
in London at an ideal time.

Playhouses dedicated
to theatrical performances

were a very recent development.

Normally, actors and playwrights

had to make do with performing
in the yards of taverns

or in the homes of aristocrats.

But now the opportunities were endless.

Just as with the invention of cinema
and the birth of television,

a whole new medium was opening up
to the masses,

and Shakespeare capitalized on it.

It wouldn't all be plain sailing though.

An outbreak of plague struck
the city in 1592,

and the theaters were shut
just as Shakespeare had hit his stride.

But, as always,
it seems he adapted quickly

and soon had great success publishing
the narrative poem Venus and Adonis.

It was based on Metamorphoses,

another narrative poem
by Shakespeare's favorite writer, Ovid,

whom he adored from the time
he first would've encountered his work

back at school in Stratford.

Shakespeare simply couldn't resist
a return to the theater,

and he threw himself almost exclusively
into the life of a playwright

once the theaters reopened.

Perhaps he knew
that it was his true calling

or perhaps he simply missed
the thrill of acting.

It's thought that he took on roles
himself throughout his career,

whatever the reason,
we can all be very grateful

that he turned his back
on what seemed to be

a more relaxed
and lucrative career as a poet.

My liege, the noble Mortimer,
leading the Mayor of Herefordshire

to fight against the irregular
and wild Glendower,

was by the rude hands
of that Welshman taken.

A thousand of his people butchered
upon whose dead corpses

there was such misuse,
such beastly shameless transformation

by those Welshwomen done

as may not be without much shame
retold or spoken of.

It seems then
that the tidings of this broil

brake off our business for the Holy Land.

This matched with others does,
my gracious lord.

Given that Shakespeare had thrown himself
back into the world of a playwright,

he was going to need to create
new material at an alarming rate.

Writer's block didn't seem to exist
in Elizabethan England,

as theaters had such a very quick turnover
of the plays that they staged.

Just as he took inspiration
from Ovid for his poems,

Shakespeare dug deep
into a very handy book

called The Holinshed's Chronicles
of England, Scotland and Ireland.

Holinshed's Chronicles is a hugely
significant source book for Shakespeare.

It's essentially,
as the name suggests,

a chronicled history
of England, Ireland and Scotland.

There are two editions of Holinshed,
one published in 1577,

and this one, published in 1587,

which is the one that we believe
Shakespeare used as a source

for much of the history plays.

With Henry V, for example, Holinshed
describes the Battle of Agincourt

and the campaigns overseas,

so you can see where Shakespeare's
getting the story ideas from

that he then turns into the plays
on-stage themselves.

For many of our princes, woe the while,
lie drowned and soaked in mercenary blood.

O, give us leave, great king,
to view the field in safety

and dispose of their dead bodies.

I tell thee truly, herald,
I know not if the day be ours or no.

The day... is yours.

As the 16th century came
to a close,

Shakespeare had managed
to bring together everything

that he needed to dominate
the London theatrical scene.

He knew how to leave audiences
in stitches with his early hits,

The Comedy of Errors
and The Taming of the Shrew,

and his trusted copy
of Holinshed's Chronicles

had provided the material
for his plays on the English kings,

including Henry VI and Richard III.

But he needed a star creation of his own,

a character that would bring him
bigger crowds than ever

on the rapidly expanding
London stage scene,

and he found it in John Falstaff,
a buffoonish knight.

Give me a cup of sack, rogue.

Is there no virtue extant?

Go thy ways, old Jack,
die when thou wilt.

If manhood, good manhood, been not
forgot upon the face of the earth,

then I'm a shotten herring.

There live not three good men unhanged
in England and one of them is fat.

Falstaff delighted audiences
more than any other character of the era,

he stole the show
in Henry IV Part 1 and 2,

and was so popular that Shakespeare had
to knock out a comedy with Falstaff

as the main character, the rather hastily
written The Merry Wives of Windsor.

They say that jealous wittolly knave
hath masses of money

for the which his wife seems to me
well-favored.

Now, I will use her as the key
to the cuckoldy rogue's coffer,

and there's my harvest home.

I would you knew Ford, sir,
that you might avoid him if you saw him.

Oh, hang him.

Having created such a smash hit,

you could say that the world was
now Shakespeare's oyster,

which would be fitting,
as he invented that phrase

when writing the character of Falstaff.

London had given
William Shakespeare a stage,

but too often
it had been a precarious one.

His friends, the Burbage family,
had to move their playhouse,

the theater,
as they did not own the land.

William and his colleagues became
the shareholders of the Globe,

which they erected
from the timbers of the previous theater.

Shakespeare's success in London
as a playwright

had brought him much fame,

sometimes perhaps unnerving
when it came to royal attention.

