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Downloaded from
YTS.MX

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Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

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[HUM OF CONVERSATION]

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(♪ 'Bridge of Khazad Dum')

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[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

6
00:00:44,880 --> 00:00:50,760
IAN MCKELLEN: Look ahead! The bridge
is near. It is dangerous and narrow.

7
00:00:55,760 --> 00:00:59,480
Suddenly Frodo saw before him
a black chasm.

8
00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:02,520
At the end of the hall,
the floor vanished

9
00:01:02,640 --> 00:01:05,040
and fell to an unknown depth.

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00:01:05,160 --> 00:01:08,960
The outer door could only be reached
by a slender bridge of stone,

11
00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:11,480
without kerb or rail,
that spanned the chasm

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00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:13,720
in one curving spring of 50 feet.

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At the brink, Gandalf halted and
the others came up in a pack behind.

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"Lead the way, Gimli:
Pippin and Merry next.

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00:01:23,039 --> 00:01:25,320
"Straight on and up the stair
beyond the door!"

16
00:01:27,039 --> 00:01:28,800
Something was coming up behind them.

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What it was could not be seen:
it was like a great shadow,

18
00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:37,840
in the middle of which was a dark form,

19
00:01:37,960 --> 00:01:40,000
of man-shape maybe, yet greater:

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and a power and terror
seemed to be in it and to go before it.

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It came to the edge of the fire.
The light faded,

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00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:49,280
as if a cloud had bent over it.

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And then with a rush,
it leapt across the fissure.

24
00:01:51,680 --> 00:01:55,080
And the flames roared up to greet it
and wreathed about it.

25
00:01:55,200 --> 00:01:57,200
In its right hand was a blade

26
00:01:57,320 --> 00:01:59,560
like a stabbing tongue of fire.

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In its other hand,
it held a whip of many thongs.

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00:02:03,880 --> 00:02:06,880
"A Balrog," muttered Gandalf.

29
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:09,000
"Now I understand!"

30
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And he faltered
and leaned heavily on his staff.

31
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The dark figure streaming with fire
raced towards them.

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00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:20,600
"Over the bridge!" cried Gandalf,
recalling his strength.

33
00:02:20,720 --> 00:02:24,000
"Fly! This is a foe
beyond any of you.

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"I must hold the narrow way.

35
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"Fly!"

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00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:29,680
The Balrog reached the bridge

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00:02:29,800 --> 00:02:31,560
and Gandalf stood
in the middle of the span,

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leaning on the staff in his left hand:
but in his other hand,

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Glamdring gleamed cold and white.

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00:02:39,079 --> 00:02:41,720
His enemy halted again, facing him,

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00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:45,360
the shadow about it
stretched out like two vast wings.

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It raised its whip.
The thongs whined and cracked.

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00:02:48,840 --> 00:02:51,079
Fire came from its nostrils.

44
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But still Gandalf stood firm.
"You cannot pass!"

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00:02:55,079 --> 00:02:57,200
A dead silence fell.

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00:02:57,320 --> 00:03:03,520
"I am a servant of the Secret Fire,
wielder of the Flame of Anor.

47
00:03:03,640 --> 00:03:05,320
"You cannot pass.

48
00:03:05,440 --> 00:03:10,080
"The dark fire will not avail you,
flame of Udûn.

49
00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:12,760
"Go back to the shadow.

50
00:03:12,880 --> 00:03:15,560
"You cannot pass."

51
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The Balrog made no answer.

52
00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:20,720
It stepped forward slowly
on to the bridge

53
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and suddenly raised itself
to a great height

54
00:03:23,600 --> 00:03:26,600
and its wings
were spread from wall to wall.

55
00:03:26,720 --> 00:03:30,720
But still Gandalf could be seen,
glimmering in the gloom.

56
00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:34,920
Then from out of the shadow,
a red sword leaped, flaming.

57
00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:36,840
Glamdring glittered white in answer.

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There was a ringing clash,
a stab of white fire.

59
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And the Balrog fell back and its
sword flew up in molten fragments.

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00:03:44,760 --> 00:03:48,040
And then with a bound,
it leapt full upon the bridge.

61
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Its whip whirled and hissed.

62
00:03:51,440 --> 00:03:54,280
And at that moment Gandalf,
crying aloud,

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00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:57,120
smote the bridge before him.

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"You shall not pass!"

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And a blinding sheet
of white flame sprang up.

66
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The bridge cracked.

67
00:04:05,840 --> 00:04:07,400
Right at the Balrog's feet it broke

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00:04:07,520 --> 00:04:11,240
and the stone upon which it stood
crashed into the gulf.

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00:04:11,360 --> 00:04:14,240
And with a terrible cry,
the Balrog fell forward,

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00:04:14,360 --> 00:04:18,040
its shadow plunged down and vanished.

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00:04:18,160 --> 00:04:20,120
But even as it fell,
it swung its whip

72
00:04:20,240 --> 00:04:24,240
and the thongs lashed
and curled about the wizard's knees,

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dragging him to the brink.

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He staggered and fell,

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grasped vainly at the stone

76
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and slid into the abyss.

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"Fly, you fools!"

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And was gone.

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00:04:40,840 --> 00:04:43,800
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

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00:04:51,480 --> 00:04:53,240
[CHEERING]

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00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:06,040
Hello. Thank you.

82
00:05:09,040 --> 00:05:10,720
Just in case you didn't realise,

83
00:05:10,840 --> 00:05:14,480
before it was made into all those movies,
Lord of the Rings used to be a book.

84
00:05:14,600 --> 00:05:15,960
[LAUGHTER]

85
00:05:16,080 --> 00:05:19,080
And Tolkien was writing that chapter,

86
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I think in Oxford, just about the time
I was getting ready to be born

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00:05:23,160 --> 00:05:26,560
up north in the county of Lancashire.

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00:05:26,680 --> 00:05:28,000
J R R...

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00:05:28,120 --> 00:05:31,280
John, Ronald...
What does the other R for, do you know?

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00:05:31,400 --> 00:05:33,080
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Reuel.
― Reuel, yes.

91
00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:35,159
It means friend of God.
Do you know what Tolkien means?

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00:05:36,240 --> 00:05:37,560
[SILENCE]

93
00:05:38,840 --> 00:05:40,560
It means foolhardy.

94
00:05:41,320 --> 00:05:45,040
And I did perhaps wonder whether
I wasn't being a bit little foolhardy

95
00:05:45,159 --> 00:05:47,840
when Peter Jackson
came over to my house,

96
00:05:47,960 --> 00:05:50,520
it was 21 years ago,
to ask me to play Gandalf,

97
00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:53,280
because at that time,
there was no screenplay, no script.

98
00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:55,600
And to tell you the truth...

99
00:05:56,800 --> 00:05:58,159
..I'd never read Lord of the Rings.

100
00:05:58,280 --> 00:06:00,000
[LAUGHTER]

101
00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:05,280
Of course, ever since,

102
00:06:05,400 --> 00:06:08,880
I've been shamed by family and friends
and strangers who have.

103
00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:12,360
And some of them confide
almost reverentially,

104
00:06:12,480 --> 00:06:16,000
"I read Lord of the Rings every year!"

105
00:06:18,600 --> 00:06:20,480
[LAUGHTER]

106
00:06:31,480 --> 00:06:35,040
It's 1,137 pages.

107
00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:38,960
It the first week of the millennium.

108
00:06:39,080 --> 00:06:41,600
I'd just arrived in New Zealand,

109
00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:44,280
in the capital city, Wellington,
to start filming,

110
00:06:44,400 --> 00:06:46,200
and Peter Jackson,
who's a sociable fellow,

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00:06:46,320 --> 00:06:48,640
took us all out for a welcoming meal.

112
00:06:48,760 --> 00:06:51,840
That's how I met for the first time
the four adorable hobbits.

113
00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:54,320
And the glamorous three ―

114
00:06:54,440 --> 00:06:57,960
Aragorn, Boromir and...Legolas.

115
00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:10,600
And sitting next to me,
a rival wizard, Saruman.

116
00:07:10,720 --> 00:07:14,760
Christopher Frank Carandini Lee...

117
00:07:15,880 --> 00:07:18,280
..the veteran of 200 movies,

118
00:07:18,400 --> 00:07:20,680
ten of which were Count Dracula.

119
00:07:21,520 --> 00:07:24,720
And quite early on in the meal,

120
00:07:24,840 --> 00:07:27,240
Christopher Lee turned his eyes
in my direction.

121
00:07:27,360 --> 00:07:31,840
I promise you, they were gleaming
as if he was contemplating a virgin neck.

122
00:07:36,800 --> 00:07:42,080
And then he confided,
"I read Lord of the Rings every year.

123
00:07:44,360 --> 00:07:48,800
"I've always thought
I should play Gandalf."

124
00:07:53,040 --> 00:07:56,800
Look, welcome
to the Harold Pinter Theatre.

125
00:07:56,920 --> 00:08:00,400
Good to have a theatre
named after a playwright. Look at it.

126
00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:03,320
Built 140 years ago.

127
00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:10,080
And one of the first actors on this stage
was the actor/manager Herbert Beerbohm,

128
00:08:10,200 --> 00:08:13,640
and after here, he went round the corner
to Her Majesty's Theatre

129
00:08:13,760 --> 00:08:16,080
and ran a company there for seven years,

130
00:08:16,200 --> 00:08:20,480
made so much money that he built a theatre
bang opposite His Majesty's.

131
00:08:20,600 --> 00:08:26,040
And he lived there and put on his famous
extravagant productions of Shakespeare.

132
00:08:26,160 --> 00:08:28,240
He was thought to be a bit old-fashioned,

133
00:08:28,360 --> 00:08:31,200
but no, rather up to date.

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00:08:31,320 --> 00:08:34,200
He founded
the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

135
00:08:34,320 --> 00:08:38,440
He was the first actor
ever to have his voice recorded.

136
00:08:39,400 --> 00:08:41,799
He made the first film of Shakespeare.

137
00:08:41,919 --> 00:08:44,640
Well, just a short one ―
an extract from King John.

138
00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:46,520
It was a silent movie.

139
00:08:46,640 --> 00:08:48,560
[LAUGHTER]

140
00:08:53,840 --> 00:08:56,840
And Shakespeare without the words
is a bit...

141
00:08:58,240 --> 00:09:00,440
It's a bit like Mozart without the music.

142
00:09:04,840 --> 00:09:06,160
Beerbohm's a German name,

143
00:09:06,280 --> 00:09:10,160
and he thought perhaps the Brits
would like something a little bit simpler.

144
00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:13,480
And so he translated the last syllable
into English

145
00:09:13,600 --> 00:09:16,360
and it became Sit Herbert Beerbohm...

146
00:09:16,480 --> 00:09:17,800
Tree.

147
00:09:17,920 --> 00:09:19,800
And he must have stood...

148
00:09:21,280 --> 00:09:22,960
..just where I am now.

149
00:09:25,120 --> 00:09:27,560
And many other wonderful actors.

150
00:09:28,600 --> 00:09:30,880
Not me. First time
I've been on this stage.

151
00:09:31,680 --> 00:09:32,920
I've sat out there
on many happy occasions.

152
00:09:33,040 --> 00:09:34,800
I've been on the road.

153
00:09:34,920 --> 00:09:37,320
I've been visiting theatres I know well,

154
00:09:37,440 --> 00:09:39,280
and a few that I don't know at all.

155
00:09:39,400 --> 00:09:41,480
This is my skip, my box.

156
00:09:41,600 --> 00:09:43,520
This is what actors used to have
when they went on the road.

157
00:09:43,640 --> 00:09:45,920
They were usually made of wicker.

158
00:09:46,040 --> 00:09:48,640
You kept your costumes in them, props,
things you'd need on the road.

159
00:09:48,760 --> 00:09:51,400
And there are the places
that we've been to.

160
00:09:52,000 --> 00:09:53,880
87 theatres.

161
00:09:54,000 --> 00:09:57,560
And the first one was only last year,

162
00:09:57,680 --> 00:10:00,280
at my local arts centre
on the Isle of Dogs.

163
00:10:00,400 --> 00:10:04,160
Then 15 theatres in London
and then round England and Wales.

164
00:10:04,280 --> 00:10:07,440
And we ended up, beautifully, in Orkney.

165
00:10:07,560 --> 00:10:09,520
Oh, and we went to Northern Ireland.

166
00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:11,680
Yep, there we are ― the Braid.

167
00:10:12,600 --> 00:10:15,360
That's in Ballymena in County Antrim,

168
00:10:15,480 --> 00:10:17,520
which is where the McKellens come from.

169
00:10:17,640 --> 00:10:21,200
We were bequeathed
this dreadful surname...

170
00:10:22,920 --> 00:10:25,680
..that few people
outside County Antrim can spell properly.

171
00:10:25,800 --> 00:10:29,080
Just for the record,
it's capital M, small C,

172
00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:32,080
capital K, E-L-L-E-N.

173
00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:33,520
E-N!

174
00:10:34,800 --> 00:10:38,720
It's not A-N. and of course, it doesn't
really matter, but I used to think it did.

175
00:10:38,840 --> 00:10:41,520
And I wondered whether I shouldn't
adopt a stage name

176
00:10:41,640 --> 00:10:43,920
like Sir Herbert's.

177
00:10:44,040 --> 00:10:49,520
Then I remembered working with the actor
Timothy Carlton,

178
00:10:49,640 --> 00:10:53,320
just after his wife had given birth
to their first child, Benedict.

179
00:10:53,440 --> 00:10:58,480
And Tim said to me one day, "You know,
my real surname, it's not Carlton at all.

180
00:10:58,600 --> 00:11:00,880
"It's Cumberbatch."

181
00:11:05,920 --> 00:11:08,920
He said, "Can you imagine trying to have
a success as an actor if you're...?"

182
00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:14,600
[APPLAUSE]

183
00:11:16,840 --> 00:11:18,920
And on there somewhere is Home,

184
00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:22,480
which is the wonderful name for
the newest theatre built in Manchester,

185
00:11:22,600 --> 00:11:25,760
which is where
the McKellens emigrated to.

186
00:11:25,880 --> 00:11:27,600
♪ Unpack the luggage

187
00:11:30,000 --> 00:11:31,400
♪ La la la... ♪

188
00:11:31,520 --> 00:11:34,400
Hi-ho, the glamorous life!

189
00:11:34,520 --> 00:11:36,800
Really what I could do with is a table.

190
00:11:36,920 --> 00:11:38,040
Oh, look here!

191
00:11:38,160 --> 00:11:40,040
[LAUGHTER]

192
00:11:40,160 --> 00:11:42,480
My director, Sean Mathias,

193
00:11:42,600 --> 00:11:45,560
who most recently directed me
in No Man's Land by...

194
00:11:45,680 --> 00:11:47,360
Harold Pinter...

195
00:11:47,480 --> 00:11:50,040
during rehearsals for this said,

196
00:11:50,160 --> 00:11:52,200
"Ian, wouldn't it be great,
when the audience arrives

197
00:11:52,320 --> 00:11:53,320
"if the box is already there...

198
00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:55,040
"and you're inside it?""

199
00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:04,880
"Sean, what on earth
would I be doing inside a box?"

200
00:12:05,640 --> 00:12:08,240
And he said,
"Because the audience would like it."

201
00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:13,920
Which is a jolly good reason. But I can't
get in there ― there's so much else.

202
00:12:15,920 --> 00:12:17,160
Oh, look!

203
00:12:17,280 --> 00:12:19,000
Here's my precious...

204
00:12:19,760 --> 00:12:22,040
[AUDIENCE GASPS]

205
00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:25,280
That is the real...Glamdring.

206
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,320
Gandalf's sword, given to me
on my last day of shooting,

207
00:12:28,440 --> 00:12:31,880
after eight years of hobbity hills
and misty mountain ranges.

208
00:12:35,160 --> 00:12:38,360
Glamdring is in retirement now,
lives in my hall,

209
00:12:38,480 --> 00:12:40,320
between Magneto's helmet...

210
00:12:41,800 --> 00:12:45,440
..and my two walking-sticks
from The Da Vinci Code.

211
00:12:47,880 --> 00:12:49,520
See that little jewel there?

212
00:12:49,640 --> 00:12:51,000
All that writing?

213
00:12:51,120 --> 00:12:53,040
Yeah. More writing there.

214
00:12:54,480 --> 00:12:55,800
That's Elvish.

215
00:12:58,480 --> 00:13:00,080
[LAUGHTER]

216
00:13:03,840 --> 00:13:05,480
Is there a youngster further back

217
00:13:05,600 --> 00:13:07,600
who'd like to come
and have a closer look at Glamdring?

218
00:13:07,720 --> 00:13:09,400
Just put your hand up if there is.

219
00:13:09,520 --> 00:13:11,120
Where am I looking?

220
00:13:11,240 --> 00:13:13,480
All right, there's one coming.

221
00:13:13,600 --> 00:13:15,040
Thank you.

222
00:13:15,920 --> 00:13:18,120
You didn't know it was going to be
this sort of show, did you?

223
00:13:18,960 --> 00:13:20,880
Hello! What's your name?

224
00:13:21,600 --> 00:13:23,600
― Hello.
― [APPLAUSE]

225
00:13:26,160 --> 00:13:27,760
― What's your name?
― Iljama.

226
00:13:31,560 --> 00:13:34,240
Now just say your name for them.

227
00:13:34,360 --> 00:13:35,720
― Iljama.
― Iljama.

228
00:13:35,840 --> 00:13:38,560
Right, lovely.
And this is Glamdring, Iljama.

229
00:13:39,960 --> 00:13:41,560
[LAUGHTER]

230
00:13:41,680 --> 00:13:43,800
― (IAN CHUCKLES)
― You don't trust me!

231
00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:45,000
I do trust...

232
00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:46,720
[LAUGHTER]

233
00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:50,840
We all trust you. It's just
it's a bit heavy. There we are.

234
00:13:50,960 --> 00:13:52,560
No, no, I'm going to take that off.

235
00:13:52,680 --> 00:13:55,400
― IAN: Oh!
― AUDIENCE: Ooh!

236
00:13:55,520 --> 00:13:58,160
I've never held a sword before!

237
00:13:58,280 --> 00:13:59,720
― Is it heavy?
― Yeah.

238
00:13:59,840 --> 00:14:01,400
― Good.
― I think you want it back.

239
00:14:01,520 --> 00:14:03,240
[LAUGHTER]

240
00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:06,040
No, you hold onto it for a bit.

241
00:14:06,160 --> 00:14:08,080
― It looks like a sword...
― (DING)

242
00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:10,160
Sounds like a sword, but do you know what?

243
00:14:10,640 --> 00:14:12,200
(AUDIENCE GASPS)

244
00:14:12,320 --> 00:14:15,120
Just hold it in your right hand, Iljama.

245
00:14:15,240 --> 00:14:17,680
And that in the other one.
There we are. Are you all right?

246
00:14:17,800 --> 00:14:19,680
I think so!

247
00:14:21,200 --> 00:14:22,680
Would you like a selfie?

