All language subtitles for Shakespeare_ Rise of a Genius s01e02 (2023) 720p

I think what happens to you
as a kid,

no matter what era you
are living in, drives you...

..absolutely drives you,
it's the fundamental reason

that you are who you are.

William Shakespeare's childhood
was scarred by tragedy.

When he was just 14, his younger
sister died of plague.

His father, John Shakespeare,

the successful glovemaker who had
risen to become Mayor of Stratford,

was exposed for illegal business
deals and was forced to resign.

The Shakespeare family lost
everything.

Seeing his dad fail, I mean, there's
a certain thing, isn't there?

I remember the first and possibly
the only time I saw my own dad cry.

It was shocking because I don't...

Seeing a parent cry is really
shocking, but seeing your dad cry

is a big deal because it shows that
they're fallible

and they're able to be defeated and
fail

and feel things

that you just don't want these gods
in your life to feel.

And to see John

angry, humiliated, cast aside,

to be a kid growing up
next to that parent, you feel it

even if you can't locate what it is.

Er, and I think that's often
the driving force of many people,

let alone artists, where we go,
"I'm not going to be that,

"I'm going to be
the opposite of that."

Of course, the irony is, you often
go smack bang into it, don't you?

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.

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 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."

JUDI DENCH: It's his understanding
of everything...

..of love, of anger, of jealousy,

of rage, melancholy.

Who did it better?

Who's ever done it better?

I wish I'd met him.

Oh, I wish I'd met him.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

In 1595, William Shakespeare
is on top of the world.

A few years earlier, he arrived
in London a broke nobody.

Now he's the most famous
playwright in England.

As a shareholder in the capital's
most popular theatre company,

his annual income could reach £80,

placing him
firmly in the upper middle classes.

He's able to send money back
to his family in Stratford -

his wife Anne, his daughters Judith
and Susanna and his son Hamnet.

Family's there, family's safe,
they're OK,

nothing to worry about there.

Maybe, as now, when we get a bit
successful,

we go, "I'll take a bit of time out,

"I'll get that work-life balance
and I'll go home a bit more."

Of course, it never works like that,
does it?

Because if you're working at that
level,

it demands more and more and more.

Shakespeare remains in the capital.

He's focused on his writing,

but also fulfilling
a lifelong ambition.

He wants the status of being
part of the gentlemanly class,

so he applies for his own
coat of arms.

This is his design, with his spear
mirroring his upward rise.

I think William applies for a coat
of arms for very personal

and emotional reasons.

It's not simply
because he's a social climber.

I think what he wants to do

is revivify his father's desire
and dream to be a gentleman.

With it, Shakespeare hopes
his family's reputation

will be restored.

At this point, William has a son,
Hamnet. You can tell from his

writing he's very interested in
lineage and how things get handed

down and how ancestry works,

so it's clear
that by being a gentleman,

having your own coat of arms,

you are going to be demanding the
respect

that you feel you deserve, but also,
you hand that down to your children.

But just as Shakespeare has success,

he can see that life is getting
harder for his fellow Londoners.

ROWDY SHOUTING

A year or so has passed
since plague has ravaged London.

The landscape has changed
completely.

Plague has been followed by failed
harvests, famine and rebellion.

Every day, Shakespeare sees
the English hungry and desperate.

William is an intelligent artist

and an intelligent businessman,

and he recognises that in hard times

where the world is full of pain
and difficulty,

they need to be given pleasure.

They need taking
away from their wretched lives.

And so with his newest play,
Shakespeare transports his audience

from their grim urban reality
to a surreal fantasy forest world.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Oberon, the king of the fairies,

has a row with his queen

and throws their fantastical world
into turmoil.

Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania.

What, jealous Oberon?
Fairies, skip hence.

I have forsworn his bed and company.

Tarry, rash wanton.

Am not I thy lord?

Then I must be thy lady.

I'm not good at analysing it at all.