Life in Shakespeare's England
could be a dangerous endeavor.

London was a city
full of intrigue and espionage.

Elizabeth was never easy
in her role as queen

and was always on the lookout
for possible usurpers

and employed a contingent of spies.

Elizabethan England,
with all its excitement,

would've been
an amazingly vibrant place to live.

We know at one point he's living
literally a few hundred yards

from the Globe Theatre.

It was the red-light district of London.

So, I mean, it's outside the city walls

so people would've been ferried
across the Thames

and that's the Soho of the day, really.

It's an amazingly lively place.

The building
of the Globe Theatre would at last

give Shakespeare
a proper home for his plays,

which inspired him to become
more and more creative.

This is Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre in Bankside.

It welcomed its first audiences in 1997,

almost four centuries
after the original Globe Theatre,

which this building is intended
to replicate, first opened its doors.

It was 1599, and Shakespeare was
a shareholder in the playing company,

The Lord Chamberlain's Men.

It was a formidable troupe.

Shakespeare was
the resident genius playwright,

but also still an actor, of course.

They had a superstar leading man
in Richard Burbage,

who had the enormous honor
of taking on William's greatest roles

for the first time, including Hamlet,
King Lear and Macbeth.

They also had a supreme comedian,
the other Will in the group,

Will Kempe, who would
send audiences into raptures

with his performances
of Sir John Falstaff.

Shakespeare would often be at court
entertaining the queen with his plays.

When Elizabeth died
and James became king,

the royal patronage stayed with him.

Shakespeare was now
a significant member of the King's Men.

It was at the Globe
that Shakespeare truly cemented his legacy

as the greatest writer
in the English language.

Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth,

King Lear, Othello, they all had their
first-ever performances at the Globe.

Such a tragedy
that it burnt down in 1613.

They were having a performance
of the play about Henry VIII,

All is True,
as it was called at the time.

That play has a procession,
and they were using cannon

to have special effects.

And, sadly, one of the cannon
was aimed in the wrong direction,

somebody must've got in trouble for that.

And it set the thatch on fire,
and the theater was burned down.

It must've been a terribly traumatic event
for Shakespeare,

and it's towards the end
of his playwriting career.

And I sometimes think that perhaps
it was so devastating

that that's why he ceased writing plays

towards the end
of the last couple of years of his life.

Once the Globe went down,
so did Shakespeare's desire to write.

He appears to have produced
nothing after this date.

Most scholars agree
that The Tempest is the last play

that he wrote on his own,

and it appears to be
a deliberate swan song.

The character of Prospero relinquishes
his magical powers

at the end of the play
and delivers a poignant speech

where he asks the audience
to "let your indulgence set me free"...

in a way that many people have interpreted
as Shakespeare's own retirement speech.

He did collaborate with other authors
on a few works after The Tempest,

but he appears to have been happy
to bring his solo literary career

to a deliberate end.

When the opportunity arises,
he comes back to Stratford.

This is where his family,
this is where his wife, his children,

his siblings are all living, his friends.

I think
he was a Stratford man all his life,

his family remained in Stratford,

he bought a big house for them
quite early in his career.

He owned New Place, the large house
in the middle of Stratford

from the time
that he was 33 years old.

We believe
for probably 15 to 20 years,

Shakespeare was earning
between 2 to 300 pounds a year.

He is a playwright who actually hangs
on to his wealth and invests it,

and where is he investing it?
It's always in Stratford-upon-Avon.

He bought 102 acres of land,

which is about the same size
as Stratford itself,

the land to the north of the town.

He purchased an interest in the tithes
which he spent a lot of money on.

When he was up in court as a witness
in a court case in 1614,

he was referred to clearly
as William Shakespeare

of Stratford-upon-Avon,
he was thought of as a Stratford man.

William Shakespeare died
on April 23rd, 1616,

and it may be that his death was sudden
and unexpected

because just a month earlier
he had signed his will,

in which he said
he was in perfect health.

In that last will and testament,
Shakespeare left money behind

to his wife and sister,
his niece and nephews,

his children and his grandchildren,
to his friends,

and to the poor in this, his hometown
of Stratford-upon-Avon.

But to the world of literature,
and to the English language,

he left behind an unparalleled legacy.

As feted as Shakespeare was
in his own lifetime,

his legacy, along with all
of his remarkable plays,

could've easily been lost.

What became known
as the First Folio was published in 1623,

that's seven years
after Shakespeare's death.

Thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays
were collected together

by Shakespeare's colleagues
and fellow actors,

John Hemmings
and Henry Condell.

It was a project of great determination
and devotion to Shakespeare.

The First Folio is particularly special

because it records for the first time the
collected plays of William Shakespeare.