248
00:14:26,200 --> 00:14:28,520
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

249
00:14:36,200 --> 00:14:37,640
There we are.

250
00:14:37,760 --> 00:14:40,480
(APPLAUSE DROWNS OUT SPEECH)

251
00:14:40,600 --> 00:14:42,360
Here we are. Is it working?

252
00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:43,960
There we go.

253
00:14:48,920 --> 00:14:53,360
When you get home,
Google Samuel Dunseith McKellen ―

254
00:14:53,480 --> 00:14:55,360
he invented the portable camera.

255
00:14:55,480 --> 00:14:59,520
All right, Iljama. Do you want to pop the
sword back in the scabbard for me?

256
00:14:59,640 --> 00:15:00,920
― OK.
― Yeah.

257
00:15:02,320 --> 00:15:05,000
I don't think I'll be able
to put it back in.

258
00:15:05,120 --> 00:15:06,600
I think you better...

259
00:15:06,720 --> 00:15:08,240
No, no, no, you...

260
00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:11,200
No, no, no, no,
I want you to do it for me.

261
00:15:11,320 --> 00:15:13,000
― OK.
― I'll help you.

262
00:15:13,120 --> 00:15:14,840
All right?

263
00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:17,680
― Thank you.
― There we are.

264
00:15:17,800 --> 00:15:20,080
[APPLAUSE]

265
00:15:24,720 --> 00:15:27,160
― Have you got one of these?
― No.

266
00:15:27,280 --> 00:15:28,520
Well, you do now.

267
00:15:28,640 --> 00:15:33,200
All right. This is as close as I'm
going to get to an autobiography.

268
00:15:34,520 --> 00:15:36,800
I wrote it specially for the tour.

269
00:15:36,920 --> 00:15:39,880
It's just an autobiography,
really, with...

270
00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,720
Those are all the places we went to.

271
00:15:42,840 --> 00:15:45,360
And it's full of photographs.
Who's that? Do you know?

272
00:15:47,080 --> 00:15:48,880
― Is it you?
― That's me there.

273
00:15:50,120 --> 00:15:51,960
Who's that one? Don't know?

274
00:15:52,080 --> 00:15:53,920
All right, I won't tell Patrick Stewart.

275
00:15:57,160 --> 00:16:01,600
I-L-J-A-M-A...

276
00:16:01,720 --> 00:16:02,720
― Is that right?
― Yep.

277
00:16:02,840 --> 00:16:04,360
That's right, good.

278
00:16:04,960 --> 00:16:06,800
Well, it's nice to have your name
spelled properly,

279
00:16:06,920 --> 00:16:08,720
― isn't it?
― Yes.

280
00:16:08,840 --> 00:16:09,840
There we are, Iljama.

281
00:16:09,960 --> 00:16:12,160
You give me the sword back...

282
00:16:12,280 --> 00:16:14,080
Let's shake hands.

283
00:16:14,200 --> 00:16:19,040
[APPLAUSE DROWNS OUT SPEECH]

284
00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:31,000
By chance,
anyone here born in New Zealand?

285
00:16:31,600 --> 00:16:33,160
― Yes, where?
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Auckland.

286
00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:35,320
Auckland, where the Orcs come from!

287
00:16:37,520 --> 00:16:39,360
Anyone ever been to New Zealand?

288
00:16:39,480 --> 00:16:40,760
[WHOOPING]

289
00:16:40,880 --> 00:16:42,680
Aren't we the lucky ones?

290
00:16:42,800 --> 00:16:45,760
Anyone ever been on a stamp
in New Zealand?

291
00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:48,280
[LAUGHTER]

292
00:16:57,400 --> 00:16:59,000
And a coin?

293
00:17:03,760 --> 00:17:06,720
No, no, that's wasn't me.
That was Gandalf.

294
00:17:09,800 --> 00:17:11,119
You know, Iljama...

295
00:17:11,240 --> 00:17:13,800
Iljama, the best day was when...

296
00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:19,960
..this helicopter lifted the nine members
of The Fellowship up, up, up...

297
00:17:20,079 --> 00:17:22,160
to the Southern Alps. And off it went,

298
00:17:22,280 --> 00:17:24,960
and the cameraman inside it filmed me

299
00:17:25,079 --> 00:17:28,119
leading the way
up this narrow, snowy ridge,

300
00:17:28,240 --> 00:17:29,840
I promise you, up to our knees.

301
00:17:29,960 --> 00:17:33,840
No human being
could ever have been there before.

302
00:17:33,960 --> 00:17:37,040
Down here, there was a perilous drop
and up there, Mount Cook,

303
00:17:37,160 --> 00:17:39,040
where I knew Edmund Hillary had trained

304
00:17:39,160 --> 00:17:41,520
for the successful ascent
of Mount Everest.

305
00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:43,800
He was a bit of a hero in our household.

306
00:17:43,920 --> 00:17:48,280
My dad used to climb
in the Lake District and Snowdonia.

307
00:17:48,400 --> 00:17:51,160
Crampons, ropes, all that.
And as a treat for me,

308
00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:54,600
they invited Edmund Hillary
to come and see us filming.

309
00:17:55,240 --> 00:17:58,040
And it turned out it was going to be
a bit of a thrill for him too,

310
00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:01,680
because he was a huge Tolkien fan.

311
00:18:02,920 --> 00:18:04,440
So you can imagine my excitement ―

312
00:18:04,560 --> 00:18:08,760
suddenly there he is at the end of the
corridor. The conqueror of Everest.

313
00:18:08,880 --> 00:18:11,560
Six foot three inches tall,
a bit stooped now,

314
00:18:11,680 --> 00:18:14,720
like Gandalf, and oh, a lovely long face.

315
00:18:14,840 --> 00:18:17,120
A bit like my dad's, actually ―
big jutting jaw.

316
00:18:17,240 --> 00:18:19,920
And he held out his great big paw.
And he said,

317
00:18:20,040 --> 00:18:23,240
"I read Lord of the Rings every year."

318
00:18:23,360 --> 00:18:25,320
[LAUGHTER]

319
00:18:29,800 --> 00:18:32,520
(HUMS A TUNE)

320
00:18:41,880 --> 00:18:46,360
♪ For the strength of the hills
We bless thee

321
00:18:46,480 --> 00:18:48,560
♪ Our God

322
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:54,040
♪ Our fathers' God
Amen. ♪

323
00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:58,240
I don't go to church any more,
but I do miss the hymns.

324
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,240
And as a kid back in Lancashire,
in Wigan...

325
00:19:03,080 --> 00:19:05,240
..on a Sunday, hymns all day long.

326
00:19:05,360 --> 00:19:07,760
10:30 in the morning, church service,
Sunday School in the afternoon,

327
00:19:07,880 --> 00:19:09,480
then back to church in the evening.

328
00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:11,720
Congregational Church.

329
00:19:11,840 --> 00:19:15,600
And the Congregationalists,
as their name implies, are in charge.

330
00:19:15,720 --> 00:19:17,720
They organise everything
through their monthly meeting.

331
00:19:17,840 --> 00:19:20,000
There's no hierarchy.
They make all the big decisions,

332
00:19:20,120 --> 00:19:21,320
like who's going to be their minister.

333
00:19:21,440 --> 00:19:27,240
And in Romiley in Cheshire, where
we've already been with the show...

334
00:19:27,360 --> 00:19:30,800
Yep, there we are ― the Forum, Romiley.

335
00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:32,920
The Congregational Church there

336
00:19:33,040 --> 00:19:35,840
appointed my mother's father
to be their minister,

337
00:19:35,960 --> 00:19:37,640
and my dad was a lay preacher.

338
00:19:37,760 --> 00:19:40,680
So was his dad, Grandad McKellen.

339
00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:43,520
And he had a bit of a theatrical bent.

340
00:19:43,640 --> 00:19:45,120
If he felt that the congregation

341
00:19:45,240 --> 00:19:46,960
weren't really paying him
quite enough attention,

342
00:19:47,080 --> 00:19:48,400
he'd suddenly say,
in the middle of the sermon,

343
00:19:48,520 --> 00:19:51,000
"I can see the children of Israel!"

344
00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:57,040
And half the congregation would fall
for it and turn round to look where...

345
00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:01,000
So I come from a family who are at ease...

346
00:20:01,800 --> 00:20:05,840
..with public speaking in the pulpit
and the classroom ―

347
00:20:05,960 --> 00:20:07,240
lots of teachers in the family.

348
00:20:07,360 --> 00:20:10,520
My sister Jean, five years older.

349
00:20:10,640 --> 00:20:13,200
She was an English teacher.
She married a teacher.

350
00:20:13,320 --> 00:20:18,280
Our Uncle Ken was a teacher ― first one
in the family to get to university.

351
00:20:18,400 --> 00:20:20,760
Kenneth Sutcliffe.
He ended up as headmaster

352
00:20:20,880 --> 00:20:24,560
of Latymer Upper School for Boys,
here in West London,

353
00:20:24,680 --> 00:20:28,600
at a time when Alan Rickman was a student.

354
00:20:29,240 --> 00:20:31,520
And now, look,
Uncle Ken was a bit of a stick,

355
00:20:31,640 --> 00:20:34,120
but I checked with Alan
and he promised me

356
00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:37,920
he did not base Professor Snape
on my uncle.

357
00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:44,480
So we are a family of communicators.

358
00:20:45,520 --> 00:20:47,680
Proselytisers on occasion.

359
00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:51,680
And performers...amateur performers.

360
00:20:52,800 --> 00:20:55,240
My grandmother was a renowned soprano.

361
00:20:55,920 --> 00:21:00,080
And when Grandad McKellen first saw
his future wife, she was singing hymns.

362
00:21:01,040 --> 00:21:05,680
Solos for the church choir
in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

363
00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:11,160
And he said,
"Ian, I fell in love with her voice."

364
00:21:13,360 --> 00:21:16,520
And back in Romiley,
when she was a girl...

365
00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:21,080
..my mother used to do a bit of amateur
acting with the church players.

366
00:21:21,200 --> 00:21:22,760
And sister Jean...

367
00:21:22,880 --> 00:21:26,120
Oh, well, she was an enthusiastic amateur
all her life,

368
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:28,480
and as a girl, she sang in choirs,

369
00:21:28,600 --> 00:21:32,920
and at home, played duets with Dad on
the upright Bechstein in the front room.

370
00:21:33,520 --> 00:21:35,120
And Dad's hands...

371
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,320
A bit like Edmund Hillary's.
They were huge!

372
00:21:40,080 --> 00:21:41,680
The fingers...

373
00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:45,480
so thick, sometimes
they got stuck between the keys.

374
00:21:46,800 --> 00:21:49,480
A very early memory for me
was trying to get to sleep,

375
00:21:49,600 --> 00:21:54,520
and Dad pounding his way through
a Chopin sonata on the piano below.

376
00:21:54,640 --> 00:21:56,720
I've got the piano in here somewhere.

377
00:21:57,360 --> 00:21:58,680
[LAUGHTER]

378
00:22:01,800 --> 00:22:05,200
Promise I have. I've got the piano
in here because...

379
00:22:06,800 --> 00:22:10,680
..The Piano is a 12-line
poem by David Herbert Lawrence.

380
00:22:11,880 --> 00:22:14,160
Look at that ―
all those poems by a novelist.

381
00:22:14,280 --> 00:22:18,280
Actually I once played DH Lawrence
in the film Priest of love.

382
00:22:18,400 --> 00:22:19,400
[SILENCE]

383
00:22:19,520 --> 00:22:20,760
Which you never saw.

384
00:22:20,880 --> 00:22:23,120
[LAUGHTER]

385
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:28,520
But if you're a fan of Ava Gardner,
have a look at Priest of Love.

386
00:22:28,640 --> 00:22:30,720
It was her last movie.

387
00:22:32,800 --> 00:22:34,160
The Piano.

388
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:42,200
Softly, in the dusk,
a woman is singing to me

389
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:48,080
Taking me back down the vista of years

390
00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:52,360
Till I see a child sitting under the piano

391
00:22:52,480 --> 00:22:54,040
In the boom of the tingling strings

392
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:57,440
And pressing the small,
poised feet of a mother

393
00:22:57,560 --> 00:22:59,960
Who smiles as she sings

394
00:23:00,080 --> 00:23:01,640
In spite of myself

395
00:23:01,760 --> 00:23:04,640
The insidious mastery of song

396
00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:06,320
Betrays me back

397
00:23:06,440 --> 00:23:08,640
Till the heart of me weeps to belong

398
00:23:08,760 --> 00:23:11,920
To the old Sunday evenings at home,
with winter outside

399
00:23:12,040 --> 00:23:14,320
And hymns in the cosy parlour

400
00:23:14,440 --> 00:23:16,760
The tinkling piano our guide

401
00:23:16,880 --> 00:23:21,080
So now it is vain
for the singer to burst into clamour

402
00:23:21,200 --> 00:23:25,240
With the great black piano appassionato

403
00:23:25,360 --> 00:23:26,520
The glamour

404
00:23:26,640 --> 00:23:31,320
Of childish days is upon me,
my manhood is cast

405
00:23:31,440 --> 00:23:34,000
Down in the flood of remembrance

406
00:23:34,120 --> 00:23:40,480
I weep like a child for the past.

407
00:23:44,760 --> 00:23:48,440
"So, young Master McKellen,
what do you want to be when you grow up?"

408
00:23:48,560 --> 00:23:50,480
This is Auntie Dorothy one Christmas.

409
00:23:50,600 --> 00:23:57,040
"Do you want to be a preacher,
like your grandad? Yes? Yes?"

410
00:23:57,160 --> 00:23:59,440
"No. No."

411
00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:03,480
"Do you want to be, oh, a teacher,
like your Uncle Ken? Yes?"

412
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:05,080
"No."

413
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:09,920
"Well, do you want to be
a civil engineer, like your dad?"

414
00:24:10,080 --> 00:24:13,280
And I screamed inside, "No, no, no!

415
00:24:13,400 --> 00:24:15,920
"I want to go into hotel management."

416
00:24:16,040 --> 00:24:18,360
[LAUGHTER]

417
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:27,480
For years, I wanted to be a chef,

418
00:24:27,600 --> 00:24:29,400
and then a journalist,

419
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:31,240
and then something...

420
00:24:32,000 --> 00:24:34,200
Not an actor. Well, not yet.

421
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:36,320
Eventually, inevitably.

422
00:24:37,040 --> 00:24:40,840
I suppose it all began
when I was very young.

423
00:24:41,640 --> 00:24:43,320
One Wednesday morning.

424
00:24:44,000 --> 00:24:47,320
I was taken out
of my nursery school in Wigan.

425
00:24:47,440 --> 00:24:48,920
I was three. Three years old.

426
00:24:49,040 --> 00:24:53,280
And we were going on our first family
theatre outing to Manchester ― big city.

427
00:24:54,120 --> 00:24:55,560
On the train.

428
00:24:56,400 --> 00:24:57,960
The steam train.

429
00:24:58,560 --> 00:25:02,360
And we were going to go
to the Palace Theatre.

430
00:25:02,480 --> 00:25:04,520
What a wonderful name for a theatre.

431
00:25:05,080 --> 00:25:08,800
And we were all going to see Peter Pan.
And all through the journey,

432
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,760
"Mummy, will it be a real crocodile?

433
00:25:11,880 --> 00:25:14,000
"Mummy, will they really fly?"

434
00:25:15,760 --> 00:25:17,840
"Well, we'll have to wait and see."

435
00:25:18,880 --> 00:25:22,520
Well, the trouble was I could see.
I mean, I could see the wires.

436
00:25:25,680 --> 00:25:27,000
And the croc...

437
00:25:27,120 --> 00:25:30,000
It was obviously just a silly man
crawling about on his tummy.

438
00:25:30,880 --> 00:25:33,440
I don't know ―
three years old and a critic.

439
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:39,520
Tinkerbell ―
it was obviously just a torch!

440
00:25:40,960 --> 00:25:43,560
Mind you, when Peter Pan said
we were to clap

441
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:45,160
if we believed in fairies,

442
00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:46,920
I clapped away.

443
00:25:48,720 --> 00:25:50,280
I've been clapping ever since.

444
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:54,280
[APPLAUSE]

445
00:25:58,480 --> 00:26:02,360
And that's one of those moments. You don't
see it coming and it changes your life.

446
00:26:03,480 --> 00:26:05,840
Dad whispered, "We've got to go!"

447
00:26:07,120 --> 00:26:08,520
Before the end of the show.

448
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:12,520
Get the train back to Wigan.
And we're pushing along the row

449
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:16,800
where we've been sitting up there,
getting to the side door to go.

450
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:21,680
And just before,
I have one last look at the stage.

451
00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:29,800
And the backcloth
is covered in little stars.

452
00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:32,640
In Neverland.

453
00:26:34,920 --> 00:26:36,120
And I thought...

454
00:26:36,240 --> 00:26:39,120
"I want more of this. I'm coming back."

455
00:26:39,240 --> 00:26:41,840
And it wasn't
that I wanted to be on the stage.

456
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:45,960
No, I wanted to be behind it,
either side of it, underneath it.

457
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:47,080
Is that possible?

458
00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:50,160
Above it. Find out
where did all the wires go to?

459
00:26:50,280 --> 00:26:53,360
How does it all work?
What's behind the scenery?

460
00:26:53,480 --> 00:26:54,840
And anyway...

461
00:26:56,120 --> 00:26:57,880
How do you make starlight?

462
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:02,440
So this...

463
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:04,560
..passion grew.

464
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:06,920
And it wasn't a passion for the church.

465
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:09,400
It wasn't a passion for music.
I still can't play the piano.

466
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:11,560
It wasn't a passion for cricket.

467
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:15,480
It could have been, because at the end
of our garden was the Wigan Cricket Club,

468
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:17,960
and every Saturday during the season,

469
00:27:18,080 --> 00:27:19,160
I saw every single game,

470
00:27:19,280 --> 00:27:23,680
and on Sundays, I used to race back from
Sunday School to score for the Second XI.

471
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:25,480
Look what I've just found at home.

472
00:27:28,720 --> 00:27:30,440
[LAUGHTER]

473
00:27:31,320 --> 00:27:33,200
AUDIENCE: Awww!

474
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:38,160
It's my studio chair.

475
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,120
They gave it to me
on the last day of Priest of Love.

476
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:42,800
Not what I was looking for.

477
00:27:44,440 --> 00:27:45,440
Here we are.

478
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:51,720
"Country Borough of Wigan
Education Committee exercise book.

479
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:54,960
"Name ― Ian M McKellen."

480
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:57,120
M is for Murray.

481
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,920
"Subject ― hobbies book."

482
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:07,760
(CHUCKLES) I wonder, can you see?

483
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:12,400
"The theatre.

484
00:28:13,120 --> 00:28:18,280
"Yes, anything to do
with the theatre pleases me.

485
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:20,960
"I'm sure a great thrill must go through

486
00:28:21,080 --> 00:28:26,040
"anyone sitting in the orchestra stalls
and waiting for the curtain to go up.