If you can say this about the king
and the queen of the fairies,

they're having a tricky
relationship.

Er, and he is...
She says that long, long speech

which I could say to you now -

"These are the forgeries of
jealousy.

"And never,
since the middle summer's spring,

"met we on hill, in dale, forest or
mead,

"by paved fountain or by rushy
brook,

"or on the beached margent
of the sea,

"to dance our ringlets
to the whistling wind,

"but with thy brawls
thou has disturbed our sport."

God, it's wonderful, wonderful
language.

It's the first play
that he writes

that's not taken
from a previous source.

It's about a deep tradition within
England

of a fairy world half believed in
or more

and of the kind of darker side

to the
mischievous forces that surround us.

Sleep thou,
and I will wind thee in my arms.

A Midsummer Night's Dream,
it was enormously transgressive.

Perhaps the most famous scene,
it is,

we shouldn't be scared to say it,
is a bit of dirty sex

between the queen of the faerie
and a man who's also a donkey.

It's an unfathomably profound
and beautiful dream

which is at the centre of this play.

I think that's an incredible
thing to have done.

Shakespeare is London's most
celebrated playwright,

but it's not enough.

After years of run-ins
with the city authorities,

he wants to make theatre respectable
by building a new kind of playhouse.

Indoors and bespoke,

with a smaller capacity of
higher-paying, higher-class people.

And he's going to do it within
the city walls at Blackfriars,

where the upper classes
live.

William's been part of a profession

which was legally associated
with outlawry and vagabondage

and sort of homelessness, really.

The Liberties plays host to all
sorts of unregulated life,

whereas the city is much more
civilised,

it's much more respectable,
it's more professional.

There were two ways to make money.

One was to pull in a lot of people,

and the other was to make it an
indoor theatre

that played to
a wealthier and more upscale crowd

that would pay six times the amount.

You can imagine the kind of
excitement,

reverberation, resonance,
and the opportunity to play

to a completely different
kind of audience

in a completely different part of
the city

must be a thrilling one.

But it's now that things start
to go wrong for Shakespeare.

The problems begin with his newest
play.

Henry IV is the latest

in his series of works on
English history,

and it tells the story
of a young prince

torn between his duty as the
future King Henry V

and the corrupting pleasures of
London life.

He wants to bring history to life

not just as the official record of
kings and courts and battles.

His instinct is that history might
not really be living there at all,

that it might be living
in the tavern.

Shakespeare wants to make Henry IV
as entertaining as possible,

so he creates a character he
knows Londoners will love,

a member of the English gentry

who is also a drunken and debauched
rogue.

He meets people, so many people,
so many different types of people.

And when he met an interesting
character, he took that character

and placed it inside a play
and made that person speak.

He puts them in and suddenly,

there's this fizz of...of life
that's created

that ignites the story,

and reimagines it for an Elizabethan
audience.

A good sherris sack hath
a two-fold operation in it.

It ascends me into the brain,

dries me there all the foolish
and dull and crudy vapours

which environ it,

makes it apprehensive, quick,
forgetive, full of nimble,

fiery and delectable shapes, which,
delivered o'er to the voice,

the tongue, which is the birth,
becomes excellent wit.

The second property
of your excellent sherris

is the warming of the blood...

You know he's fat, he's drunk,

he's bad-mannered, he burps,
he farts, he goes out whoring,

he's rude to everybody,

he deceives Henry IV.

And yet at the same time,
he is the most marvellous character.

It's not that there's
a heart of gold,

but there's a golden spirit,
you know,

there's something alight in him.

LAUGHTER

Portraying an English
noble as a drunk is edgy enough,

but Shakespeare goes further.

He names the character
after Sir John Oldcastle,

a martyr of the Puritans, England's
hardline Protestant elite.

For William to spring Oldcastle on
us is an amazing thing.

It suggests a kind of mischievous
confidence

such as we haven't seen before.

There is a dangerousness to it.