And without this book, 18 of the plays
would be lost to us forever

'cause they don't survive
in any other printed form.

And it's clear that they've been
putting together a lot of work

to gather up the plays,
to edit them,

to bring them into what they consider
their preferred format

to be presented for the first time
in their authentic state.

It brings together the plays
in their division into tragedies,

histories and comedies for the first time,
and it presents them in a standard format.

Shakespeare's plays have gone on
to have a huge impact

on our collective thoughts
of so many historical figures.

The way that the world views
Richard III, Cleopatra, Henry V,

Mark Antony, and so many, many more

has been forever altered
by Shakespeare's works.

Speak, hands, for me!

How perfectly did he capture the
sense of betrayal felt by Julius Caesar

as he was assassinated by Brutus,
Cassius and many others

with the simple but devastating line,
Et tu, Brute?

Et tu, Brute?

Then fall Caesar.

The funerary monument
in the Holy Trinity Church

may look a little kitsch,

it has gone through centuries
of retouching, after all.

But it remains one of the only two images

that we are certain was intended
to depict William Shakespeare.

The other is the Droeshout portrait,

which was an engraving placed
on the front cover of the First Folio

and which Ben Jonson declared was
a very good likeness.

In 2009, a new portrait
of Shakespeare came to light,

it was held by the Cobbe family

who had had it in their family
for many, many years

and saw a relationship between it
and another portrait.

Lots of research went into these portraits

and identified them
as being one of William Shakespeare,

probably painted during his own lifetime.

The Birthplace Trust owns
a copy of the Cobbe portrait,

known as the Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust portrait,

and it shows him as perhaps
as a wealthy, more youthful man

than has traditionally been the case
for Shakespeare portraits.

And it's an interesting addition to
the canon of portraiture of Shakespeare,

starting with the First Folio and the bust
that's in Holy Trinity Church,

perhaps being the more traditional views
of what Shakespeare would've looked like.

Shakespeare's greatest legacy of all

remains in the language
we all use every day.

There's the incredible number of words
that he coined

that are as varied as bedroom,
zany, gossip, invulnerable,

lustrous, fashionable, monumental,
eyeball, savagery, and lonely.

They all trace back to the Bard.

He was very fond of expanding
the horizons of the English language

with his own inventiveness.

Shakespeare's had
colossal influence,

a lot of his plays and poems
have produced phrases

which are in anybody's mouths,
even if they don't know Shakespeare,

a lot of people know
what a Romeo is, for example.

Uh, and phrases like a man
more sinned against than sinning,

for example,
which is a line from King Lear,

will be used by people who've never
heard of King Lear even, possibly.

It was Shakespeare's ability
to create a turn of phrase

that really resonates today,
to wait on bated breath,

to vanish into thin air,
to fight fire with fire,

to be made of sterner stuff,

to be cruel to be kind, all phrases
conjured in Shakespeare's plays.

Any adman today would kill
to have Shakespeare's ability

to create such memorable sound bites.

In fact, as many as one in ten
of the common phrases

that we use every day are most likely
the work of the Bard,

which is a truly astonishing number.

Quite a few
of Shakespeare's many phrases

have also become the titles
of works by later authors.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley's most
famous novel, is taken from The Tempest.

John Steinbeck wrote
The Winter of Our Discontent,

title coming from the opening speech
of Richard III.

Even the very recent hit novel
The Fault in our Stars by John Green

is taken from Julius Caesar.

Shakespeare forever remains...
the ultimate inspiration.

The colossal influence
that Shakespeare

is having increasingly still
on the world of the arts,

the music that's been inspired
by Shakespeare,

the films, the theatrical productions
which go on,

the fact that actors love playing
Shakespeare's roles

'cause they give actors
such incredible opportunities.

He's always
a very chameleon-type person,

I can never quite pin him down,

but I'm very fortunate there are moments
quite often in the morning

when I open the house up on my own.

And just when you walk through,

it's a very humbling experience
to be there,

having spoken to so many people

who it's been a lifetime's ambition
to come to the birthplace.

The works go on being replicated,
inspiring other composers,

inspiring operas,
inspiring ballets, novels, poems,

so that Shakespeare is now
in the water supply,

you can't get away from him.
Television programs, pop songs,

all of them are frequently referring
to Shakespeare,

even subconsciously, very often.

Yeah, Shakespeare is here to stay.

To the reader, this figure
that thou here seest put,

it was for gentle Shakespeare cut.

Wherein the graver had a strife
with nature to out-do the life.

O, could he but have drawn his wit
as well in brass,

as he have hit his face,
the print would then surpass

all that was ever writ in brass.

But since he cannot, reader,
look not on his picture, but his book.