487
00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:29,080
"But have you ever thought of all the work

488
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:32,120
"that many people have to undergo...?"

489
00:28:32,240 --> 00:28:34,080
Who did I think I was writing it for?

490
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:40,720
Well, perhaps for you.

491
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:44,720
Here's my theatre diary.

492
00:28:44,840 --> 00:28:49,880
"One week ago,
I saw Mr Novello's King's Rhapsody

493
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:51,600
"at the Palace Theatre, Manchester."

494
00:28:51,720 --> 00:28:54,600
Ah, so we did go back there. Now, that
needs a bit of an explanation these days.

495
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:56,280
King's Rhapsody...

496
00:28:57,280 --> 00:29:02,880
..was the last of the great extravagant
sentimental operettas ― musicals...

497
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:07,520
by Ivor Novello,
the Welsh composer and actor,

498
00:29:07,640 --> 00:29:12,080
remembered these days
for the Novello Theatre in London and...

499
00:29:12,200 --> 00:29:17,960
oh, everywhere, every year with the
Ivor Novello Awards for popular music.

500
00:29:18,080 --> 00:29:19,480
When he was 21 years old,

501
00:29:19,600 --> 00:29:23,280
he had written the hit song of...

502
00:29:23,400 --> 00:29:26,200
the First World War,
still remembered today.

503
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:28,400
Do you recall?

504
00:29:28,520 --> 00:29:30,720
Keep the Home Fires Burning.

505
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:35,800
♪ Keep the home fires burning... ♪

506
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:38,120
Though your hearts are yearning.

507
00:29:38,240 --> 00:29:41,640
(AUDIENCE SINGS ALONG)
♪ Though your hearts are yearning... ♪

508
00:29:41,760 --> 00:29:43,600
While the boys are far away.

509
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:48,160
♪ While the boys are far away... ♪

510
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:49,480
They dream of home.

511
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:54,480
♪ They dream of home

512
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:56,000
AUDIENCE MEMBER: ♪ There's a silver... ♪

513
00:29:56,120 --> 00:29:58,160
[LAUGHTER]

514
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:04,040
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
♪ Through the dark clouds shining

515
00:30:04,160 --> 00:30:08,680
♪ Turn the dark cloud inside out

516
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:14,160
♪ Till the boys come home. ♪

517
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:16,880
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

518
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:28,200
And then later, in the Second World War,
he wrote We'll Gather Lilacs.

519
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,320
He didn't sing himself,
but he was always in the musicals

520
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:32,800
and he accompanied the leading ladies.

521
00:30:32,920 --> 00:30:34,800
In the case of King's Rhapsody,

522
00:30:34,920 --> 00:30:36,520
she was called... Well!

523
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,360
Well, his leading lady
in King's Rhapsody had a stage name

524
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:43,480
and it had been given to her
by Ivor Novello.

525
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:45,160
He said, "I'm going to name you

526
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,040
"after the most beautiful actress
working today.

527
00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:51,360
"And I'm going to give you her initials
and her second name.

528
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:53,000
"We'll spell it differently."

529
00:30:53,120 --> 00:30:55,280
And that's how young Vanessa Lee

530
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,360
was named
after the beautiful Vivien Leigh.

531
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:02,320
Oh, and was Ivor beautiful!

532
00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:05,720
Oh, you have a look at his
early photographs in his silent movies ―

533
00:31:05,840 --> 00:31:07,960
two of them directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

534
00:31:08,080 --> 00:31:10,560
On stage, total matinee idol.

535
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:15,840
One year, he'd won an award for the
most glamorous profile in the world.

536
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,480
And the hit song in King's Rhapsody was

537
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:24,320
♪ Someday my heart will awake

538
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:27,000
♪ Someday... ♪

539
00:31:28,760 --> 00:31:30,160
And up there...

540
00:31:31,280 --> 00:31:35,360
..in row C, where we were sitting for
my mother's birthday treat, my heart...

541
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:39,680
I mean...Ivor Novello...

542
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:44,720
..upstage centre. Profile on display.

543
00:31:45,800 --> 00:31:47,480
Tailored silken dressing gown.

544
00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:49,120
And at the exact moment

545
00:31:49,240 --> 00:31:51,960
when he seductively handed over
a glass of champagne

546
00:31:52,080 --> 00:31:55,000
to young Vanessa Lee
on the chaise longue,

547
00:31:55,120 --> 00:31:56,120
up there in row C,

548
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:57,840
I had my first erection.

549
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,200
[LAUGHTER]

550
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:11,400
And I've loved the theatre ever since.

551
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:15,080
[APPLAUSE]

552
00:32:18,280 --> 00:32:20,960
I mean, loved it as you love it,
as theatregoers.

553
00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:23,880
And it was sister Jean
started taking me to the theatre.

554
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,000
When I was ten,

555
00:32:27,120 --> 00:32:29,560
she took me off
to the Wigan Little Theatre

556
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:32,480
to see the amateurs there
do Twelfth Night.

557
00:32:32,600 --> 00:32:34,600
First Shakespeare I'd ever seen.

558
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,880
And shortly after,
at the same address, Macbeth.

559
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:43,560
And my boyhood
seemed to be packed with Shakespeare.

560
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:48,520
Our school took an annual camp
to Stratford-upon-Avon,

561
00:32:48,640 --> 00:32:50,160
where Shakespeare was born.

562
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:52,760
Under canvas, and then we
punted up the River Avon

563
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:54,680
to the old Memorial Theatre,

564
00:32:54,800 --> 00:32:59,920
where some of the most illustrious
performers of my youth

565
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,520
were in the summer season
of Shakespeare there.

566
00:33:02,640 --> 00:33:04,680
Most exciting of all for me,

567
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:07,600
Sir Laurence Olivier.

568
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:12,280
And I saw him first playing Malvolio
in Twelfth Night.

569
00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:13,640
Second time I'd seen the play.

570
00:33:13,760 --> 00:33:16,920
And in the same season, Macbeth.

571
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:22,080
And his wife in the play
was played by his actual wife,

572
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:25,760
the beautiful Vivien Leigh.

573
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,400
Then I started going to the theatre...

574
00:33:31,680 --> 00:33:33,760
..by myself. I hesitate because...

575
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:36,400
Well, it's true of everything, but...

576
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:42,520
My relationship with the live theatre has
been very dependent on luck. Good luck.

577
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:47,560
And...the luck was that Dad got a new job

578
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:53,360
and we moved from Wigan
all of 11 miles away to Bolton.

579
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:57,520
And 150,000 people
in the cotton spinning town,

580
00:33:57,640 --> 00:34:01,720
and in Bolton, they had three
fully functioning commercial theatres,

581
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:03,520
and I went to them all.

582
00:34:04,560 --> 00:34:06,560
Number one, the Hippodrome.

583
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:10,199
This housed
the Lawrence Williamson Players

584
00:34:10,320 --> 00:34:15,679
and they did weekly rep ― a weekly
repertory of a new play every Monday.

585
00:34:15,800 --> 00:34:17,639
Thriller, light comedy, farce.

586
00:34:17,760 --> 00:34:20,360
And that would play through the week
in the evenings,

587
00:34:20,480 --> 00:34:24,159
while during the day, the actors rehearsed
the following week's play.

588
00:34:24,280 --> 00:34:28,840
They'd been doing this
without a break for 27 years,

589
00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,560
and some of the actors had been
in the company that length of time.

590
00:34:32,679 --> 00:34:34,440
And they obviously
didn't get paid enough money

591
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:37,199
and they certainly
didn't get enough rehearsal.

592
00:34:37,320 --> 00:34:38,880
[LAUGHTER]

593
00:34:43,719 --> 00:34:48,080
So I'm afraid it was 27 years
of rather dodgy productions.

594
00:34:48,199 --> 00:34:50,840
But I did not care.

595
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:55,040
Then in Churchgate in Bolton...

596
00:34:56,560 --> 00:34:57,920
..we had the Theatre Royal.

597
00:34:58,040 --> 00:34:59,840
Now, this was something.
It had been designed

598
00:34:59,960 --> 00:35:03,120
by the great late-19th-century
architect of British theatres,

599
00:35:03,240 --> 00:35:05,720
Frank Matcham.

600
00:35:06,960 --> 00:35:08,640
Some of them
still remain up and down the place.

601
00:35:08,760 --> 00:35:11,760
I've played them on this tour ―
Theatre Royal, Newcastle

602
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:14,760
and the Lyric Hammersmith,
and there are others in London ―

603
00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,440
the Palladium, the Coliseum,
the Victoria Palace.

604
00:35:17,560 --> 00:35:20,360
But in Bolton, the Theatre Royal.

605
00:35:20,480 --> 00:35:23,760
And this put on tours ― Ballet Rambert.

606
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,120
Carl Rosa Opera,
Gilbert and Sullivan...

607
00:35:27,240 --> 00:35:29,400
Oh, and at Christmas, the pantomime.

608
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:31,720
I love pantomime.

609
00:35:31,840 --> 00:35:35,400
I see a pantomime every year.

610
00:35:38,280 --> 00:35:41,240
Well, many more than one
if I can manage it.

611
00:35:42,080 --> 00:35:45,880
What an introduction to the theatre
pantomime is,

612
00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:49,720
because anything that's theatrical
works in a pantomime, doesn't it,

613
00:35:49,840 --> 00:35:51,520
from transforming scenery

614
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:55,560
to outrageous costumes
and singing and dancing and poetry.

615
00:35:55,680 --> 00:35:57,320
A moral story.

616
00:35:57,800 --> 00:36:00,840
Silly jokes, dirty jokes,
audience participation.

617
00:36:00,960 --> 00:36:04,960
It invented here.
It belongs to us. It's ours.

618
00:36:06,480 --> 00:36:08,360
Doesn't travel very well.

619
00:36:10,720 --> 00:36:13,400
Well, I mean you try explaining
to somebody what a pantomime is.

620
00:36:13,520 --> 00:36:17,280
Ah, well, you see,
there's all this cross-dressing.

621
00:36:17,400 --> 00:36:20,000
And the principal boy
isn't actually a boy.

622
00:36:20,120 --> 00:36:24,360
No, she's a girl.
And the dame is not really a dame.

623
00:36:24,480 --> 00:36:25,880
He's a bloke in a frock.

624
00:36:26,000 --> 00:36:28,680
Oh, it's nothing to do with
female impersonation.

625
00:36:30,720 --> 00:36:34,280
And when I came to achieve a lifetime's
ambition of playing there myself,

626
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,960
it was here in London
at The Old Vic theatre

627
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:44,240
and we were doing Aladdin.
I was playing his mother, Widow Twankey,

628
00:36:44,360 --> 00:36:47,560
and Sean, who was directing,
had assembled

629
00:36:47,680 --> 00:36:50,640
a world-beating troupe of talent
onstage and off.

630
00:36:50,760 --> 00:36:52,520
I thought, I'm really going to
have to find out how to do this.

631
00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:58,880
So I found a man who had played dames
professionally 40 times ―

632
00:36:59,000 --> 00:37:02,240
the Welsh prince of laughter, Wyn Calvin,

633
00:37:02,360 --> 00:37:05,760
and he said,
"Well, I'm only too happy to help, Ian.

634
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:08,400
"Now, look, if you're going to play dames,

635
00:37:08,520 --> 00:37:11,280
"there are two things
that are very important to remember.

636
00:37:11,400 --> 00:37:12,920
"Number one...

637
00:37:13,840 --> 00:37:16,880
"..warm your bra on the radiator."

638
00:37:17,000 --> 00:37:18,600
[LAUGHTER]

639
00:37:24,960 --> 00:37:29,880
"And two ― get your first entrance right.
I'll tell you what I do.

640
00:37:30,000 --> 00:37:34,280
"I'm running a laundry, as you know,
in old Peking.

641
00:37:34,400 --> 00:37:38,800
"And I just dashed out to do a little bit
of shopping on my own down the market.

642
00:37:39,320 --> 00:37:43,200
"Looking for bargains.
And I'm on my way back home.

643
00:37:43,320 --> 00:37:46,040
"Of course I've got my shopping bag
with me,

644
00:37:46,160 --> 00:37:49,240
"and I make my entrance
from the prompt corner.

645
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:51,640
"And of course the audience
sees me immediately,

646
00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,120
"but I pretend that I don't see them.

647
00:37:56,400 --> 00:37:57,920
"I pay them no heed.

648
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:01,120
"And I get to the centre of the stage
then I have a little stop in the middle.

649
00:38:01,240 --> 00:38:02,320
"Then I go back the way I came.

650
00:38:02,440 --> 00:38:03,960
"I still don't see them.

651
00:38:04,080 --> 00:38:07,120
"And then I wait
until I get to the middle of the stage,

652
00:38:07,240 --> 00:38:08,400
"then I give a little trip,

653
00:38:08,520 --> 00:38:10,960
"and I look down and then I look up.

654
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:12,560
"And then I see them."

655
00:38:12,680 --> 00:38:14,480
Hello, boys and girls!

656
00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:18,160
― Hello! It's Twankey!
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hello!

657
00:38:18,280 --> 00:38:20,400
Hello, darling!

658
00:38:21,480 --> 00:38:25,480
Look here. Twankey ― that's my name.

659
00:38:25,600 --> 00:38:29,480
Well, yes, I've heard all the jokes,
thank you very much.

660
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:31,080
Anyway, it's Mrs Twankey to you.

661
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:34,040
Well, no, actually, it's not,
it's Widow Twankey.

662
00:38:34,160 --> 00:38:35,960
AUDIENCE, HALF-HEARTEDLY: Awww!

663
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:39,480
Well, come on!

664
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:42,120
AUDIENCE, ENTHUSIASTICALLY: Awww!

665
00:38:42,240 --> 00:38:43,720
All right, don't go mad.

666
00:38:44,800 --> 00:38:47,280
You never met my horrible ex-husband,

667
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:49,080
Donald J Twankey.

668
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:53,480
[APPLAUSE]

669
00:38:56,840 --> 00:39:00,560
You know the kind, girls ―
all hair and no wall.

670
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,320
Oh, would you shut up, you politico!

671
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:12,680
Got people trying to sleep down here.

672
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:16,080
Oh, I love your hair, madam.

673
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,360
Did you come on a motorbike?

674
00:39:23,440 --> 00:39:25,640
Hello, love. Give us a little wave. Go on.

675
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:28,040
Yeah. That's right. All the boys
and girls, all the mums and dads,

676
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,320
wave to Twankey. Thank you.

677
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:31,440
And you lot up there.

678
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:33,200
♪ The boy I love is up in the gallery... ♪

679
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:34,520
Don't lean over, dear.

680
00:39:35,440 --> 00:39:38,400
Don't want any accidents.
If you give me a little wave,

681
00:39:38,520 --> 00:39:40,280
I'll give you a little sweetie.

682
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:42,480
All right, go on.

683
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,880
Here you go. (LAUGHS)

684
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:47,840
Wooo!

685
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:50,960
All right, one for you.

686
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:52,320
One for you.

687
00:39:52,440 --> 00:39:53,840
One for you.

688
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:56,480
And one for you.

689
00:39:57,640 --> 00:39:59,120
Go on!

690
00:40:00,640 --> 00:40:02,160
(CHUCKLES)

691
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:06,000
[CHEERING]

692
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:10,720
Oh dear!

693
00:40:11,680 --> 00:40:13,280
All right!

694
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:15,160
Oh dear!

695
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:19,240
No, it's always nice, isn't it,

696
00:40:19,360 --> 00:40:20,880
to have something to suck?

697
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:30,200
Go on, darling, there you are!

698
00:40:34,200 --> 00:40:36,600
AUDIENCE: Woo!

699
00:40:42,200 --> 00:40:43,840
Anyone fancy a banana?

700
00:40:49,480 --> 00:40:52,000
Go on, you little monkey!

701
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:56,760
We'll have another go. Come on.

702
00:40:56,880 --> 00:40:59,680
[AUDIENCE GASPS]

703
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:04,640
All right.

704
00:41:05,680 --> 00:41:07,600
[LAUGHTER]

705
00:41:16,120 --> 00:41:17,800
(MOUTHS)

706
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,080
Go on. Go on.

707
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:26,200
Come on. Come and get it.

708
00:41:28,480 --> 00:41:30,440
[CHEERING]

709
00:41:39,040 --> 00:41:40,720
And do be careful.

710
00:41:43,320 --> 00:41:46,400
Is there an older gentleman
who'd like a carrot?

711
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,480
Go on ― you stick that up your Brexit.

712
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:02,560
I've got to be on my way.

713
00:42:02,680 --> 00:42:06,280
I'm expecting the repairman ― he's
coming round to service my Hotpoint.

714
00:42:10,680 --> 00:42:14,320
All this chatting to you
and I've got just a little behind.

715
00:42:16,680 --> 00:42:18,760
[CHEERING AND WHISTLING]

716
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:30,000
All right. So in Churchgate,
we've got the Theatre Royal

717
00:42:30,120 --> 00:42:31,440
then there's a little alleyway.

718
00:42:32,480 --> 00:42:34,840
Little alleyway here
and then there's another theatre.

719
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:38,840
Right next door.
Also built by Frank Matcham. We had two.

720
00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:43,600
The Grand Theatre. My favourite.

721
00:42:46,640 --> 00:42:47,800
My favourite.

722
00:42:50,160 --> 00:42:53,040
The Grand put on variety. Do you remember?

723
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:57,040
Variety? Every Monday
new performers would arrive in town

724
00:42:57,160 --> 00:43:00,160
and play twice nightly through the week.

725
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:02,800
Some of them quite famous.
I'd heard them on the radio.

726
00:43:03,840 --> 00:43:05,600
And in the Grand, you got performers

727
00:43:05,720 --> 00:43:08,320
you couldn't get on the radio,
like dancers.

728
00:43:11,920 --> 00:43:15,520
Like acrobats and magicians.

729
00:43:17,120 --> 00:43:22,320
Escapologists. I remember Alan Alan,
The Man They Cannot Hang.

730
00:43:27,320 --> 00:43:28,680
And luck.

731
00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:32,640
The Grand was managed by...

732
00:43:33,920 --> 00:43:38,000
..James Bleakley.
Alderman James Bleakley.

733
00:43:38,120 --> 00:43:41,080
Very big in Bolton. He had been the mayor.

734
00:43:42,480 --> 00:43:44,240
Alderman James Bleakley.

735
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:46,280
Tory, but nice.

736
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:56,080
And as luck would have it,
he works on occasion in the town hall.

737
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,760
And so did my dad, and they got talking
and Alderman Bleakley said,

738
00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:01,480
"Oh, yes, that will be all right
if young Ian

739
00:44:01,600 --> 00:44:04,960
"wants to come down to the Grand
one evening,

740
00:44:05,080 --> 00:44:06,560
"see how it all works.

741
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:10,960
"Maybe go backstage. Yeah.

742
00:44:11,080 --> 00:44:13,360
"Well, not on a Monday.
Let the turns get settled in.

743
00:44:13,480 --> 00:44:15,240
"Say Tuesday? Before first house.