I think Shakespeare wanted to take
risks

and have little pokes at people

who were seen as the higher-ups,
you know, the people in power.

I mean, I guess it was hard
to do it overtly,

maybe impossible sometimes to do it
overtly, but covertly, er,

I'm sure at the time a lot of the
audiences would have known

exactly what he was talking about
and who he was getting at.

CHURCH BELL TOLLS

But this time, Shakespeare's
gone too far.

He even names one of Oldcastle's
drinking buddies in the play

after another dead Puritan,
Lord John Russell.

The problem is that Lord Russell's
widow,

the Countess Elizabeth Russell,
is still very much alive.

She's powerful,
influential and now furious.

People read different things
into portraits.

Some people might say that was a
mild-mannered,

pretty but intelligent woman

with a very elaborate costume,

and others would say that is a
termagant.

Well, you may ask, what's wrong
with a termagant,

er, what's wrong
with strong-minded women?

She was an aristocrat.

She was a convinced Puritan.

Everything that we know about Lady
Russell

suggests that she wasn't
the most agreeable of characters.

And if offending the Puritans
wasn't bad enough,

Lady Russell has also heard about
Shakespeare's plan

for a theatre in Blackfriars,
just 120 feet from her front door.

And so Lady Russell got
together a petition.

And she gathered a large
number of signatures.

These are people who are being made
fun of and got the better of.

So perhaps Lady Russell didn't think
too kindly of Shakespeare

or of the Lord Chamberlain's Men,
who performed Shakespeare's plays.

Under pressure,
even Shakespeare's patron,

the Lord Chamberlain,
signs the petition.

She clearly had a sharp mind, one
which was capable of understanding

the arguments that would work with
the powers that be of the day.

So the combination of an iron
determination in her own character,

of her education and her
intelligence and her connections,

were just the thing to enable her
to get her own way.

Shakespeare is forced to apologise
on stage at the Rose Theatre.

The apology he wrote survives today.

"First my fear, then my courtesy,
last my speech, pardons...

"..for Oldcastle died a martyr,
and this is not the man."

I think the tone of the apology is
quite tongue-in-cheek.

This is a bit of a...
you know, a bit galling for him,

to have to apologise
for something he's written.

I think he apologises

with the least grovelling
you can possibly get away with.

Shakespeare has to change the names

of Henry IV's offending
characters.

Russell becomes Bardolph, and
Oldcastle becomes Sir John Falstaff.

But now comes the real hammer blow.

Lady Russell's petition

is officially endorsed by the Privy
Council.

Shakespeare's new Blackfriars
Theatre is shut down

before it can even open.

The loss of Blackfriars
put the company

in an extremely precarious position.

The stakes were incredibly high
for William at this moment.

He had so much invested
in the success of this venture.

Shakespeare's ambition

for an upmarket theatre within
London's city walls is dead.

For all his popularity, it's a stark
reminder to the upper classes

he's still a common playwright.

He remains determined, however, to
build a playhouse in his own vision.

So his company sets about building
a new theatre

in the only
place that will have them,

on the south bank
of the River Thames,

in London's roughest neighbourhood.

Bankside, you know,
it really was a stew

in the sense that there was
bear-baiting pits there,

there was dog-fighting, er,
a lot of brothels.

You know, it's not genteel, it's
not middle-class, it's not nice.

But he has no choice.

At that point, it seems that opening
a theatre

within the jurisdiction of the city

is something that he would never be
able to do.

At the end of summer, Shakespeare
receives news from home.

In Stratford, his son Hamnet
lies ill.

HAMNET COUGHS

The horrendous weight of the grief
of losing a child

must, er, have been... I can't,
I can't really imagine.

Actually, sometimes historians do
make out that people in the past

felt less grief because they
had more children,

they experienced death more
frequently.

That isn't my understanding of it
at all.

He's clearly completely engulfed
by...by grief.

It's around this time, in a play
called King John,

that Shakespeare creates the
character

of a mother mourning the loss
of her son.

