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But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.

If you read Shakespeare's stage directions, all the gore and violence is right in there.

Shakespeare and his work will always be relevant. He wrote those pieces hundreds of years ago and we haven't really changed as humans, have we? We have to deal with love, honour and adultery now - people were the same then, too - that's what's so wonderful and powerful.

Shakespeare is universal.

Shakespeare is all big themes, like the most amazing love, or the most scary war.

All the great Shakespeare plays are about killing. 'Alas, poor Yorick,' that's about death. And in 'Romeo and Juliet' everyone up ends up dying. The greatest dramas in the world are all about sex, violence and death.

The rules of drama are very much separate from the properties of life. I think that's especially true of Shakespeare.

English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.

People have known of Shakespeare's homosexuality down through the ages.

Shakespeare would never have gone far in today's politically correct world.