744
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:19,480
"Six o'clock. Tell him to go down
to Churchgate, down the little alleyway,

745
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,360
"knock on t'stage door,
say that I sent him."

746
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:24,440
And so...

747
00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:26,360
Hello. It's Ian McKellen.

748
00:44:27,280 --> 00:44:28,720
McKellen.

749
00:44:30,720 --> 00:44:33,200
Alderman Bleakley said that...
Oh, thank you.

750
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:39,000
"Go on, lad. Go down the stairs.

751
00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:42,520
"Watch yourself ― they're a bit slippy.

752
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:47,320
"When you get to the bottom,
you'll be on the stage."

753
00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:54,000
Oh.

754
00:44:57,840 --> 00:44:59,440
I can see the wires.

755
00:45:00,720 --> 00:45:05,480
The hempen ropes going up,
up from the wings to the flies,

756
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:09,760
and they supported the cloths that went
up and down between the performers

757
00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:11,880
on the brightly lit stage here.

758
00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:14,920
Here in the wings, we're in the dark.

759
00:45:15,040 --> 00:45:17,480
It's a bit murky, bit musty, dusty, dirty.

760
00:45:17,600 --> 00:45:19,280
Bare boards.

761
00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:23,360
Nail sticking up, heads of old screws.

762
00:45:24,400 --> 00:45:26,600
And in the corner, Alf ―
he's the stage manager.

763
00:45:26,720 --> 00:45:30,080
He gives the cues
for the performers to go on stage.

764
00:45:30,200 --> 00:45:33,120
And that's where I have to be,
next to him.

765
00:45:33,240 --> 00:45:35,560
Oh, they start coming down
from their dressing rooms.

766
00:45:35,680 --> 00:45:37,240
And, oh...

767
00:45:37,360 --> 00:45:42,520
Dreadful dressing rooms ―
cracked basins, broken mirrors. Hi-ho.

768
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:44,560
The glamorous life.

769
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:49,360
And, oh, they look marvellous, all
done up for the stage in their feathers

770
00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:52,600
and their hats and sequins and glitter.

771
00:45:54,000 --> 00:45:56,480
All got this strange orange makeup.

772
00:45:57,720 --> 00:46:00,120
Which always seemed to end
just about there.

773
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:08,120
And they're bickering.
I can hear them arguing, complaining.

774
00:46:08,240 --> 00:46:09,920
What, is it the new digs?

775
00:46:11,400 --> 00:46:14,880
Imagine new digs every Monday,
every week, every month.

776
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:19,520
Not a good atmosphere backstage.

777
00:46:19,640 --> 00:46:24,000
And then their music
starts up in the orchestra pit.

778
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:27,040
Joe Hill's Band.

779
00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:30,120
And Alf gets ready.

780
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:32,480
And gives the cue,

781
00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:34,960
and onto the stage they go.

782
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:38,640
Transformed.

783
00:46:39,480 --> 00:46:42,520
By the glare of the lights
and your attention,

784
00:46:42,640 --> 00:46:44,960
and this reality in the wings...

785
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,400
..put to one side, forgotten for,
what, just...seven minutes.

786
00:46:51,200 --> 00:46:55,920
And a whole new reality created...

787
00:46:57,360 --> 00:46:59,240
And I felt at home...

788
00:47:01,280 --> 00:47:04,920
..with them. Because a theatre
is a house, isn't it?

789
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:08,960
Playhouse, opera house.
Main house, full house.

790
00:47:10,360 --> 00:47:12,520
And I did not want to go home.

791
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:15,280
Here I am, backstage for the first time,

792
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:19,560
wondering what it would
actually feel like to be on stage myself.

793
00:47:19,680 --> 00:47:22,560
And that's why I started acting.

794
00:47:23,160 --> 00:47:27,320
Initially at school,
Bolton School for Boys.

795
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:29,120
Lots of theatre going on there.

796
00:47:29,240 --> 00:47:32,520
We had our own miniature theatre.

797
00:47:32,640 --> 00:47:36,160
50 family and friends could fit in
to see us do our programme

798
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:40,440
of one-act plays every term,
all the time I was at school.

799
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:42,720
And then I graduated to the main event ―

800
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:46,240
the annual school play in the Great Hall.

801
00:47:46,360 --> 00:47:48,480
That ran for six performances
through the week.

802
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:50,320
Classics one year.

803
00:47:50,920 --> 00:47:53,360
Shakespeare, Henry V.

804
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:55,960
I played King Henry.

805
00:47:56,080 --> 00:48:00,000
And in front of us
were these 1,100 chairs.

806
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:04,320
Always rush bottoms
that squeaked and creaked and...

807
00:48:05,400 --> 00:48:08,080
Our first job as young actors was
(PROJECTING) to pitch our voices...

808
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,120
over the sound of the chairs...

809
00:48:11,240 --> 00:48:12,720
And I realised that acting,

810
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:17,760
acting is something that you
have to learn, but that you can learn it.

811
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:21,480
And more than anything else
in my young life...

812
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:26,200
..I wanted to learn how to act
because I was going to become an actor.

813
00:48:28,040 --> 00:48:30,960
Not a professional.
No, I'm going to be an amateur.

814
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:33,920
Amateur, like my sister Jean and...

815
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:36,520
Like the masters at school,
when they'd finished with us

816
00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:41,720
would go off to do their amateur
productions at the Bolton Little Theatre.

817
00:48:43,040 --> 00:48:45,040
And when it came to leave school...

818
00:48:45,680 --> 00:48:49,600
..I was persuaded to try and follow
Uncle Ken to his university.

819
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:54,160
So I took the entrance exams for Cambridge

820
00:48:54,280 --> 00:48:58,720
and I don't know by what lucky fluke

821
00:48:58,840 --> 00:49:01,680
I got in, and now
there's just one obstacle left

822
00:49:01,800 --> 00:49:05,080
between me and three years
at Cambridge University

823
00:49:05,200 --> 00:49:07,760
studying English literature.

824
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:14,320
And so I went up to meet the man
who would inadvertently settle my fate ―

825
00:49:14,440 --> 00:49:18,880
Tom Henn at St Catharine's College
in Cambridge.

826
00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:23,760
Tom Henn was from County Sligo.

827
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:25,560
And...

828
00:49:25,680 --> 00:49:31,440
he'd written books on WB Yeats
and William Shakespeare.

829
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:34,320
Had a very distinctive limp.

830
00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:37,400
He had been Brigadier Tom Henn
during the war.

831
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:40,200
I assumed this was a result
of some distinguished war wound.

832
00:49:40,320 --> 00:49:41,920
It turned out later

833
00:49:42,040 --> 00:49:44,320
he'd fallen down his staircase
drunk one night.

834
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:52,280
And I was sent up to his rooms
in C Staircase at St Catharine's,

835
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:54,000
put down there on the padded stool.

836
00:49:54,120 --> 00:49:57,120
(IRISH ACCENT) "Well, now,
good afternoon to you, Mr...

837
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,800
"McKellen... McKellen?

838
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:06,240
"Well, now, that would be an Antrim name.

839
00:50:07,760 --> 00:50:10,320
"Well, Mr McKellen,

840
00:50:10,440 --> 00:50:15,200
"it says here that you are...an actor.

841
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:18,440
"Where have you acted?

842
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:21,360
"At school?

843
00:50:22,000 --> 00:50:24,640
"Have you acted in any Shakespeare?

844
00:50:26,800 --> 00:50:28,080
"Henry V?

845
00:50:29,120 --> 00:50:31,760
"All right. Do me your speech."

846
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:35,240
I'm not really thinking about it.

847
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:39,120
I just jumped up onto the stool
as if I was still in the Great Hall.

848
00:50:39,880 --> 00:50:41,440
And I let Tom Henn have it.

849
00:50:41,560 --> 00:50:44,560
(BELLOWING) Once more unto the breach!

850
00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:50,360
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!

851
00:50:50,480 --> 00:50:52,360
And he gave me a scholarship.

852
00:50:52,480 --> 00:50:54,520
[APPLAUSE]

853
00:51:03,960 --> 00:51:06,160
One of my worst performances.

854
00:51:07,240 --> 00:51:08,880
And most successful auditions.

855
00:51:10,760 --> 00:51:14,200
Now I'd arrived at my drama school ―

856
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,360
not that Cambridge
had a drama faculty then ―

857
00:51:17,480 --> 00:51:22,120
but it was full of people my age
as crazy about the theatre as I was.

858
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:27,160
Some of them, like young Derek Jacobi
and Clive Swift,

859
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:30,640
they were going to become
professionals after graduation.

860
00:51:30,760 --> 00:51:35,440
So was Miriam Margolyes, Peter Cook,
David Frost and Trevor Nunn.

861
00:51:35,560 --> 00:51:39,680
Not me. No, no,
I'm still going to be an amateur.

862
00:51:40,480 --> 00:51:44,920
And so three years of bliss, really.
21 undergraduate productions.

863
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:48,120
And then what?

864
00:51:50,360 --> 00:51:54,320
I thought, what job can I possibly get

865
00:51:54,440 --> 00:51:58,560
which will allow me to go on acting
at the rate at which I've been acting...

866
00:51:59,240 --> 00:52:00,600
..at Cambridge?

867
00:52:00,720 --> 00:52:03,760
Unless of course
I actually become a professional.

868
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:08,400
I thought, who's going to take me
seriously as a professional actor?

869
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:11,760
Then I thought,
well, if Derek Jacobi can do it...

870
00:52:17,200 --> 00:52:19,800
Sounds like a line out of Vicious.

871
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:23,480
No, Derek was streets ahead of me
at Cambridge.

872
00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:25,720
He's one of those people
who just seems to leap out of the cradle

873
00:52:25,840 --> 00:52:27,560
fully formed as an actor.

874
00:52:27,680 --> 00:52:32,360
And off he went to the prestigious
Birmingham Rep.

875
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:34,240
And where was I gonna go?

876
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:38,360
Well, I couldn't go to Bolton.

877
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:44,960
They'd pulled down the Hippodrome
and they pulled down the Theatre Royal.

878
00:52:46,880 --> 00:52:48,840
And one dreadful afternoon
during the long vacation,

879
00:52:48,960 --> 00:52:50,960
I went to have a look at the Grand.

880
00:52:54,040 --> 00:52:57,480
And the roof was off
and I could see the benches...

881
00:52:58,200 --> 00:53:01,920
..in the gods open to the sky
until they too were chucked out.

882
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:08,560
And luck.

883
00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:12,800
This theatre was beginning to change...

884
00:53:14,320 --> 00:53:15,560
..at that time, and change for the better.

885
00:53:15,680 --> 00:53:18,840
The old weekly, commercial weekly reps,

886
00:53:18,960 --> 00:53:20,080
they were on their way out.

887
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:22,680
They were being replaced
by theatres that were subsidised

888
00:53:22,800 --> 00:53:25,760
with the little bit of public money
from local authorities

889
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:28,560
or the Central Arts Council
of Great Britain.

890
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:33,000
And in the Midlands, after
the devastation of the war bombing...

891
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:36,360
..in Coventry,
they'd just built their own theatre,

892
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:40,840
the first civic theatre
ever built in the country.

893
00:53:40,960 --> 00:53:45,480
They called it the Belgrade Theatre.
And there they did fortnightly rep.

894
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,200
Which meant they had two weeks
rehearsal, which meant...

895
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:53,480
..which meant they were bound to
be twice as good.

896
00:53:54,240 --> 00:53:56,800
And I applied and I was accepted.

897
00:53:56,920 --> 00:54:01,080
And so started my apprenticeship
as a professional actor.

898
00:54:01,200 --> 00:54:02,800
I have to confess...

899
00:54:04,600 --> 00:54:08,760
..that having just enjoyed sex
for the first time at Cambridge,

900
00:54:08,880 --> 00:54:10,840
I wanted to go to the British theatre

901
00:54:10,960 --> 00:54:14,560
because I'd heard that it was possible
to meet other queers there.

902
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:19,560
And it is.

903
00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:21,400
[LAUGHTER]

904
00:54:27,560 --> 00:54:31,280
And so I signed up for a year
at the Belgrade in Coventry.

905
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:35,040
Eight pounds ten shillings a week ― three
guineas of that covered the cost of digs.

906
00:54:35,840 --> 00:54:38,200
And the contract said "play as cast",

907
00:54:38,320 --> 00:54:42,120
which means you have to do any part
that you're given, and that suited me.

908
00:54:42,240 --> 00:54:44,840
Here's the first play
than I did professionally.

909
00:54:45,360 --> 00:54:49,760
Of course it was a revival of
Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons.

910
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:52,760
I played Roper,
the son-in-law of the main character.

911
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:56,400
Then we did Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing.

912
00:54:56,520 --> 00:55:01,680
I was cast as Claudio,
which is a dreadful part.

913
00:55:02,760 --> 00:55:05,600
Bernard Shaw, Plays Pleasant,

914
00:55:05,720 --> 00:55:09,240
You Never Can Tell.
I played one of the twins.

915
00:55:11,240 --> 00:55:13,840
Anton Chekhov, The Seagull.

916
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:16,080
Toad of Toad Hall. Chief weasel.

917
00:55:18,800 --> 00:55:22,120
Yes, Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers.
Mr Snodgrass.

918
00:55:22,240 --> 00:55:25,360
There were 17 of these plays,
two of them...

919
00:55:25,480 --> 00:55:27,960
had been written especially for us ―
they were world premieres.

920
00:55:28,080 --> 00:55:30,960
That's the last play that we did ―
Andre Obey, Noah.

921
00:55:31,720 --> 00:55:33,160
Oh, and that one.

922
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:38,000
The Bride Comes Back.

923
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:41,720
By Ronald Millar.
It says here on the cover,

924
00:55:41,840 --> 00:55:44,400
rather optimistically, "a comedy".

925
00:55:52,200 --> 00:55:53,640
After he'd finished writing plays,

926
00:55:53,760 --> 00:55:56,280
Ronald Millar started to write
political speeches,

927
00:55:56,400 --> 00:55:59,720
and he invented for Mrs Thatcher
that famous quip,

928
00:55:59,840 --> 00:56:02,120
"The lady's not for turning".

929
00:56:02,240 --> 00:56:05,360
I wish there'd been a few jokes
as good as that in the play.

930
00:56:09,200 --> 00:56:11,880
And then of course we had to
do an Agatha Christie.

931
00:56:12,000 --> 00:56:14,160
And...yeah, here it is.

932
00:56:14,880 --> 00:56:17,240
Which play by Agatha Christie is that?

933
00:56:19,240 --> 00:56:21,560
[SCATTERED COMMENTS FROM AUDIENCE]

934
00:56:26,240 --> 00:56:28,360
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Black...

935
00:56:29,000 --> 00:56:30,840
Black Coffee, did you say?

936
00:56:30,960 --> 00:56:32,680
[LAUGHTER]

937
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,080
Did you say Black Coffee? Yes.

938
00:56:37,840 --> 00:56:39,280
Have you ever seen it?

939
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:41,360
No?

940
00:56:41,880 --> 00:56:43,160
Well, I've been in it.

941
00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:44,880
[LAUGHTER]

942
00:56:48,280 --> 00:56:51,720
Oh, let me tell you about Black Coffee.

943
00:56:51,840 --> 00:56:54,360
At the end of Act I of the play,

944
00:56:54,480 --> 00:56:57,200
the master of the household
comes down from supper,

945
00:56:57,320 --> 00:57:01,160
and he's sitting there surrounded by
potential murderers and victims.

946
00:57:01,280 --> 00:57:04,280
And I'm 22 years old,
playing the ancient retainer,

947
00:57:04,400 --> 00:57:08,000
who has to carry the fatal cup
of black coffee over to him.

948
00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:10,520
And I decide
that my man's going to be old.

949
00:57:10,640 --> 00:57:15,600
No, no, no, really, really old...
like, 80.

950
00:57:15,720 --> 00:57:17,400
[LAUGHTER]

951
00:57:24,640 --> 00:57:28,000
I put a pale Leichner base on
and squeezed the end of my greasepaints

952
00:57:28,120 --> 00:57:31,160
to get a lake, and put lines and wrinkles,
brown shading,

953
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:33,760
half a pound of self-raising flour
on my head.

954
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:38,280
And across the stage I go,
walking like 80-year-olds always do.

955
00:57:48,160 --> 00:57:51,160
Look, I was doing this sort of thing
long before Julie Walters.

956
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:00,720
And then the master of the household...

957
00:58:02,000 --> 00:58:04,200
..has the deathless line...

958
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:10,880
"This coffee is very bitter."

959
00:58:22,160 --> 00:58:24,920
Gus is the cat from the theatre door.

960
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:27,240
His name, as I ought
to have told you before,

961
00:58:27,360 --> 00:58:31,320
is really Aspara-gus,
but that's such a fuss to pronounce

962
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:34,400
that they usually call him just Gus.

963
00:58:34,520 --> 00:58:36,760
His coat's very shabby.

964
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:39,920
He's thin as a rake.
He suffers from palsy...

965
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:43,480
..which makes his paw shake.

966
00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:47,160
Yet he was in his youth
quite the smartest of cats,

967
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:49,960
though no longer a terror to mice or rats,

968
00:58:50,080 --> 00:58:52,640
for he isn't the cat
that he was in his prime.

969
00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:57,480
Though his name was quite famous,
he says, in his time.

970
00:58:57,600 --> 00:59:00,880
And whenever
he joins his friends at their club,

971
00:59:01,000 --> 00:59:03,680
which takes place
at the back of a neighbouring pub,

972
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:07,480
he loves to regale them,
if someone else pays,

973
00:59:07,600 --> 00:59:13,120
♪ With anecdotes drawn
from his palmiest of days

974
00:59:13,240 --> 00:59:15,920
♪ For he once was a star

975
00:59:16,040 --> 00:59:17,360
♪ Of the highest degree

976
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:19,280
♪ He has acted with Irving

977
00:59:19,400 --> 00:59:22,960
♪ He has acted with Tree♪

978
00:59:24,040 --> 00:59:27,560
And he loves to recall
his success on the Halls,

979
00:59:27,680 --> 00:59:32,120
when the gallery
once gave him seven calls.

980
00:59:32,240 --> 00:59:34,000
But his grandest creation

981
00:59:34,120 --> 00:59:35,800
As he loves to tell

982
00:59:35,920 --> 00:59:39,760
Was Firefrorefiddle

983
00:59:39,880 --> 00:59:44,240
The Fiend of the Fell.

984
00:59:44,360 --> 00:59:48,200
He has played, so he says,
every possible part

985
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:52,000
and I used to know 70 speeches by heart.

986
00:59:52,120 --> 00:59:54,760
I'd extemporise backchat.

987
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:56,800
Meow! Me-ooow!

988
00:59:56,920 --> 00:59:59,040
I knew how to gag.

989
01:00:00,240 --> 01:00:03,680
And I knew
how to let the cat out of the bag.