"Grief fills the room up of my
absent child,

"lies in his bed,
walks up and down with me,

"puts on his pretty looks,
repeats his words,

"remembers me
of all his gracious parts,

"stuffs out his vacant
garments with his form."

And, er, gosh,

that idea of stuffing
out a vacant garment with grief

makes me well up every time.
It's so powerful.

William clearly, clearly deeply
feels the loss of his son.

You can think you're
writing your own story

but, actually, life has a different
course for you to follow

and, actually, we all just are...

We have no control, really,

over the things that interrupt us
in our lives.

The funeral over,
Shakespeare receives notice.

His coat of arms has been awarded.

He's now a gentleman.

There is a time where ambition,

if not stopped or questioned,
you know, was it worth it?

"Why am I doing this?

"My son is dead."

Imagine how William feels.

He has worked so hard
to improve his social status,

to improve the standing
of his family,

the safety that they can be in,

and now he has no son to hand
this on to

and the Shakespeare name
won't continue any further.

When Hamnet dies,

Anne would have had complicated
feelings towards her husband.

Everywhere she goes, Hamnet's
memories would have been there.

And of course, she is the one who
has to live with the grief

of not only her own self,
but that of her children.

No doubt she really misses
William at this point,

and she definitely would not have
imagined

that this is what life would be
like

when she agrees for William
to go away and follow his career.

In the three years
after his son's death,

Shakespeare writes play after play,

including some of his biggest
comedies,

Much Ado About Nothing
and As You Like It.

The thing with literature and with
writing

is that it takes you away,

takes you to...to somewhere else,

and the fact that Shakespeare
wrote so much after his son died

must have something to do with that.

I think when something really
challenging happens in your life,

the last thing you want to write
is that challenge,

because you
haven't processed it yet.

Grief can make everything
meaningless,

but that also is something
that can set you free.

He's so driven, you know.

Why is he writing it all,
and this pace?

There's something he wants to get
at, but he can't.

By spring 1599, work is completed

on Shakespeare's new Bankside
theatre.

With a capacity of 3,000,

this is the biggest
theatre ever built in London,

and the only one
built by players for players.

Its motto is, "All the world's
a playhouse."

He calls it The Globe.

It's his world, and it can encompass
all the world.

And that's
an amazing thing to have done.

It suggests creative confidence

which verges on or actually is
kind of world-conquering arrogance.

Shakespeare needs a play
to open his new theatre.

But this time, it won't be a comedy
or about English history.

He's going to write something
darker,

a play that reflects the national
mood.

One of Shakespeare's greatest gifts

was his ability
to feel the anxieties

that were circulating at
this moment.

He's taking the stuff of daily life

and infusing his plays with it.

It was at this point in 1599

that Shakespeare's confidence
took that great lurch forward.

For years, Shakespeare has been
a regular

at the court of Elizabeth I.

He's had a ringside seat
to see how real power works,

and now
he's witnessing a political crisis.

In the spring of 1599, reports start
arriving in London and at court

of a new massive Spanish armada

to be joined with soldiers
coming over to the Continent

to sail up the Thames
and sack London.

This was a grave threat.

But worse for Elizabeth is
the threat she faces from within.

After decades as monarch,
she's now old and unpopular.

With no child to succeed her

and refusing to name an alternative
heir,

she's losing her grip on power.

Shakespeare is often at court,

so he is seeing and hearing
for himself

what a complete nest of vipers
this, er, place has become.

The Queen is ageing. Very soon,
people know she's going to die.

She's 67. Most
people are dead by 50,

and so there's a massive interest in
who is going to take over from her.

Reports are circulating

of assassination attempts
on Queen Elizabeth.

Queen Elizabeth has to face
the threat of assassination.

There would have been rumours, there
would have been whispers.

People are jostling for position,

it's a very strange
and dangerous time.

