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Anything one can do to provoke and inspire an interest in the works of Shakespeare in a young audience is fair game. Anything.

And I just think that to introduce an unknown Shakespeare is thrilling, too - not to do Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, to do the richer Shakespeare. People will come to this and not know the story.

There was a time when people liked to take Shakespeare and twist him around to make whatever social or political statement they wanted to make.

I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.

Maybe they say they do but I don't think many actors really enjoy trying to do a Shakespearean play.

Characters are an extreme form in Shakespeare's theater.

Shakespeare is rich and beautiful, and it can be an amazing experience to read and to watch and to work on.

Shakespeare lets us see real people undergoing real processes, with real feelings.

When I first started acting, and we would all sit down and talk about Shakespeare and how great it was. I thought well, I suppose it is.

There is some mysterious thing that goes on whereby, in the process of playing Shakespeare continuously, actors are surprised by the way the language actually acts on them.