990
01:00:04,400 --> 01:00:09,640
I have sat by the bedside
of poor Little Nell

991
01:00:09,760 --> 01:00:13,400
When the curfew was rung,
then I swung on the bell.

992
01:00:13,520 --> 01:00:16,200
In the pantomime season I never fell flat,

993
01:00:16,320 --> 01:00:18,400
And I once understudied

994
01:00:18,520 --> 01:00:20,640
Dick Whittington's Cat.

995
01:00:21,640 --> 01:00:25,440
But my grandest creation,
as he loves to tell

996
01:00:26,400 --> 01:00:29,440
Was Firefrorefiddle...

997
01:00:30,040 --> 01:00:33,320
The Fiend of the Fell.

998
01:00:33,440 --> 01:00:36,000
Then if someone will give him
a toothful of gin

999
01:00:36,120 --> 01:00:39,840
He will tell how he once
played a part in East Lynne

1000
01:00:39,960 --> 01:00:43,040
In a Shakespeare performance
he once came on pat

1001
01:00:43,160 --> 01:00:46,520
When some actor
suggested the need for a cat

1002
01:00:47,360 --> 01:00:51,040
And he says, now these kittens,
they do not get trained

1003
01:00:51,160 --> 01:00:55,480
As we did in the days
when Victoria reigned

1004
01:00:55,600 --> 01:00:58,160
They do not get drilled
in a regular troupe

1005
01:00:58,280 --> 01:01:01,440
And they think it is smart
just to jump through a hoop

1006
01:01:01,560 --> 01:01:05,840
And he says,
as he scratches himself with his claws

1007
01:01:05,960 --> 01:01:11,840
Well, the theatre
is certainly not what it was.

1008
01:01:11,960 --> 01:01:14,720
These modern productions
are all very well

1009
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:19,160
But nothing can equal,
from what I hear tell

1010
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:22,720
That moment of mystery

1011
01:01:22,840 --> 01:01:25,960
When I made history

1012
01:01:26,080 --> 01:01:29,880
As Firefrorefiddle

1013
01:01:30,680 --> 01:01:37,440
♪ The Fiend of the Fell. ♪

1014
01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:42,000
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

1015
01:01:52,680 --> 01:01:54,640
Thank you very much!

1016
01:01:59,040 --> 01:02:01,040
Words by TS Eliot,

1017
01:02:01,160 --> 01:02:04,480
and a little bit of the music
by AL Webber.

1018
01:02:05,960 --> 01:02:07,520
And in the film,

1019
01:02:07,640 --> 01:02:11,960
Cats The Musical, I got to play Gus.

1020
01:02:12,080 --> 01:02:16,880
And do you remember
who was Old Deuteronomy?

1021
01:02:17,000 --> 01:02:19,840
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Judi Dench.
― Yes, young Judi Dench.

1022
01:02:19,960 --> 01:02:23,480
Oh, I loved seeing her
all curled up in her cat basket.

1023
01:02:27,200 --> 01:02:29,240
Judi and I have worked together
on many happy occasions.

1024
01:02:29,360 --> 01:02:32,880
Never more so than when
we've been in the company together,

1025
01:02:33,000 --> 01:02:35,960
because like me, she started off in rep.

1026
01:02:37,800 --> 01:02:41,800
And after the Belgrade in Coventry,
I moved a little bit further north

1027
01:02:41,920 --> 01:02:46,680
to the New Playhouse in Nottingham.

1028
01:02:46,800 --> 01:02:51,520
And we opened it up.
Another new civic theatre.

1029
01:02:51,640 --> 01:02:55,120
Oh, and the excitement of the first night.
There were flowers and...

1030
01:02:56,480 --> 01:02:59,160
..and telegrams. One of them in particular

1031
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:02,600
was stuck up on the noticeboard
in the green room for the actors.

1032
01:03:03,400 --> 01:03:07,560
It's a telegram from London from
the National Theatre of Great Britain,

1033
01:03:07,680 --> 01:03:11,280
and it was signed, Laurence Olivier.

1034
01:03:13,480 --> 01:03:14,960
I wish I'd stolen it.

1035
01:03:18,520 --> 01:03:21,080
Olivier was running
his new National Theatre,

1036
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:26,560
not in specially built premises like
we had in Coventry and Nottingham.

1037
01:03:26,680 --> 01:03:29,240
No, he was in the old Old Vic.

1038
01:03:29,920 --> 01:03:36,760
But his planning was based on
the experience of the regional reps.

1039
01:03:36,880 --> 01:03:38,960
He kept together a company of actors,

1040
01:03:39,080 --> 01:03:43,200
oh, for months, years,
doing a changing repertoire of plays.

1041
01:03:43,320 --> 01:03:46,360
And in the company from the word go
was young Maggie Smith.

1042
01:03:46,920 --> 01:03:51,400
And here's a bit of luck.
Maggie came to see her friend,

1043
01:03:51,520 --> 01:03:55,080
the English film star Phyllis Calvert,
in a new play

1044
01:03:55,200 --> 01:03:57,800
at the Duke of York's Theatre
here in London,

1045
01:03:57,920 --> 01:03:59,800
and I was in the cast.

1046
01:03:59,920 --> 01:04:04,000
It was the first play I'd ever done
as a professional in London.

1047
01:04:04,600 --> 01:04:06,680
And Maggie went back to Sir Laurence...

1048
01:04:08,960 --> 01:04:10,440
..and...

1049
01:04:11,080 --> 01:04:15,320
..I got the call ― would I come
and join the National Theatre?

1050
01:04:15,440 --> 01:04:19,320
Because Sir Laurence was putting together
a new production of Much Ado About Nothing

1051
01:04:19,440 --> 01:04:23,480
and he invited me
to come and play the part of Claudio.

1052
01:04:23,600 --> 01:04:25,200
[LAUGHTER]

1053
01:04:29,560 --> 01:04:32,600
Well, of course,
I was not going to say to no.

1054
01:04:33,040 --> 01:04:35,720
No, Much Ado was to be directed by the...

1055
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:41,200
..wonderful opera and film director
Franco Zeffirelli.

1056
01:04:41,320 --> 01:04:43,720
And Maggie was to be Beatrice

1057
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:46,880
and her then husband,
Robert Stephens, Benedick.

1058
01:04:47,000 --> 01:04:51,280
And I had joined the most prestigious
rep company in the country,

1059
01:04:51,400 --> 01:04:53,200
if not the world.

1060
01:04:56,800 --> 01:04:59,680
Oh, there was just one thing.

1061
01:05:00,280 --> 01:05:05,240
Listen to who else was in that company
at the same time.

1062
01:05:05,360 --> 01:05:08,440
Now, look, these are just actors
of my gender and my generation.

1063
01:05:08,560 --> 01:05:13,560
Robert Stephens.
Derek Jacobi, fresh from Birmingham.

1064
01:05:13,680 --> 01:05:17,240
Anthony Hopkins, Michael Gambon,

1065
01:05:17,360 --> 01:05:19,160
Jeremy Brett,

1066
01:05:19,280 --> 01:05:22,440
Colin Blakey, Edward Petherbridge,
Edward Hardwicke, Ronald Pickup,

1067
01:05:22,560 --> 01:05:25,560
Michael Burke, Michael York, Frank Finlay.

1068
01:05:25,680 --> 01:05:29,640
And the most famous and glamorous
young acts of the time,

1069
01:05:29,760 --> 01:05:31,680
Albert Finney.

1070
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:33,360
We were all...

1071
01:05:35,320 --> 01:05:36,880
..in the company at the same time.

1072
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:39,600
And you know, today
the National Theatre of Great Britain

1073
01:05:39,720 --> 01:05:41,840
doesn't have an acting company.

1074
01:05:43,280 --> 01:05:45,440
Nor does any other theatre in the country.

1075
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:50,280
With one exception, and we went
to visit them on the tour in Scotland.

1076
01:05:51,320 --> 01:05:53,720
There we are ― Dundee Rep.

1077
01:05:54,960 --> 01:06:00,440
The one theatre in the country
that still has the old system.

1078
01:06:02,600 --> 01:06:05,480
And I thought,
if I'm going to have to stand in line

1079
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:07,840
behind that queue of talent,

1080
01:06:07,960 --> 01:06:11,120
I'm never going to get anywhere
at the National Theatre, so...

1081
01:06:11,240 --> 01:06:14,200
I handed in my notice
after only nine months.

1082
01:06:14,320 --> 01:06:16,600
And Sir Laurence was not best pleased.

1083
01:06:17,200 --> 01:06:20,480
You know he had a rather flowery
turn of phrase.

1084
01:06:20,600 --> 01:06:23,760
And he said, "I am haunted...

1085
01:06:26,160 --> 01:06:31,720
"..by the spectre of lost opportunity."

1086
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:35,040
Well, he needn't have worried too much.

1087
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:38,560
I fell in with a touring troupe
of players, Prospect,

1088
01:06:38,680 --> 01:06:42,720
who did the classics, mainly,
around the country and...

1089
01:06:43,320 --> 01:06:46,040
..they were doing
a play by Christopher Marlowe,

1090
01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:48,520
an exact contemporary of Shakespeare's.

1091
01:06:48,640 --> 01:06:51,320
And his play, King Edward II,

1092
01:06:51,440 --> 01:06:56,640
which I think is the first play ever
in the English language

1093
01:06:56,760 --> 01:07:02,280
to have a gay hero at the centre,
and they asked me to play King Edward.

1094
01:07:02,400 --> 01:07:05,200
And all was well and off we went.

1095
01:07:06,920 --> 01:07:11,600
Until we reach
the Edinburgh International Festival,

1096
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:15,600
where we found ourselves
doing the first gay play ever written

1097
01:07:15,720 --> 01:07:19,560
on the temporary stage of the
Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland.

1098
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:25,960
And, uh...

1099
01:07:27,120 --> 01:07:30,920
To the first night came a local
councillor, Councillor John Kidd,

1100
01:07:31,040 --> 01:07:35,200
and he was (SCOTTISH ACCENT) appalled
at the sight of two actors ―

1101
01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:37,120
that would be Jimmy Laurenson and me ―

1102
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:38,400
kissing!

1103
01:07:38,520 --> 01:07:40,880
He complained
to the local Watch Committee.

1104
01:07:41,000 --> 01:07:44,600
He was determined he was going to
close down our production.

1105
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:46,600
And so they sent
to the second performance,

1106
01:07:46,720 --> 01:07:50,360
to judge whether we would be allowed
to continue or not,

1107
01:07:50,480 --> 01:07:51,560
two policemen,

1108
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:53,880
who sat on the front row in full uniform.

1109
01:07:57,880 --> 01:08:00,240
And...they seemed to enjoy it.

1110
01:08:02,080 --> 01:08:07,080
And...they stayed right through to the end
and they started the standing ovation.

1111
01:08:07,200 --> 01:08:10,640
And that was the last
that we heard of that.

1112
01:08:10,760 --> 01:08:12,400
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

1113
01:08:17,240 --> 01:08:19,600
Mind you, because of
all the fuss he'd caused,

1114
01:08:19,719 --> 01:08:22,280
we sold every single ticket.

1115
01:08:26,559 --> 01:08:28,280
John Kidd.

1116
01:08:29,120 --> 01:08:30,280
(SIGHS)

1117
01:08:30,920 --> 01:08:32,559
A man of his time, of course.

1118
01:08:33,960 --> 01:08:35,559
And the time was 1969,

1119
01:08:35,680 --> 01:08:40,479
when it was still illegal
for two men to make love in Scotland.

1120
01:08:43,240 --> 01:08:46,960
And my boyfriend Brian and I
broke the law most nights.

1121
01:08:49,840 --> 01:08:53,639
Brian was a history teacher
at a secondary modern school

1122
01:08:53,760 --> 01:08:57,319
here in London, in Shepherd's Bush,
and we lived close by. We had...

1123
01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:00,559
..gay friends and straight friends. We
always went out together as a couple,

1124
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:02,479
but of course, we'd never show

1125
01:09:02,600 --> 01:09:06,960
any affection towards each other in
public. That would have been dangerous.

1126
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:12,000
Had anyone discovered that Brian was gay,
he could have been sacked as a teacher.

1127
01:09:12,120 --> 01:09:15,000
Not me ― I'm fine as an actor ―
but I'm so busy enjoying myself,

1128
01:09:15,120 --> 01:09:19,399
I don't really notice that the law
is discriminating against me.

1129
01:09:21,719 --> 01:09:24,360
And I don't speak publicly
about being gay.

1130
01:09:24,479 --> 01:09:29,120
I'm what the Americans
would call...I was in the closet.

1131
01:09:30,120 --> 01:09:33,440
And the closet is not
a glamorous place to be.

1132
01:09:33,559 --> 01:09:36,040
We would say I was living in a cupboard,

1133
01:09:36,160 --> 01:09:40,040
and you cannot live in a cupboard,
unless of course, you're a skeleton.

1134
01:09:42,559 --> 01:09:44,639
And this went on.

1135
01:09:44,760 --> 01:09:51,120
Even when I was doing a world premiere
at the Royal Court Theatre.

1136
01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:55,080
Martin Sherman's sensational Bent,

1137
01:09:55,200 --> 01:09:59,840
which educated the world
on the ill-treatment of gay people...

1138
01:10:00,760 --> 01:10:04,520
..in the labour camps
of the Third Reich under Adolf Hitler.

1139
01:10:04,639 --> 01:10:07,639
I remember saying to a journalist
at the time, "Oh, Bent...

1140
01:10:09,080 --> 01:10:12,960
"It's not a play about gay rights.
No, it's a play about human rights."

1141
01:10:14,559 --> 01:10:16,559
As if there were a difference.

1142
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:20,280
I couldn't quite bring myself
to be honest.

1143
01:10:23,559 --> 01:10:25,360
And then I woke up.

1144
01:10:26,400 --> 01:10:31,120
The government was introducing
a nasty, short brutish law

1145
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:32,840
called Section 28.

1146
01:10:32,960 --> 01:10:35,080
If you don't know what that is, Google it.
You won't believe it.

1147
01:10:35,200 --> 01:10:37,120
Section 28...

1148
01:10:39,040 --> 01:10:43,320
..would make it illegal for any teacher
in a state-maintained school

1149
01:10:43,440 --> 01:10:47,639
to say anything positive
about homosexuality in the classroom.

1150
01:10:47,760 --> 01:10:50,680
Keep the kids in the dark.

1151
01:10:50,800 --> 01:10:52,600
Lie if necessary.

1152
01:10:52,719 --> 01:10:55,600
Do not prepare them
for the world outside.

1153
01:10:55,719 --> 01:10:56,960
And I took this personally.

1154
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:02,080
And did I get angry.
I went on the marches and I...

1155
01:11:02,600 --> 01:11:05,480
..signed petitions, wrote letters,
banged on doors.

1156
01:11:05,600 --> 01:11:07,719
And I debated the issue on radio

1157
01:11:07,840 --> 01:11:10,200
with a man who thought
Section 28 was a jolly good idea.

1158
01:11:10,320 --> 01:11:14,800
He was the editor of the Sunday Telegraph,
Peregrine Worsthorne.

1159
01:11:15,400 --> 01:11:16,480
And...

1160
01:11:17,040 --> 01:11:18,520
..he said to me
in the course of our discussion,

1161
01:11:18,639 --> 01:11:20,719
"Do you know, McKellen, these queers,

1162
01:11:20,840 --> 01:11:23,639
"they congregate
in the West End of London.

1163
01:11:27,320 --> 01:11:30,080
"In their own private clubs."

1164
01:11:30,840 --> 01:11:34,080
And I said,
"Oh, do you mean like the Garrick Club?"

1165
01:11:35,240 --> 01:11:38,080
Which is an ultra-respectable
gentlemen's club

1166
01:11:38,200 --> 01:11:40,960
that I knew Peregrine Worsthorne
was a member of.

1167
01:11:42,840 --> 01:11:45,280
I said, "Look, we can stop
talking about "them".

1168
01:11:45,400 --> 01:11:47,240
"You're talking about me. I'm gay."

1169
01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:50,760
And that was it.

1170
01:11:50,880 --> 01:11:52,520
I was out.

1171
01:11:52,639 --> 01:11:54,240
And the weight...

1172
01:11:55,600 --> 01:11:57,000
..that fell...

1173
01:11:59,520 --> 01:12:01,559
I hadn't known it was there.

1174
01:12:01,680 --> 01:12:03,880
And like everybody else who comes out,

1175
01:12:04,000 --> 01:12:05,840
I joined the human race.

1176
01:12:05,960 --> 01:12:09,680
And this broadcast was going to go out
just two days later.

1177
01:12:10,360 --> 01:12:13,639
Which meant that I'd just got two days
to nip up to the Lake District

1178
01:12:13,760 --> 01:12:19,080
to have a long a...long overdue chat
with my 80-year-old stepmother Gladys.

1179
01:12:23,559 --> 01:12:26,639
Gladys was five feet one inches tall.

1180
01:12:28,400 --> 01:12:31,639
She was from Birkenhead. She'd done
her early theatre-going in Liverpool

1181
01:12:31,760 --> 01:12:35,040
at the Royal Court and the Playhouse.

1182
01:12:35,160 --> 01:12:39,040
So we had that in common.
And we both liked dogs.

1183
01:12:39,160 --> 01:12:41,440
She was a Quaker. Good woman.

1184
01:12:42,680 --> 01:12:46,600
And the day... Oh, it was just...

1185
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:49,400
..blue...blue.

1186
01:12:51,240 --> 01:12:55,760
And I drove Gladys out to my
favourite spot, the Langdale Pikes.

1187
01:12:55,880 --> 01:12:57,880
Stopped the car, wound down the windows.

1188
01:12:58,440 --> 01:13:01,840
And we could hear the birds tweeting
and the Herdwick sheep bleating.

1189
01:13:01,960 --> 01:13:05,240
"Look, Gladys, there's something
that I want to...

1190
01:13:05,360 --> 01:13:08,040
"that I ought to have...
that I've always been meaning to...

1191
01:13:11,160 --> 01:13:14,120
"You know I've just been to San Francisco?

1192
01:13:16,160 --> 01:13:17,200
"Yeah, well...

1193
01:13:17,320 --> 01:13:21,000
"I met there Armistead Maupin.
You know, the man who wrote

1194
01:13:21,120 --> 01:13:23,000
"Tales of the City that you like so much.

1195
01:13:23,120 --> 01:13:26,200
"Well, it turns out
Armistead Maupin lives with his partner,

1196
01:13:26,320 --> 01:13:32,320
"who is a man. Turns out that
Armistead Maupin is actually gay.

1197
01:13:33,200 --> 01:13:34,200
"And..."

1198
01:13:36,440 --> 01:13:37,520
And I'm...

1199
01:13:39,520 --> 01:13:42,200
..stammering and sweating.
I'm 47 years old

1200
01:13:42,320 --> 01:13:45,600
and I can't tell the woman
I love most in the world.

1201
01:13:46,280 --> 01:13:47,960
And eventually I just blurt it out.

1202
01:13:48,080 --> 01:13:50,440
"Gladys, I'm trying to tell you I'm gay."