And so Shakespeare starts to write

what will be one of his most cynical

and dispiriting plays
about politics.

But he can't write directly
about Elizabeth -

that's treason
and might get him killed.

So instead
of Elizabethan England,

Shakespeare
sets his story in ancient Rome.

The play, called Julius Caesar,

tells the story of a Roman dictator

assassinated by his own
inner circle

and the battle for political
control that follows.

People say, er, you know, leaders in
politics should read Machiavelli.

I've never read Machiavelli.

I think you might be better reading
Shakespeare

because he's talking
about the dilemmas you face,

he's talking about the human
frailties

that make leaders bad people as well
as, er, good people.

He's talking about the results of,
er, and the unintended consequences

of events that people set in
motion as a result of envy, revenge,

pride or whatever, er, other sin
that they're guilty of.

When it comes to Caesar,

initially it's about the dangers
of tyranny,

which I think Shakespeare would, er,
detest.

It becomes about the consequences
of assassination.

Wilt thou lift up Olympus?
Great Caesar...

Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?
Speak, hands, for me!

As Julius Caesar is killed by a gang
of conspirators,

one of them, Brutus, hesitates,

torn between a noble idea of ending
Caesar's tyranny

and his own morality.

LUNGING STAB

Et tu, Brute?

Then fall, Caesar.

Brutus, I mean, he's a leader of
those conspirators

because they're working towards an
end that he believes in.

He realises that Caesar's
gone too far

and he says it's got to be stopped.

He's very straightforward,
he's very simple.

In many ways, he's
the conscience of the play.

He does say that thing about,
"Let's not murder him,

"let's carve him as a dish fit for
the gods,"

so there's a sort of hyperbolic
kind of thing

about what he feels
that should happen

and do it in an honourable and noble
way, and it's not. It's ugly,

and that's what he never quite gets,
Brutus,

he never sees the ugliness of it.

A battle for control breaks out

between the conspirators,
led by Brutus,

and their opponents, led by a rival
senator, Mark Antony.

As an angry crowd of Romans gather,

Brutus gives a speech to justify
the assassination.

And it's here that Shakespeare
shows a mastery of his craft,

contrasting two styles of writing,

prose and verse.

Believe me for mine honour,

and have respect to mine honour
that you may believe.

Censure me in your wisdom,

and awake your senses that you may
the better judge.

Caesar, Caesar!

ALL: Caesar!

His speech, you would think, would
be in verse,

but it's not, it's in prose.

You do have to understand

the relationship between iambic,
the dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum,

and straight prose.

It's prosaic and it doesn't serve,
it doesn't serve him.

His glory not extenuated wherein
he was worthy,

nor his offences enforced for
which he suffered death.

SUDDEN SCREAM

Brutus had spoken in prose,

but Shakespeare writes
Mark Antony's speech in verse.

CROWD CLAMOUR

Friends, Romans, countrymen,
lend me your ears!

CROWD QUIETEN

I come to bury Caesar,
not to praise him.

I don't think we're in any doubt

that Shakespeare's comparing
Brutus with Antony

by putting
the speeches so close together,

and it's an astonishing set of
words

because the first, Brutus, is
in prose and it's actually far more,

if you like, clinical and the second
is in poetry, which is to inspire

and, as people say of politics,

you run for government in poetry,
but you govern in prose.

The noble Brutus hath told you
Caesar was ambitious.

If it were so, it was a grievous
fault,

and grievously hath Caesar
answered it.

Here, under leave of Brutus
and the rest,

for Brutus is an honourable man,

so are they all, all honourable men.

Antony is forced at the start
of his speech

to look as if he's supporting the
assassins

rather than supporting Caesar,

and so he starts using these words,
"honourable" and "ambition",

and he uses both of them
in an ironic way

and then in a sarcastic way.

Ambition should be made of sterner
stuff.

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,

and Brutus is an honourable man.

By repeating it,
and by the way he repeats it,

he makes it clear that that's not
what he believes.

