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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.

You can find more traditional Shakespeare than we do. But what we want to bring to these works is energy, passion, freshness.

I think reading Shakespeare's plays when I was young was extremely important. He had the ability to make utter strangers come alive.

First of all, Shakespeare is about pleasure and interest. He was from the first moment he actually wrote something for the stage, and he remains so.

With Shakespeare, because you invest so much time in working on material, it always sort of stays with you to some degree.

If you take away a lot of the pretension and grandness from Shakespeare, a true poeticism is revealed.

At his heart, Shakespeare was a YA author. So many of his plays are set with high school-aged characters. He understood the passion, the confusion and drama that marks that life stage.

I think Shakespeare is everybody's treasure.

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.

I believe that it is a whole lifetime of work on Shakespeare's part that enabled him to do what he did. But the question is how you can explain this whole lifetime in such a way to make it accessible and available to us, to me.