1203
01:13:52,719 --> 01:13:54,440
And she said, "Oh, Ian!

1204
01:13:54,559 --> 01:13:56,240
"I thought you were going to tell me
something really dreadful.

1205
01:13:56,360 --> 01:13:58,120
"I've known that for 35 years."

1206
01:13:58,240 --> 01:14:00,800
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]

1207
01:14:07,639 --> 01:14:10,719
Well, you know, 35 wasted years,
but except from that moment,

1208
01:14:10,840 --> 01:14:12,360
Gladys and Ian...

1209
01:14:13,520 --> 01:14:17,920
..best pals. And, wasn't I lucky,
she went on for another 20 years.

1210
01:14:18,440 --> 01:14:21,880
She was over 100, and I got to
take her to Buckingham Palace.

1211
01:14:28,680 --> 01:14:29,920
Have you ever been?

1212
01:14:30,040 --> 01:14:31,240
[LAUGHTER]

1213
01:14:31,360 --> 01:14:35,080
No? Oh, well,
once inside Buckingham Palace,

1214
01:14:35,200 --> 01:14:40,600
you'll find that everything is designed
to, if not intimidate, to impress.

1215
01:14:41,520 --> 01:14:45,440
And to my big day,
I took Gladys and my sister.

1216
01:14:45,559 --> 01:14:48,360
And they were shunted off somewhere
quite early on,

1217
01:14:48,480 --> 01:14:51,760
I suppose to await my arrival
in the Throne Room.

1218
01:14:51,880 --> 01:14:54,160
And I was left facing...

1219
01:14:54,840 --> 01:14:59,200
..the ceremonial staircase that overlooks
the courtyard there in the Palace,

1220
01:14:59,320 --> 01:15:01,719
and at the end of each step, each tread,

1221
01:15:01,840 --> 01:15:06,520
there was a young soldier with a silver
breastplate and white leather trousers.

1222
01:15:11,160 --> 01:15:12,840
[LAUGHTER]

1223
01:15:21,639 --> 01:15:22,800
(GROANS)

1224
01:15:27,559 --> 01:15:30,719
And we were shown into this long room.

1225
01:15:30,840 --> 01:15:33,639
It was oblong. It was more like a gallery.

1226
01:15:33,760 --> 01:15:37,639
An art gallery, really.
There were Titians on the wall.

1227
01:15:39,480 --> 01:15:41,680
Van Dijks, Reynoldses.

1228
01:15:41,800 --> 01:15:43,400
And at the centre of the hall,

1229
01:15:43,520 --> 01:15:47,440
there was a great crowd of very
distinguished-looking ladies and gentlemen

1230
01:15:47,559 --> 01:15:50,719
who'd travelled across the world
to meet the Queen and get their medal.

1231
01:15:50,840 --> 01:15:53,840
All done up in their Sunday best.
And at this end of the hall, same thing ―

1232
01:15:53,960 --> 01:15:56,840
another crowd of people. And in between,
there was just enough room...

1233
01:15:56,960 --> 01:15:59,240
I think he was the Lord Chamberlain.
..to slip through

1234
01:15:59,360 --> 01:16:01,360
and try and put us all at our ease.

1235
01:16:01,480 --> 01:16:05,520
"So now, ladies and gentlemen,
welcome to Buckingham Palace.

1236
01:16:05,639 --> 01:16:10,600
"I'm sure some of you are a little bit
apprehensive about today's proceedings.

1237
01:16:10,719 --> 01:16:14,800
"But let me reassure you,
absolutely nothing can go wrong.

1238
01:16:15,840 --> 01:16:18,000
"Because we here at Buckingham Palace

1239
01:16:18,120 --> 01:16:23,080
"have done this sort of thing
many, many times before.

1240
01:16:23,960 --> 01:16:26,360
"However, there's one thing
I do want you to remember,

1241
01:16:26,480 --> 01:16:29,200
"because it's absolutely
vitally important.

1242
01:16:29,320 --> 01:16:32,320
"At the moment at which
you greet Her Majesty..."

1243
01:16:32,440 --> 01:16:35,280
(INDISTINCT SPEECH)

1244
01:16:36,680 --> 01:16:38,280
[LAUGHTER]

1245
01:16:46,719 --> 01:16:49,160
"So if we can all remember that."

1246
01:16:57,680 --> 01:16:58,760
Panic!

1247
01:16:58,880 --> 01:17:02,440
And then we were led in single file
along the corridors

1248
01:17:02,559 --> 01:17:05,400
lined with Ming vases,
more classical painters...

1249
01:17:05,520 --> 01:17:07,120
In the distance, I can hear...

1250
01:17:07,240 --> 01:17:10,559
I suppose it's the Coldstream Guards
playing the National Anthem.

1251
01:17:10,680 --> 01:17:12,719
That must mean she's arrived
in the Throne Room.

1252
01:17:12,840 --> 01:17:16,719
And then through the archway we go,
and then, oh, my God!

1253
01:17:16,840 --> 01:17:20,280
Oh, here we are.
Oh, look. Oh, my goodness.

1254
01:17:20,400 --> 01:17:23,160
Oh, look, that's where
I'm going to have to kneel.

1255
01:17:23,280 --> 01:17:25,000
Oh, there she is.

1256
01:17:26,600 --> 01:17:28,480
In lime green.

1257
01:17:31,360 --> 01:17:32,840
[LAUGHTER]

1258
01:17:46,600 --> 01:17:49,400
And I stood to one side,
waiting for my name to be called.

1259
01:17:49,520 --> 01:17:51,880
Do you know who was standing next to me
waiting for his knighthood?

1260
01:17:52,000 --> 01:17:53,520
Peregrine Worsthorne.

1261
01:17:57,400 --> 01:17:58,800
It's called balance.

1262
01:18:00,320 --> 01:18:02,080
And then I heard...

1263
01:18:02,200 --> 01:18:05,280
"Mr Yawn McKellen..."

1264
01:18:05,400 --> 01:18:09,520
And I'm so impressed
by the whole proceedings,

1265
01:18:09,639 --> 01:18:12,719
particularly being face-to-face
with the Queen, I thought to myself,

1266
01:18:12,840 --> 01:18:16,080
good God, I've been mispronouncing
my own name all these years.

1267
01:18:28,240 --> 01:18:29,639
All right.

1268
01:18:30,800 --> 01:18:35,120
To end this half,
a poem about getting old.

1269
01:18:36,680 --> 01:18:38,840
Written I think by my favourite poet.

1270
01:18:40,160 --> 01:18:45,280
He happens to be gay.
He was a Jesuit priest and teacher.

1271
01:18:45,400 --> 01:18:50,240
And he slapped the words on the page
like oils on the canvas

1272
01:18:50,360 --> 01:18:53,960
so they all mixed up together
in an almost incomprehensible way.

1273
01:18:54,080 --> 01:18:56,840
Bit like looking at
a Van Gogh painting up close.

1274
01:18:58,040 --> 01:19:00,360
Gerard Manley Hopkins.

1275
01:19:00,480 --> 01:19:02,920
And, like his hero Shakespeare,

1276
01:19:03,040 --> 01:19:07,320
he wanted to write a play, and
he started one, which he couldn't finish.

1277
01:19:08,520 --> 01:19:13,760
And in the play, there's a chorus
who speak The Leaden Echo.

1278
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:18,880
In which they bemoan the fact that they're
getting older and they don't like it.

1279
01:19:19,880 --> 01:19:21,120
And...

1280
01:19:22,200 --> 01:19:24,320
Then the whole thing spins on a pun.

1281
01:19:25,240 --> 01:19:28,000
And we get the response
from The Golden Echo.

1282
01:19:29,120 --> 01:19:32,200
In which it says, look, if you want
to hold on to your youth and your beauty,

1283
01:19:32,320 --> 01:19:33,880
you best give them away.

1284
01:19:34,880 --> 01:19:38,920
And Hopkins wrote,
"Take breath and read it with ears.

1285
01:19:41,080 --> 01:19:46,440
"As I always wish to be read,
and my verse becomes all right."

1286
01:19:46,559 --> 01:19:47,960
I hope you agree.

1287
01:19:53,320 --> 01:19:55,400
How to keep...

1288
01:19:56,280 --> 01:19:57,280
Is there any

1289
01:19:58,320 --> 01:19:59,559
Any

1290
01:19:59,680 --> 01:20:05,160
Is there nowhere known,
some bow or brooch

1291
01:20:05,280 --> 01:20:07,520
Or braid or brace

1292
01:20:07,639 --> 01:20:10,320
Lace, latch or catch or key

1293
01:20:10,440 --> 01:20:12,160
To keep back beauty

1294
01:20:12,280 --> 01:20:14,920
Keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty

1295
01:20:15,040 --> 01:20:16,680
From vanishing away?

1296
01:20:16,800 --> 01:20:20,920
O is there no frowning of these wrinkles
Rankéd wrinkles deep down?

1297
01:20:21,040 --> 01:20:24,360
No waving off of these most
mournful messengers, still messengers,

1298
01:20:24,480 --> 01:20:26,800
Sad and stealing messengers of grey?

1299
01:20:26,920 --> 01:20:30,080
O there's none, no, no, there's none
Nor can you long be

1300
01:20:30,200 --> 01:20:32,000
What you now are, called fair

1301
01:20:32,120 --> 01:20:33,920
Do what you may do, what

1302
01:20:34,040 --> 01:20:35,080
Do what you may

1303
01:20:35,200 --> 01:20:37,719
And wisdom is early to despair

1304
01:20:37,840 --> 01:20:43,400
So be beginning, since now nothing
can be done to keep at bay age.

1305
01:20:44,160 --> 01:20:46,880
And age's evils, hoar hair

1306
01:20:47,000 --> 01:20:50,200
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying

1307
01:20:50,760 --> 01:20:53,960
Death's worst, winding sheets,
tombs and worms

1308
01:20:54,080 --> 01:20:55,960
And tumbling to decay

1309
01:20:56,080 --> 01:20:58,680
So be beginning to despair

1310
01:20:58,800 --> 01:21:02,440
O there's none; no, no, no, there's none

1311
01:21:02,559 --> 01:21:04,760
Be beginning to despair

1312
01:21:04,880 --> 01:21:06,360
To despair

1313
01:21:06,480 --> 01:21:10,840
Despair, despair, despair, despair

1314
01:21:13,559 --> 01:21:14,559
Spare!

1315
01:21:15,360 --> 01:21:16,520
There is one

1316
01:21:16,639 --> 01:21:19,160
Yes, I have one

1317
01:21:19,280 --> 01:21:20,280
Hush there!

1318
01:21:20,400 --> 01:21:22,559
Only not within seeing of the sun

1319
01:21:22,680 --> 01:21:24,960
Not within the singeing of the strong sun

1320
01:21:25,080 --> 01:21:28,520
Tall sun's tingeing, or treacherous
the tainting of the earth's air

1321
01:21:28,639 --> 01:21:31,120
Somewhere, elsewhere there is
Ah well where!

1322
01:21:32,000 --> 01:21:33,000
One

1323
01:21:33,120 --> 01:21:34,120
One

1324
01:21:34,240 --> 01:21:36,600
Yes, I can tell such a key

1325
01:21:36,719 --> 01:21:38,840
I do know such a place

1326
01:21:38,960 --> 01:21:42,240
Where whatever's prized and passes of us

1327
01:21:42,360 --> 01:21:45,360
Everything that's fresh
and fast flying of us

1328
01:21:45,480 --> 01:21:47,160
Seems to us sweet of us

1329
01:21:47,280 --> 01:21:50,160
And swiftly away with,
done away with, undone

1330
01:21:50,280 --> 01:21:51,480
Sone with, soon done with

1331
01:21:51,600 --> 01:21:54,120
And yet dearly and dangerously
sweet of us

1332
01:21:54,240 --> 01:21:59,160
The wimpled-water-dimpled,
not-by-morning-matchèd face

1333
01:21:59,280 --> 01:22:02,960
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty

1334
01:22:03,080 --> 01:22:05,320
Too, too apt to, ah! to fleet

1335
01:22:05,440 --> 01:22:08,320
Never fleets more

1336
01:22:08,440 --> 01:22:11,000
Fastened with the tenderest truth

1337
01:22:11,120 --> 01:22:14,680
To its own best being
To its loveliness of youth

1338
01:22:14,800 --> 01:22:18,320
It is an ever-lastingness of
O it is

1339
01:22:19,280 --> 01:22:22,120
An all youth!

1340
01:22:22,240 --> 01:22:25,000
Come then, your ways and airs and looks

1341
01:22:25,120 --> 01:22:29,080
Locks, maiden gear,
gallantry and gaiety and grace

1342
01:22:29,200 --> 01:22:33,400
Winning ways, airs innocent,
sweet looks, loose locks

1343
01:22:33,520 --> 01:22:36,880
Long locks, lovelocks, gaygear,
going gallant, girlgrace

1344
01:22:37,000 --> 01:22:38,320
Resign them

1345
01:22:38,440 --> 01:22:41,480
Sign them, seal them, send them,
motion them with breath

1346
01:22:41,600 --> 01:22:45,440
And with sighs soaring,
soaring sighs deliver them

1347
01:22:45,559 --> 01:22:47,000
Early now, long before death

1348
01:22:47,120 --> 01:22:51,639
Give beauty back, beauty,
beauty, beauty, back

1349
01:22:51,760 --> 01:22:53,639
To God

1350
01:22:55,520 --> 01:22:57,120
Beauty's self

1351
01:22:58,639 --> 01:22:59,840
And beauty's giver

1352
01:23:01,559 --> 01:23:03,760
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash

1353
01:23:05,080 --> 01:23:07,280
Not the least lash lost

1354
01:23:08,320 --> 01:23:10,880
Every hair is, hair of the head, numbered

1355
01:23:11,639 --> 01:23:13,639
O weary then why should we tread?

1356
01:23:14,440 --> 01:23:17,520
O why are we so haggard at the heart

1357
01:23:17,639 --> 01:23:20,120
So care-coiled, care-killed

1358
01:23:20,760 --> 01:23:23,400
So fagged, so fashed,
so cogged, so cumbered

1359
01:23:23,520 --> 01:23:27,200
When the thing we freely forfeit
is kept with fonder a care

1360
01:23:27,320 --> 01:23:28,920
Fonder a care kept
than we could have kept it

1361
01:23:29,040 --> 01:23:30,920
Kept, ah, with fonder a care

1362
01:23:31,040 --> 01:23:32,440
And we, we should have lost it

1363
01:23:32,559 --> 01:23:34,680
Finer, fonder a care kept.

1364
01:23:34,800 --> 01:23:35,880
Where kept?

1365
01:23:36,000 --> 01:23:37,920
Do but tell us where kept?

1366
01:23:38,040 --> 01:23:39,280
Yonder

1367
01:23:39,400 --> 01:23:41,000
What high as that?

1368
01:23:41,120 --> 01:23:42,719
We follow, we follow

1369
01:23:42,840 --> 01:23:44,360
Yonder, yes yonder

1370
01:23:44,480 --> 01:23:47,800
Yonder, yonder, yonder.

1371
01:23:51,200 --> 01:23:54,080
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

1372
01:24:01,400 --> 01:24:04,800
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

1373
01:24:14,680 --> 01:24:16,559
All the world's a stage

1374
01:24:17,400 --> 01:24:19,559
And all the men and women merely....

1375
01:24:19,680 --> 01:24:20,920
AUDIENCE Players.

1376
01:24:21,040 --> 01:24:22,800
They have their exits and their entrances.

1377
01:24:22,920 --> 01:24:24,440
And one man

1378
01:24:25,280 --> 01:24:27,360
in his time plays many parts,

1379
01:24:27,480 --> 01:24:31,040
his acts being seven ages.

1380
01:24:31,160 --> 01:24:32,920
First the infant...

1381
01:24:34,000 --> 01:24:35,080
..mewling...

1382
01:24:36,360 --> 01:24:38,360
..and puking in the nurse's arms.

1383
01:24:38,480 --> 01:24:41,200
And then the whining schoolboy

1384
01:24:41,320 --> 01:24:43,600
with his satchel and shining morning face,

1385
01:24:43,719 --> 01:24:46,400
creeping like snail unwillingly to school.

1386
01:24:48,040 --> 01:24:51,160
Then the lover, sighing like furnace,

1387
01:24:51,280 --> 01:24:55,480
with a woeful ballad
made to his mistress' eyebrow.

1388
01:24:55,600 --> 01:24:59,000
Then, the soldier,
full of strange oaths...

1389
01:24:59,880 --> 01:25:01,480
..and bearded like the pard,

1390
01:25:01,600 --> 01:25:04,559
jealous in honour,
sudden and quick in quarrel,

1391
01:25:04,680 --> 01:25:09,320
seeking the bubble reputation
even in the cannon's mouth.

1392
01:25:09,800 --> 01:25:11,240
Then the justice,

1393
01:25:11,360 --> 01:25:14,639
in fair round belly
with a good capon lined,

1394
01:25:14,760 --> 01:25:18,360
with eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

1395
01:25:18,480 --> 01:25:21,480
full of wise saws and modern instances.

1396
01:25:21,600 --> 01:25:24,120
And so he plays his part.

1397
01:25:24,240 --> 01:25:29,920
The sixth age shifts
into the lean and slippered pantaloon,

1398
01:25:30,040 --> 01:25:33,840
with spectacles on nose and pouch on side.

1399
01:25:34,920 --> 01:25:38,200
His youthful hose well saved,
a world too wide...

1400
01:25:39,360 --> 01:25:42,880
For his shrunk shank,
and his big manly voice,

1401
01:25:43,000 --> 01:25:47,800
turning again toward childish treble,

1402
01:25:47,920 --> 01:25:54,240
pipes and whistles in his sound.

1403
01:25:54,360 --> 01:25:58,080
Last scene of all,
that ends this strange eventful history,

1404
01:25:58,200 --> 01:26:00,280
is second childishness...

1405
01:26:02,520 --> 01:26:04,440
..and mere oblivion, sans eyes,

1406
01:26:04,559 --> 01:26:06,120
sans teeth...

1407
01:26:06,719 --> 01:26:08,360
..sans taste...

1408
01:26:10,000 --> 01:26:11,920
..sans everything.

1409
01:26:14,440 --> 01:26:20,480
The melancholy words of Jaques
from Act II, Scene vii of As You Like It,

1410
01:26:20,600 --> 01:26:23,280
a play by William Shakespeare
which I've never been in.

1411
01:26:25,360 --> 01:26:27,400
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

1412
01:26:32,400 --> 01:26:36,320
I've got into the habit of going
to the stage door during the interval

1413
01:26:36,440 --> 01:26:39,920
to get a bit of fresh air,
and I was doing that in East Anglia,

1414
01:26:40,040 --> 01:26:42,440
when we were
at the Wolsey Theatre in Ipswich,

1415
01:26:42,559 --> 01:26:43,719
and I'm just standing there
and the girl...

1416
01:26:43,840 --> 01:26:46,320
I think she was delivering
pizzas or something.