Was this ambition?

Yet Brutus says he was ambitious,

and sure he is an honourable man.

I fear I wrong the honourable men
whose daggers have stabbed Caesar.

What, er, Antony is showing

is the secret of what is
true success in oratory,

that you've got to take your
opponent's arguments

and then you've got to somehow find
a way of demolishing them.

And what, er, Mark Antony
is doing by irony

and then I think by, if you like,
satire,

is by taking the argument
that Brutus has put,

that we have to deal with
Caesar because of his ambition,

and actually saying to people,

"Well, what's wrong with ambition

"if it's going to actually do some
good for you, the people?"

And then saying, well, before that,
saying,

"Honourable, you know, that's a
great term," but actually,

by the time he's finished
using it, people think,

"Well, is Brutus really honourable
or is he actually as guilty

"of some of the sins that he is
attributing to Caesar?"

Methinks there is much
reason in his saying.

Mark Antony's speech is pure hokum.
It is pure hokum, but it works.

Here was a Caesar.

When comes such another?

ALL SHOUT

And then it's as
if William puts the light off on it

and the whole thing disintegrates

almost as if you see the world
crumbling to pieces

in the course of the play.

He based things on the reality
around him,

but there's also the questioning
that's there in him,

and that's what you've got to find.

You've got to find, what is he
questioning,

what are the values he's
questioning, why do men do this?

In the end, nothing is really
resolved and everybody loses out.

It's about people who try
to tear up the existing order

and everything that flows from that
is disastrous.

There is no winner in this

and you just see civil war being
the result of Brutus' actions.

So however public-spirited he was,

what Shakespeare, I think, is asking
you to say -

well, is it justified given the
disorder, the civil war, the chaos,

the strife and the deaths of all the
leading characters except Antony?

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

Julius Caesar is a hit.

The play's themes of power
and succession

are aimed directly
at those in Elizabeth's court.

And one courtier is taking a
particular interest in Shakespeare -

the Earl of Essex,

a dangerous nobleman with his own
designs on power.

Essex was someone who was very
popular with the public,

who had been a military hero,
done dramatic things,

was clearly handsome
and clearly liked by the Queen,

but he didn't know his boundaries.
He pushed the boundaries too far.

Essex had once been a fixture
at court.

He was the Queen's favourite

and there were even rumours
they were lovers.

But Essex has crossed the line.

Sent by the Queen to crush rebellion
in Ireland,

Essex disobeyed
her orders by securing a truce,

and, later, daring to argue with
the Queen, Essex drew his sword.

If you think about Essex,
he's pushed his luck.

He comes back from Ireland without
permission to do so.

He goes marching into the Queen's
bedroom

before she's put her wig on or put
her make-up on,

he starts dissing her, he goes
around dishing out knighthoods

without asking anyone for
permission.

This is someone who's very dangerous
to you.

If you're the Queen's Chief
Minister,

you are worried about this man.
What is he going to do next?

So the Queen's advisors have got him
out of the palace

and so he's looking for ways
that he can get back into the game.

How does he actually make
himself relevant?

On 5th February 1601,

Shakespeare's company receive
a visitor,

one of Essex's men, with
a dangerous proposition.

They ask William's company
to perform a play

that is somewhat out of date.

Richard II,
the story of a weak English monarch

deposed by a strong, more
capable noble.

It's a huge risk for Shakespeare
and his company

to put Richard II on at this
point,

but he's also rather too senior
a nobleman to refuse.

Two days later,

Richard II is performed
for a full house at The Globe.

Essex is sending a clear message -
he is a power to be reckoned with.

Shakespeare is now in the middle
of a very dangerous game.

ANGRY SHOUTING OUTSIDE

I'm sure he woke up the next morning

and said, "What the fuck?",
or its Elizabethan equivalent.

Essex and 200 armed men march
on the city of London

to confront and overthrow
Elizabeth's inner circle.

