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It is difficult to know how the Tudors actually spoke because we're going back before Shakespeare; much of the drama from that period is courtly, allegorical.

I think that music is crucially important in Shakespeare - and, clearly, was an important part of the Elizabethan theatre. And, it's always been something that was a profound element of the experience of Shakespeare that I have been drawn to - and interpreters have, as well.

I've done a lot of Shakespeare onstage, and I'm not convinced that the Earl of Oxford was the author of all those works, but I am convinced that the Stratfordian William Shakespeare was not. My feeling is that it was an amalgamation of many writers, in the same way that most films are a collaborative endeavor.

From kings to groundlings, Shakespeare made his work profound for everybody. That is how it should be. There is no hierarchy in theatre. It makes everyone part of a collective.

In many ways, 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' is modeled on Shakespeare's Henry V, which relied on a chorus to explain in words the battles of Harfleur and Agincourt that could never be captured on the Elizabethan stage.

Most of my career has been spent with the RSC doing Shakespeare, and the thing you learn from Shakespeare is that his historical plays don't bear anything other than a basic resemblance to history.

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.

In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.

I love the Shakespeare history plays; I love the struggle for the crown as a plot.

Shakespeare is, essentially, the emanation of the Renaissance. The overflow of his fame on the Continent in later years was but the sequel of the flood of the Renaissance in Western Europe. He was the child of that great movement, and marks its height as it penetrated the North with civilization.