1417
01:26:46,440 --> 01:26:48,120
And she caught sight of me and said,

1418
01:26:48,240 --> 01:26:50,040
"Oh, I know you.

1419
01:26:50,920 --> 01:26:52,960
"You're from Harry Potter!"

1420
01:27:00,600 --> 01:27:03,840
I said, "I'm sorry, love, you've got
the wrong wizard. I pay the real wizard."

1421
01:27:09,639 --> 01:27:12,360
Of course she thought
she'd seen Michael Gambon.

1422
01:27:12,480 --> 01:27:15,840
I did once ask Mike
if he ever got mistaken for me.

1423
01:27:15,960 --> 01:27:18,360
"Oh, yes," he said,

1424
01:27:18,480 --> 01:27:19,719
"the whole time, they bring me

1425
01:27:19,840 --> 01:27:22,639
"their wretched eight-by-ten
photographs of Gandalf."

1426
01:27:23,880 --> 01:27:24,880
I said, "What do you do?"

1427
01:27:25,000 --> 01:27:26,400
He said, "Oh, I just sign your name."

1428
01:27:26,520 --> 01:27:28,680
[LAUGHTER]

1429
01:27:33,840 --> 01:27:37,200
Well, I just hope he spells it correctly.

1430
01:27:37,320 --> 01:27:39,120
So there we are. That's As You Like It.

1431
01:27:39,240 --> 01:27:45,120
That's one of 37 plays which Shakespeare
wrote. And guess what? In here...

1432
01:27:45,240 --> 01:27:46,960
I've got the other 36.

1433
01:27:47,960 --> 01:27:49,040
So...

1434
01:27:50,400 --> 01:27:52,280
There we are. Those are the...

1435
01:27:52,800 --> 01:27:55,280
..the Roman plays ―
plays that are set in Italy.

1436
01:27:55,400 --> 01:27:58,960
I think there's one of them
set in Greece as well.

1437
01:27:59,080 --> 01:28:02,559
Then we've got the four last plays
that he wrote ― the late plays.

1438
01:28:03,200 --> 01:28:06,240
The two so-called "problem plays".

1439
01:28:06,360 --> 01:28:08,080
Look at all those tragedies.

1440
01:28:08,200 --> 01:28:09,719
No, no, comedies, rather, he wrote.

1441
01:28:09,840 --> 01:28:12,040
These are the tragedies ―
just five of those.

1442
01:28:12,160 --> 01:28:13,440
All right.

1443
01:28:14,360 --> 01:28:18,160
All the rest, they're all plays
set in the past ― history plays.

1444
01:28:18,840 --> 01:28:20,280
All right.

1445
01:28:20,400 --> 01:28:21,480
So...

1446
01:28:22,880 --> 01:28:24,719
Here's a challenge.
Do you suppose collectively

1447
01:28:24,840 --> 01:28:27,240
you can remember all the titles
of Shakespeare's plays?

1448
01:28:27,360 --> 01:28:29,000
Yes!

1449
01:28:32,719 --> 01:28:34,600
Iljama, where are you?

1450
01:28:36,280 --> 01:28:37,960
Could you name me a play by Shakespeare?

1451
01:28:38,880 --> 01:28:40,080
ILJAMA: Macbeth!

1452
01:28:40,200 --> 01:28:41,920
AUDIENCE: Ooh!

1453
01:28:45,760 --> 01:28:47,960
[APPLAUSE]

1454
01:28:52,680 --> 01:28:54,880
Well done.
No, that's a play by Shakespeare,

1455
01:28:55,000 --> 01:28:57,040
and a very good one too,
and a lucky play for me.

1456
01:28:57,160 --> 01:29:00,360
But for a lot of actors,
it's thought not to be.

1457
01:29:00,480 --> 01:29:03,400
It's a play so unlucky
that we won't say the title.

1458
01:29:03,520 --> 01:29:05,320
Do you know what I'm referring to?

1459
01:29:05,440 --> 01:29:06,880
AUDIENCE: The Scottish Play.

1460
01:29:07,000 --> 01:29:08,320
The Scottish play. Thank you.

1461
01:29:08,440 --> 01:29:09,920
Yes, that's what we call it.

1462
01:29:10,040 --> 01:29:13,760
And we will not mention the title
backstage or quote it.

1463
01:29:13,880 --> 01:29:15,200
Oh, all hell breaks loose.

1464
01:29:15,320 --> 01:29:16,760
Why is it...

1465
01:29:17,559 --> 01:29:21,800
..so unlucky? Well, it's nothing
to do with the supernatural, I think.

1466
01:29:23,320 --> 01:29:25,240
It's because ― could be ―

1467
01:29:25,360 --> 01:29:29,800
the play is perhaps the most popular play
he wrote with audiences.

1468
01:29:30,480 --> 01:29:31,800
It's short.

1469
01:29:34,240 --> 01:29:35,280
And...

1470
01:29:36,160 --> 01:29:39,800
..it's a thriller, and whenever
you put The Scottish Play on,

1471
01:29:39,920 --> 01:29:41,600
an audience always turns up to see it.

1472
01:29:41,719 --> 01:29:43,000
So that may be the origin

1473
01:29:43,120 --> 01:29:46,160
why professional actors
will not even say the title,

1474
01:29:46,280 --> 01:29:48,760
because in the old days,
when the actors were touring around

1475
01:29:48,880 --> 01:29:50,440
with a bundle of Shakespeare
in their repertoire

1476
01:29:50,559 --> 01:29:52,680
and they heard that the management
were thinking of slipping in

1477
01:29:52,800 --> 01:29:57,080
a couple of extra performances
of this play, ever popular,

1478
01:29:57,200 --> 01:29:59,960
it probably meant that
there wasn't enough money in the kitty

1479
01:30:00,080 --> 01:30:01,639
to pay the actors at the end of the week.

1480
01:30:01,760 --> 01:30:05,360
So don't even mention the title.

1481
01:30:06,400 --> 01:30:07,400
Maybe.

1482
01:30:08,160 --> 01:30:09,400
And...

1483
01:30:10,440 --> 01:30:13,320
You'll like this. When we were in...

1484
01:30:14,080 --> 01:30:16,040
..North Wales ― Mold, Theatr Clwyd ―

1485
01:30:16,160 --> 01:30:19,240
in the audience was Royd Tolkien...

1486
01:30:20,600 --> 01:30:22,200
..the great-grandson.

1487
01:30:22,320 --> 01:30:24,240
And afterwards, he...

1488
01:30:25,559 --> 01:30:29,559
..said, "Ian, this was my
great-grandad's copy of Macbeth.

1489
01:30:29,680 --> 01:30:31,160
"I'd like you to have it."

1490
01:30:31,880 --> 01:30:33,000
There we are.

1491
01:30:33,680 --> 01:30:34,680
So...

1492
01:30:35,280 --> 01:30:39,400
OK, up there in the balcony,
a play by Shakespeare?

1493
01:30:40,120 --> 01:30:41,639
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Cymbeline.

1494
01:30:41,760 --> 01:30:43,400
Cymbeline, OK.

1495
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:47,559
Well, we all know Cymbeline.

1496
01:30:47,680 --> 01:30:49,360
[LAUGHTER]

1497
01:30:52,880 --> 01:30:57,120
You wait. You know it
better than you realise.

1498
01:30:57,240 --> 01:30:59,639
In the play, you know,
the two brothers...

1499
01:31:01,280 --> 01:31:05,480
..discover their best friend has died
and they weave a quilt of words,

1500
01:31:05,600 --> 01:31:07,480
which we often use today.

1501
01:31:07,600 --> 01:31:12,480
So, now for Gladys
and my parents and sister Jean...

1502
01:31:14,080 --> 01:31:18,400
..and recently for good friends
Tim Pigott-Smith, John Hurt,

1503
01:31:18,520 --> 01:31:20,639
Alan Rickman, Stan Lee,

1504
01:31:20,760 --> 01:31:27,440
who wrote X-Men, Gillian Lynne...
who choreographed the original Cats...

1505
01:31:29,000 --> 01:31:31,160
..Peter Hall, Clive Swift...

1506
01:31:32,600 --> 01:31:35,400
..Freddie Jones, Stephen Moore...

1507
01:31:36,400 --> 01:31:39,520
..Frank Finlay, and now, Albert Finney...

1508
01:31:39,639 --> 01:31:43,000
Fear no more the heat of the sun.

1509
01:31:44,160 --> 01:31:46,160
Nor the furious winter's rages;

1510
01:31:46,280 --> 01:31:49,120
Thou thy worldly task hast done,

1511
01:31:49,240 --> 01:31:51,760
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages:

1512
01:31:51,880 --> 01:31:54,920
Golden lads and girls all must,

1513
01:31:55,040 --> 01:31:58,960
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

1514
01:31:59,080 --> 01:32:01,280
Fear no more the frown o' the great;

1515
01:32:01,400 --> 01:32:03,440
Thou art past the tyrant’s stroke;

1516
01:32:04,160 --> 01:32:06,559
Care no more to clothe and eat;

1517
01:32:06,680 --> 01:32:09,480
To thee the reed is as the oak:

1518
01:32:09,600 --> 01:32:12,000
The sceptre, learning, physic, must

1519
01:32:12,120 --> 01:32:16,160
All follow this, and come to dust.

1520
01:32:16,280 --> 01:32:19,000
Fear no more the lightning flash,

1521
01:32:19,120 --> 01:32:21,719
Nor the all-dreaded thunder stone;

1522
01:32:21,840 --> 01:32:24,719
Fear not slander, censure rash;

1523
01:32:24,840 --> 01:32:27,960
Thou hast finished joy and moan:

1524
01:32:28,080 --> 01:32:31,960
And all lovers young, all lovers must

1525
01:32:32,080 --> 01:32:36,120
Consign to thee, and come to dust.

1526
01:32:36,240 --> 01:32:37,880
No exorciser harm thee!

1527
01:32:38,000 --> 01:32:39,840
Nor no witchcraft charm thee!

1528
01:32:39,960 --> 01:32:42,719
Ghost unlaid forbear thee!

1529
01:32:42,840 --> 01:32:44,880
Nothing ill come near thee!

1530
01:32:45,760 --> 01:32:47,840
Quiet consummation have;

1531
01:32:48,920 --> 01:32:53,800
And renownèd be thy grave!

1532
01:32:58,639 --> 01:33:01,240
[APPLAUSE]

1533
01:33:08,200 --> 01:33:11,080
"Like chimney sweepers come to dust."

1534
01:33:11,200 --> 01:33:14,639
You know, the dandelion,
when it loses his yellow petals,

1535
01:33:14,760 --> 01:33:17,400
it turn into a sort of puffball.
It looks a bit like

1536
01:33:17,520 --> 01:33:19,800
the old brushes
that went up the old chimneys,

1537
01:33:19,920 --> 01:33:21,480
which is why Shakespeare
and his contemporaries

1538
01:33:21,600 --> 01:33:23,600
called the dandelion

1539
01:33:23,719 --> 01:33:25,360
"the chimney sweeper."

1540
01:33:25,480 --> 01:33:27,240
(BLOWS)

1541
01:33:31,639 --> 01:33:33,120
Come to...

1542
01:33:34,719 --> 01:33:35,880
..dust.

1543
01:33:37,280 --> 01:33:39,080
OK. Play by Shakespeare?

1544
01:33:40,120 --> 01:33:41,600
AUDIENCE MEMBER: As You Like It.

1545
01:33:41,719 --> 01:33:44,600
As You Like It. Well, we've had that one.

1546
01:33:46,360 --> 01:33:47,639
Play by Shakespeare?

1547
01:33:47,760 --> 01:33:50,840
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Richard III.
― Richard III. OK.

1548
01:33:52,320 --> 01:33:53,559
Bloody good film.

1549
01:33:53,680 --> 01:33:55,120
[LAUGHTER]

1550
01:33:57,040 --> 01:33:59,360
This is my street screenplay.
The only book I intend to write,

1551
01:33:59,480 --> 01:34:02,600
apart from the brochure,
which is still available at the...

1552
01:34:03,160 --> 01:34:05,240
And what I did was I put the...

1553
01:34:05,960 --> 01:34:08,520
..the dialogue
as I cut it down from the play

1554
01:34:08,639 --> 01:34:11,400
on this side and on the other,
photographs of...

1555
01:34:13,040 --> 01:34:14,719
There's Nigel Hawthorne.

1556
01:34:14,840 --> 01:34:16,840
Robert Downey Jr.

1557
01:34:18,000 --> 01:34:22,080
And then there's Maggie Smith
enjoying a Coca-Cola.

1558
01:34:25,800 --> 01:34:27,639
Oh, and up there,
if you want to have a look at this,

1559
01:34:27,760 --> 01:34:30,200
you can get it ―
it's free on my website.

1560
01:34:31,800 --> 01:34:35,080
What's the first word in this play?
Not the first line, the first word.

1561
01:34:35,200 --> 01:34:36,680
AUDIENCE Now.

1562
01:34:38,760 --> 01:34:41,880
Now, what a word to start to play with.

1563
01:34:42,000 --> 01:34:44,040
Now what's going to happen?

1564
01:34:44,160 --> 01:34:46,600
Now where are we?

1565
01:34:47,960 --> 01:34:49,639
That's live theatre.

1566
01:34:51,680 --> 01:34:53,280
It's here and it's...

1567
01:34:53,400 --> 01:34:54,639
And it's us, you know,

1568
01:34:54,760 --> 01:34:58,680
it's not yesterday's performance,
it's not tomorrow's, it's not the movie.

1569
01:34:59,480 --> 01:35:00,880
Film is a bit...

1570
01:35:01,000 --> 01:35:02,440
a bit "then", isn't it?

1571
01:35:02,559 --> 01:35:04,960
Because the actors aren't there.
It's just...

1572
01:35:05,639 --> 01:35:06,960
Shadows on a screen.

1573
01:35:07,719 --> 01:35:11,600
But here we are...ready for anything.

1574
01:35:13,920 --> 01:35:15,480
Ah. Hmm.

1575
01:35:15,600 --> 01:35:17,559
OK, play by Shakespeare?

1576
01:35:18,120 --> 01:35:19,880
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
A Midsummer Night's Dream.

1577
01:35:20,000 --> 01:35:22,480
Midsummer Night's Dream. OK.

1578
01:35:22,600 --> 01:35:23,680
When we were at Cambridge,

1579
01:35:23,800 --> 01:35:28,000
we recorded the whole of Shakespeare
on record for...

1580
01:35:28,680 --> 01:35:30,120
..the British Council.

1581
01:35:30,240 --> 01:35:32,320
And all the main parts were played
by professional actors

1582
01:35:32,440 --> 01:35:33,440
and we played the other parts.

1583
01:35:33,559 --> 01:35:36,920
So in Midsummer Night's Dream,
I got to play Lysander.

1584
01:35:38,160 --> 01:35:40,719
Which is a marginally
better part than Claudio.

1585
01:35:42,719 --> 01:35:46,440
And that's another play we did
on record ― Antony and Cleopatra.

1586
01:35:46,559 --> 01:35:50,960
And Cleopatra was played by Irene Worth.

1587
01:35:52,160 --> 01:35:57,280
And I had the very, very, very small part
of Mardian the eunuch.

1588
01:36:01,200 --> 01:36:02,480
(CHUCKLES)

1589
01:36:03,160 --> 01:36:04,880
OK, next one.

1590
01:36:05,000 --> 01:36:06,639
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hamlet.
― Hamlet.

1591
01:36:07,840 --> 01:36:09,680
Well, Hamlet.

1592
01:36:09,800 --> 01:36:12,120
He's one of us, isn't he?
Loves the theatre.

1593
01:36:13,760 --> 01:36:17,639
When he hears
that his father has been murdered,

1594
01:36:17,760 --> 01:36:19,400
or so the ghost tells him...

1595
01:36:21,000 --> 01:36:22,080
..he fears he's living in a prison.

1596
01:36:22,200 --> 01:36:24,480
Who can he talk to, apart from...

1597
01:36:25,639 --> 01:36:27,160
you? And then...

1598
01:36:28,360 --> 01:36:31,680
..then he discovers that it's his uncle,
now the king, who did the murder.

1599
01:36:31,800 --> 01:36:33,800
So the ghost tells him again.

1600
01:36:33,920 --> 01:36:38,600
He has to talk to the audience.
Then the actors arrive in Elsinore.

1601
01:36:38,719 --> 01:36:41,240
The players do a bit of a play.

1602
01:36:41,360 --> 01:36:44,639
And Hamlet, as we all do,
responds to what he sees in the play

1603
01:36:44,760 --> 01:36:50,240
to his own life, and then off actors go
and the court leaves.

1604
01:36:53,000 --> 01:36:54,000
So...

1605
01:36:57,040 --> 01:36:58,600
Now I am alone.

1606
01:37:01,400 --> 01:37:03,920
O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

1607
01:37:07,240 --> 01:37:13,080
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction...

1608
01:37:14,880 --> 01:37:16,920
..in a dream of passion,

1609
01:37:17,040 --> 01:37:20,240
Could force his soul so to his own conceit

1610
01:37:20,360 --> 01:37:26,760
That from her working
all his visage wann'd,

1611
01:37:26,880 --> 01:37:29,600
Tears in his eyes,
distraction in's aspect,

1612
01:37:29,719 --> 01:37:31,800
A broken voice,
and his whole function suiting

1613
01:37:31,920 --> 01:37:34,040
With forms to his conceit?
And all for nothing!

1614
01:37:36,240 --> 01:37:37,920
For Hecuba!

1615
01:37:38,040 --> 01:37:41,000
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,

1616
01:37:41,120 --> 01:37:42,880
That he should weep for her?

1617
01:37:43,000 --> 01:37:44,160
What would he do,

1618
01:37:44,280 --> 01:37:47,639
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have?

1619
01:37:49,480 --> 01:37:52,000
He would drown the stage with tears

1620
01:37:54,040 --> 01:37:56,400
But I, a dull and muddy-mettled
rascal, peak,

1621
01:37:56,520 --> 01:37:58,680
Like John-a-dreams,
unpregnant of my cause,

1622
01:37:58,800 --> 01:38:00,719
And can say nothing; no...

1623
01:38:02,559 --> 01:38:04,960
Not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life

1624
01:38:05,080 --> 01:38:06,600
A damn'd defeat was made.

1625
01:38:10,800 --> 01:38:12,120
Am I a coward?

1626
01:38:15,280 --> 01:38:16,639
Who calls me villain?

1627
01:38:17,320 --> 01:38:18,680
Breaks my pate across?

1628
01:38:18,800 --> 01:38:20,040
Tweaks me by the nose?

1629
01:38:21,480 --> 01:38:22,800
Gives me the lie i' the throat,

1630
01:38:22,920 --> 01:38:24,320
As deep as to the lungs?
Who does me this?