London is plunged into chaos.

William wakes up -
Essex is starting a rebellion,

nominally not against the Queen
but against her advisors,

but he is rallying
the people of the city to his cause.

Essex is a hugely popular
heroic figure,

and so he is expecting the city
to rise up in arms with him

and to basically get
rid of the Queen's counsellors.

Some would say he's even trying
to get rid of her

and become the next king.

Elizabeth and her advisors get out
very quickly

the notion that anyone who thinks
it's a good idea

to be on Essex's team will be
considered guilty of treason

and punished immediately, and the
punishment was very, very extreme.

I mean, it wasn't just being killed.

You were hung, you were pulled down
before you were dead,

you were castrated,

your guts were cut out of you while
you were still alive

and displayed to the audience,
and then you were quartered

and your quarters put
on the outside of the city.

Essex is caught, the few remaining
rebels arrested and imprisoned.

Word soon passes to the
Privy Council

that Shakespeare staged the
seditious play Richard II

on the eve of the rebellion.

William and his company are in an
extremely dangerous position.

He's obviously keenly aware

that writers have had their hands
cut off, they've been imprisoned,

they've been tortured
for potentially less.

On 25th February,
Essex is beheaded.

It takes three strokes of the axe
to sever his neck.

The executioner holds the head
aloft, saying, "God save the Queen."

And it's believed that Shakespeare
and his troupe

are summoned to perform Richard II
for the Queen.

Imagine the atmosphere at court.

And William's there,
playing the same part

he was playing on the day
before the rebellion.

And to watch the monarch,

and she would only have been a few
feet in front of him,

to watch her steely gaze

as she viewed this performance
of the play that was put on.

It would not have been a stretch
to have them all, er,

sent to prison
and the company shut down.

Are you contented to resign
the crown?

I give this heavy
weight from off my head...

..and this unwieldy
sceptre from my hand.

Elizabeth decides
to take no further action.

Shakespeare is off the hook...
this time.

At the end of the summer
that same year,

William receives news
that his father has died.

I think William must feel, erm,
you know,

an extraordinary mixture of
feelings.

As a bereaved son and, even more
terribly, a bereaved father,

he's thinking about inheritance,

he's thinking about, erm, fathers
and sons,

and of course he's thinking
about, er, worldly communications

between, er, the dead and the
living.

It's around this time
Shakespeare completes work

on the most personal play
he's ever written.

He calls it Hamlet.

"I am thy father's spirit, doomed
for a certain term to walk the night

"and for the day confined to fast
in fires

"till the foul crimes done in my
days of nature

"are burnt and purged away."

As the play begins,

it seems Shakespeare has written
a simple revenge story.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,

is visited by the ghost
of his murdered father, the king.

Hamlet, overcome by terror and
grief, agrees to avenge his death.

GHOST: Revenge his foul
and most unnatural murder.

Murder?

Murder most foul, as in the best it
is,

but this most foul, strange
and unnatural.

Haste me to know't, that I, with
wings as swift

as meditation or the thoughts of
love, may sweep to my revenge.

Hamlet's father is the one who wants
his son

to vindicate that forceful
personality

and to step into himself -
he's called Hamlet, after all.

And Hamlet the prince, you know,

he becomes something
completely different.

But after accepting the task
his father's ghost has given him,

Hamlet finds himself unable to act.

What's great about the play
is that you are presented

with almost a straightforward
revenge tragedy

and in the middle of this,

Shakespeare places a modern
Elizabethan man who's a thinker,

who's an intellect,
who has a deep moral conscience.

Until now, revenge tragedies had
been defined

by a hero bent on vengeance,

but with Hamlet, Shakespeare does
something radical,

writing not about what a character
does, but about how he feels.

When Hamlet has the opportunity
to kill his father's murderer,

he is
filled with doubt and hesitates.

And so he goes to heaven,
and so am I revenged.

That would be thought on: a villain
kills my father, and for that,

I, his sole son, do this same
villain send to heaven.

