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Well, as a kid I did not get Shakespeare. I just never understood it.

It's like saying French shouldn't be taught because you don't understand it because it's new. Shakespeare is just like learning a new, exciting language.

First of all, there was a volcano of words, an eruption of words that Shakespeare had never used before that had never been used in the English language before. It's astonishing. It pours out of him.

We have cut the text, but what remains are Shakespeare's words.

Shakespeare teaches you how to act. You come out of this process as a better actor. It's just the nature of the words he writes.

I read Shakespeare when I was 14 because it's what we were taught.

With Shakespeare, there's no subtext; you're speaking exactly what you're thinking constantly.

Shakespeare is the one who gets re-interpreted most frequently.

The Elizabethan mind wanted and demanded that one word could mean 50 things. What Shakespeare offers us is not ambiguity; it's choices.

There's a specificity of language that's required in Shakespeare that most drama students in England deal with - a specificity of language that is somehow not as clear in a lot of American schools.