The best time to kill Claudius
was when he was praying,

so therefore, you could kill him
then,

but of course Hamlet gives him
the benefit of the doubt,

and that's what Hamlet does
throughout.

He questions, and he questions
himself more than anybody else.

Just recognising how weird a kind of
hero Hamlet is

is really important, because Hamlet
comes before us saying,

"I don't know why I'm not doing
this."

He's abject in his own failure

to fulfil the play form

that Shakespeare has written him
into.

He's hopelessly
miscast as a revenging hero.

Did Hamlet like his father?

Now, that's a question which is well
worth asking

because we never ask that question.

We assume that he does,
but what if he didn't?

You know, and yet he's
haunted by this ghost

and then he says, "The spirit that
I have seen may be the devil,

"and the devil hath the power
to assume a pleasing shape

"and perhaps, out of my weakness and
my melancholy,

"abuses me to damn me."

And again, I think that reflects

on Shakespeare's position
with his own family.

I think in Hamlet, you very much see
Shakespeare analysing

and almost torturing himself over
the role of fathers and sons

and what they owe each other

and the obligations and the
emotional connections.

I wonder also if there's quite
a lot of guilt in there.

It's no coincidence that Hamlet is
one of his greatest plays,

and maybe one of the most painful
plays for him to write

because it is so personal.

It mixes ideas of depression, um,

with ideas of looking
at the grand scheme of things

in terms
of the shape of a person's life.

Hamlet questions God,
the existence of God,

whether God is right or not.

Hamlet questions his sanity,

he questions his relationship to his
mother, his father, family, duty.

Why are we alive?

Why do we have to go through this?
Why do I have to go through this?

There's huge doubt there,

and he sits the audience
in the middle of it and says, "Why?"

Unsure of whether he should
fulfil his father's wishes

and lost in grief and confusion,

Hamlet, in one of Shakespeare's most
iconic scenes, contemplates suicide.

To be or not to be...

..that is the question.

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...

ADRIAN LESTER: Knowing that it was
basically, "What's the point?",

I found that...really engaging
with those words really moving.

I'd get to the end of the speech and
I'd find it really quite upsetting.

There's pain in the play.

There's a lot of pain,

but in that sense of loss comes a...
a new understanding of who you are.

In the play's finale,

Hamlet, having fulfilled his
father's request for vengeance,

is stabbed by a poisoned sword.

In his death throes,

he finds a clarity
about what's important to him.

He makes his peace with death,

calmly asking his friend Horatio
to preserve his memory.

If thou didst ever hold me
in thy heart...

..absent thee from felicity
awhile...

..and in this harsh world...

..draw thy breath in pain

to tell my story.

The rest...

..is silence.

There's something about Hamlet's
negativity

that is weirdly
and unexpectedly positive.

He does
not become the royal king.

He doesn't father a family, he
doesn't, er, establish a dynasty,

and yet those negatives seem to open
up space for another kind of life.

Hamlet has an amazing phrase
which is, "The interim is mine,"

which suggests that that's where
life is -

not when you come and do your
big thing,

but actually in all the rest of it.

That's where your life really
unfurls,

that's where there is space for
life,

and I think what we see there
is Shakespeare's insistence

that all that assertion,

what we think makes character, what
we think makes a man

may actually be beside the point.

It may be the quality of life that's
irreducible to achievement,

that's irreducible to heroic actions
and so forth -

that's what we care about,

that's what we love, that's what we
mourn for.

That's where life perhaps really is.

The Gunpowder Plot -
it was a terrorist threat

and a religious war.

Nobody in England was as proximate
to the Catholic plot

as Shakespeare was.

This was a grave threat.

No-one's sure what's going to
happen.

There's a great deal of fear and
uncertainty.

He's about to go much deeper,
much darker.

There's nothing more horrible
than losing that we love most dear.

It's like the art and his life,

they kind of move like that.