1631
01:38:24,440 --> 01:38:25,920
'Swounds, I should take it:
for it cannot be

1632
01:38:26,040 --> 01:38:29,719
But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack the gall

1633
01:38:29,840 --> 01:38:32,920
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites

1634
01:38:33,040 --> 01:38:34,639
With this slave's offal:
bloody, bawdy villain!

1635
01:38:35,200 --> 01:38:39,800
Remorseless, treacherous,
(SHOUTING) lecherous, kindless villain!

1636
01:38:39,920 --> 01:38:41,680
O, vengeance!

1637
01:38:46,559 --> 01:38:48,280
O, what an ass am I!

1638
01:38:49,000 --> 01:38:51,080
This is most brave...

1639
01:38:52,920 --> 01:38:55,440
That I, the son of a dear father murder'd

1640
01:38:55,559 --> 01:38:57,440
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,

1641
01:38:57,559 --> 01:39:00,840
Must, like a whore,
unpack my heart with words,

1642
01:39:00,960 --> 01:39:03,040
And fall a-cursing, like a very drab,
A scullion!

1643
01:39:03,160 --> 01:39:05,440
Fie upon't! About, my brain!

1644
01:39:12,400 --> 01:39:17,880
I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play

1645
01:39:18,000 --> 01:39:21,800
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul that presently

1646
01:39:21,920 --> 01:39:26,120
They have proclaim'd their malefactions;

1647
01:39:27,639 --> 01:39:29,120
I'll have these players

1648
01:39:29,240 --> 01:39:31,920
Play something
like the murder of my father

1649
01:39:32,040 --> 01:39:35,080
Before my uncle: I'll observe his looks;

1650
01:39:35,200 --> 01:39:38,320
I'll tent him to the quick:
if he do blench,

1651
01:39:38,440 --> 01:39:39,920
I know my course.

1652
01:39:42,840 --> 01:39:47,040
This spirit that I have seen
May be the devil: and the devil hath power

1653
01:39:47,160 --> 01:39:49,040
To assume a pleasing shape;
yea, and perhaps

1654
01:39:49,160 --> 01:39:54,120
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,

1655
01:39:54,240 --> 01:39:56,639
Abuses me to damn me.

1656
01:39:59,400 --> 01:40:03,719
I have things
More relative than this:

1657
01:40:03,840 --> 01:40:05,639
The play is the thing

1658
01:40:06,960 --> 01:40:10,600
Wherein I'll catch the conscience
of the king.

1659
01:40:14,040 --> 01:40:17,920
So Hamlet goes on to write a couple
of extra lines into the actors' play

1660
01:40:18,040 --> 01:40:19,920
and he gives it a new title.

1661
01:40:20,040 --> 01:40:21,680
He calls it The Mousetrap.

1662
01:40:24,200 --> 01:40:26,760
[APPLAUSE]

1663
01:40:28,920 --> 01:40:30,200
Thank you.

1664
01:40:30,840 --> 01:40:33,280
All right. Back of the stalls, a play?

1665
01:40:33,400 --> 01:40:35,320
(PEOPLE CALLING OUT)

1666
01:40:36,960 --> 01:40:39,840
All right, I heard King Lear.

1667
01:40:41,160 --> 01:40:46,000
Oh, was it the year before last
I did King Lear a hundred times?

1668
01:40:46,120 --> 01:40:47,360
Not for the first time.

1669
01:40:47,480 --> 01:40:49,080
It's that sort of play.

1670
01:40:50,000 --> 01:40:51,280
It's like a mountain.

1671
01:40:51,400 --> 01:40:52,920
You'll never get to the top.

1672
01:40:54,000 --> 01:40:57,360
Although the view from halfway up
can be all right. Look.

1673
01:40:57,480 --> 01:41:01,760
There's Timothy West. He's played
King Lear in four different productions.

1674
01:41:02,440 --> 01:41:06,559
And the hero of my youth, John Gielgud,
he played King Lear three times.

1675
01:41:06,680 --> 01:41:09,400
I saw him do it once
at the Opera House in Manchester.

1676
01:41:09,520 --> 01:41:12,680
And a colleague a fellow actor

1677
01:41:12,800 --> 01:41:17,639
asked Gielgud if he'd got any tips
on playing King Lear.

1678
01:41:17,760 --> 01:41:20,120
And Gielgud said, "Oh, yes!

1679
01:41:20,680 --> 01:41:22,480
"Get a small Cordelia."

1680
01:41:22,920 --> 01:41:24,760
[LAUGHTER]

1681
01:41:33,360 --> 01:41:35,040
When Gielgud was playing...

1682
01:41:35,160 --> 01:41:36,760
Lear at Stratford,

1683
01:41:36,880 --> 01:41:40,520
his fool, King Lear's fool, was played
by Alan Badel. Wonderful actor.

1684
01:41:40,639 --> 01:41:42,760
He's only got one fault.

1685
01:41:42,880 --> 01:41:46,080
He always insisted on giving
other actors in the production he was in

1686
01:41:46,200 --> 01:41:48,280
notes on how
they ought to be playing their part.

1687
01:41:49,080 --> 01:41:53,280
And I suffered that
when I was playing a small part...

1688
01:41:54,840 --> 01:41:56,719
..with him in Henry VIII on radio

1689
01:41:56,840 --> 01:42:00,080
and poor old Gielgud playing King Lear...

1690
01:42:00,200 --> 01:42:03,639
Well, this was told me by a friend who
was standing in the wings with Sir John.

1691
01:42:03,760 --> 01:42:05,559
"Sir John, Sir John,
we're on the wrong side of the stage.

1692
01:42:05,680 --> 01:42:07,600
"We shouldn't be here.
We should be over there.

1693
01:42:07,719 --> 01:42:11,480
"We come out from over there.
If we go this way we can get to..."

1694
01:42:11,600 --> 01:42:13,000
"Yes, yes, I know, I know.

1695
01:42:13,800 --> 01:42:16,440
"But I'm hiding from Alan Badel."

1696
01:42:16,559 --> 01:42:18,440
[LAUGHTER]

1697
01:42:24,920 --> 01:42:26,280
Oh dear, oh dear!

1698
01:42:26,920 --> 01:42:28,719
All right. Up there, yes?

1699
01:42:28,840 --> 01:42:30,240
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Measure for Measure.
― Measure for Measure.

1700
01:42:30,360 --> 01:42:32,160
Well, that's one of the problem plays.

1701
01:42:32,280 --> 01:42:34,400
It is for me. I've never been in it,

1702
01:42:34,520 --> 01:42:37,840
but whenever I see it,
I never quite get to grips.

1703
01:42:37,960 --> 01:42:40,880
So I'm looking forward
to the production that explains it all.

1704
01:42:42,040 --> 01:42:43,960
And what's the other problem play?

1705
01:42:44,080 --> 01:42:46,080
― (AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT ANSWERS)
― No.

1706
01:42:46,200 --> 01:42:48,200
― Merchant of Venice.
― No.

1707
01:42:48,320 --> 01:42:52,000
― (AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT ANSWERS)
― No.

1708
01:42:52,120 --> 01:42:55,000
No. These are all easy ones.
This is the difficult one.

1709
01:42:55,120 --> 01:42:56,559
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
All's Well That Ends Well.

1710
01:42:56,680 --> 01:43:00,559
What? All's Well That Ends Well. Yes.

1711
01:43:00,680 --> 01:43:02,160
Hasn't that got a wonderful rhythm to it?

1712
01:43:02,280 --> 01:43:04,000
Why don't we all say it together?
Come on.

1713
01:43:04,120 --> 01:43:07,639
ALL: All's Well That Ends Well.

1714
01:43:07,760 --> 01:43:08,880
Ah!

1715
01:43:15,120 --> 01:43:18,639
I just hope that's true. All right,
so next play at the back there.

1716
01:43:18,760 --> 01:43:20,040
― What, what?
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Coriolanus.

1717
01:43:20,160 --> 01:43:22,840
Coriolanus. Well, I've done that twice.

1718
01:43:22,960 --> 01:43:25,639
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Romeo and Juliet.
― Hang on. We're doing Coriolanus.

1719
01:43:28,719 --> 01:43:31,520
When I played Marcius Coriolanus
at the National,

1720
01:43:31,639 --> 01:43:36,040
my mother was played by Irene Worth.

1721
01:43:37,040 --> 01:43:39,360
Second time I'd worked with her, and...

1722
01:43:40,480 --> 01:43:42,960
She said in rehearsal,
"Ian, don't expect me

1723
01:43:43,080 --> 01:43:44,520
"to give the same performance every night.

1724
01:43:44,639 --> 01:43:46,840
"I don't do that.

1725
01:43:46,960 --> 01:43:49,559
"It's live theatre.
It's all about the here and..."

1726
01:43:49,680 --> 01:43:50,960
AUDIENCE: Now.

1727
01:43:51,080 --> 01:43:53,120
She said, "I like to jazz Shakespeare."

1728
01:43:55,200 --> 01:43:57,880
That's what I've tried to do
with Shakespeare ever since.

1729
01:43:58,360 --> 01:44:00,200
And the other great part...

1730
01:44:00,840 --> 01:44:03,719
..is Tullus Aufidius.
That was played by Greg Hicks.

1731
01:44:03,840 --> 01:44:06,840
And that was the part I played
when I first did it in Nottingham,

1732
01:44:06,960 --> 01:44:12,480
when John Neville was Marcius.
His mother was played by Dorothy Reynolds.

1733
01:44:13,200 --> 01:44:16,040
That name mean anything to you?
Dorothy Reynolds wrote the words

1734
01:44:16,160 --> 01:44:19,520
for Salad Days,
which was the longest-running musical

1735
01:44:19,639 --> 01:44:22,680
in the history of British theatre
before there was Andrew Lloyd Webber.

1736
01:44:24,920 --> 01:44:27,480
And Tullus and Marcius...

1737
01:44:28,840 --> 01:44:31,920
..great rivals on the battlefield,
great warriors, great athletes,

1738
01:44:32,040 --> 01:44:33,719
and they're too similar.

1739
01:44:33,840 --> 01:44:35,120
They hate each other.

1740
01:44:36,960 --> 01:44:39,719
Proud, nationalistic, until...

1741
01:44:40,320 --> 01:44:43,600
Marcius is thrown out of his native Rome
because of his pride

1742
01:44:43,719 --> 01:44:48,200
and he makes his way to the
enemy camp, where Tullus is waiting...

1743
01:44:49,040 --> 01:44:50,120
..and listening.

1744
01:44:56,719 --> 01:44:58,639
O Marcius...

1745
01:45:00,639 --> 01:45:02,360
Marcius!

1746
01:45:04,120 --> 01:45:07,160
Each word thou hast spoke
hath weeded from my heart

1747
01:45:07,280 --> 01:45:10,920
A root of ancient envy.

1748
01:45:11,880 --> 01:45:15,600
If Jupiter should from yond cloud
speak divine things,

1749
01:45:15,719 --> 01:45:17,600
And say 'Tis true,'
I'ld not believe them...

1750
01:45:19,440 --> 01:45:23,400
..more than thee, all noble Marcius.

1751
01:45:23,520 --> 01:45:27,280
Let me twine
Mine arms about that body, where against

1752
01:45:27,400 --> 01:45:30,400
My grained ash an hundred times hath broke

1753
01:45:30,520 --> 01:45:34,360
And scarr'd the moon with splinters:
here I clip

1754
01:45:34,480 --> 01:45:37,280
The anvil of my sword, and do contest

1755
01:45:37,400 --> 01:45:41,520
As hotly and as nobly with thy love
As ever in ambitious strength I did

1756
01:45:41,639 --> 01:45:44,080
Contend against thy valour.

1757
01:45:46,480 --> 01:45:51,280
Know thou first, I loved the maid
I married; never man

1758
01:45:51,400 --> 01:45:54,480
Sigh'd truer breath;
but that I see thee here,

1759
01:45:54,600 --> 01:45:56,960
Thou noble thing!

1760
01:45:57,880 --> 01:46:00,160
More dances my rapt heart

1761
01:46:00,800 --> 01:46:05,880
Than when I first my wedded mistress saw
Bestride my threshold.

1762
01:46:06,000 --> 01:46:09,760
Why, thou Mars!

1763
01:46:12,800 --> 01:46:16,360
I tell thee,
We have a power on foot; and I had purpose

1764
01:46:16,480 --> 01:46:18,760
Once more to hew
thy target from thy brawn,

1765
01:46:18,880 --> 01:46:22,160
Or lose mine arm for't:
thou hast beat me out

1766
01:46:22,280 --> 01:46:27,559
Twelve...several times,
and I have nightly since

1767
01:46:27,680 --> 01:46:30,280
Dreamt of encounters
'twixt thyself and me;

1768
01:46:30,400 --> 01:46:33,800
We have been down together
in my sleep,

1769
01:46:33,920 --> 01:46:36,920
Unbuckling helms,
fisting each other's throat,

1770
01:46:37,040 --> 01:46:40,840
And waked half dead with nothing.

1771
01:46:40,960 --> 01:46:43,240
Had we no quarrel else to Rome, but that

1772
01:46:43,360 --> 01:46:47,320
Thou art thence banish'd,
we should muster all

1773
01:46:47,440 --> 01:46:52,800
From twelve to seventy, and pouring war
Into the bowels of ungrateful Rome,

1774
01:46:52,920 --> 01:46:56,360
Like a bold flood o'er-bear.
O, come, go in,

1775
01:46:56,480 --> 01:46:58,480
Let me commend thee first
to those that shall

1776
01:46:58,600 --> 01:47:01,320
Say yea to thy desires.

1777
01:47:01,440 --> 01:47:03,160
A thousand welcomes!

1778
01:47:05,120 --> 01:47:07,160
And more a friend than e'er an enemy;

1779
01:47:07,280 --> 01:47:09,760
Yet Martius, that was much.

1780
01:47:10,600 --> 01:47:12,480
Your hand.

1781
01:47:17,840 --> 01:47:20,559
Most welcome!

1782
01:47:24,920 --> 01:47:27,120
And if there's two studs
are not slipping off into the wings

1783
01:47:27,240 --> 01:47:28,880
to have a bit of how's-your-father...

1784
01:47:29,000 --> 01:47:30,120
[LAUGHTER]

1785
01:47:30,240 --> 01:47:31,960
[APPLAUSE]

1786
01:47:37,520 --> 01:47:39,760
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Titus Andronicus.
― Titus Andronicus.

1787
01:47:41,200 --> 01:47:44,639
Well, you know, it's not done very often.
Have you ever seen it?

1788
01:47:45,440 --> 01:47:49,880
Yeah. Well, whenever it's done,
the critics always get very excited.

1789
01:47:50,000 --> 01:47:53,320
"Oh, oh, this director!
Oh, oh, the actors!

1790
01:47:53,440 --> 01:47:55,200
"Oh, they're marvellous!"

1791
01:47:55,320 --> 01:47:58,360
"They've managed to turn this rubbish play
into something really quite..."

1792
01:48:01,000 --> 01:48:04,600
It's not a rubbish play. It's not
a rubbish movie. Did you see the film?

1793
01:48:05,120 --> 01:48:08,480
Oh, with Anthony Hopkins.
If you think he's frightening

1794
01:48:08,600 --> 01:48:10,920
as Hannibal Lecter,
you wait till you see him as...

1795
01:48:11,639 --> 01:48:15,960
Titus Andronicus.
Yeah. OK. OK. Another play?

1796
01:48:16,760 --> 01:48:18,719
Twelfth Night.
That's my favourite.

1797
01:48:19,320 --> 01:48:20,920
Can you have a favourite?

1798
01:48:21,040 --> 01:48:24,440
Well...yes. It was the first one...
first one I saw.

1799
01:48:24,559 --> 01:48:26,040
First one...

1800
01:48:26,960 --> 01:48:29,400
..that I was in at school.
We did the letter scene.

1801
01:48:29,520 --> 01:48:32,559
And I played Malvolio.

1802
01:48:32,680 --> 01:48:36,760
I was 13 years old. And this copy
of the play has got the famous quote.

1803
01:48:36,880 --> 01:48:38,639
"Some are born great.

1804
01:48:38,760 --> 01:48:40,480
"Some achieve greatness..."

1805
01:48:41,120 --> 01:48:43,760
And I suppose with a reference
to modern politics,

1806
01:48:43,880 --> 01:48:46,240
"Some have greatness thrust upon them."

1807
01:48:49,920 --> 01:48:52,280
― OK, another play?
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Romeo and Juliet.

1808
01:48:52,400 --> 01:48:53,400
Thank you.

1809
01:48:58,400 --> 01:49:01,040
Romeo and Juliet. Well, he was young.

1810
01:49:02,639 --> 01:49:06,480
Young love. Young verse.
Easy to understand.

1811
01:49:06,600 --> 01:49:10,160
And listen, you'll hear...the text

1812
01:49:10,280 --> 01:49:13,160
is full of light and shade,
light and dark,

1813
01:49:13,280 --> 01:49:16,240
sunlight, daylight, moonlight, starlight,

1814
01:49:16,360 --> 01:49:19,040
lamplight. Colours too. White and black.

1815
01:49:19,800 --> 01:49:22,480
The white of new snow.

1816
01:49:23,400 --> 01:49:25,520
On a raven's back.

1817
01:49:27,800 --> 01:49:29,400
Green of the moon.

1818
01:49:30,240 --> 01:49:32,480
The red of lips and cheeks

1819
01:49:32,600 --> 01:49:34,000
and blood.

1820
01:49:37,400 --> 01:49:38,520
Soft!

1821
01:49:40,600 --> 01:49:43,639
What light through yonder window breaks?

1822
01:49:45,080 --> 01:49:49,840
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

1823
01:49:49,960 --> 01:49:54,120
Arise, fair sun,
and kill the envious moon,

1824
01:49:54,240 --> 01:49:56,280
Who is already sick and pale with grief,

1825
01:49:56,400 --> 01:49:59,520
That thou her maid
art far more fair than she:

1826
01:49:59,639 --> 01:50:02,120
Be not her maid, since she is envious;

1827
01:50:02,240 --> 01:50:04,600
Her vestal livery is but sick and green

1828
01:50:05,360 --> 01:50:08,120
And none but fools do wear it;
cast it off.

1829
01:50:09,840 --> 01:50:14,040
It is my lady, O, it is my love!

1830
01:50:14,160 --> 01:50:15,639
O, that she knew she were!

1831
01:50:17,520 --> 01:50:21,600
See, how she leans her cheek
upon her hand!

1832
01:50:21,719 --> 01:50:24,559
Ooh, that I were a glove upon that hand,

1833
01:50:24,680 --> 01:50:27,480
That I might touch that cheek!

1834
01:50:27,600 --> 01:50:29,080
She speaks.

1835
01:50:29,960 --> 01:50:32,559
O, speak again, bright angel!

1836
01:50:34,719 --> 01:50:38,400
(GIRLISHLY) O Romeo, Romeo!

1837
01:50:38,520 --> 01:50:40,280
[LAUGHTER]

1838
01:50:44,760 --> 01:50:46,719
Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

1839
01:50:48,360 --> 01:50:51,719
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.

1840
01:50:53,160 --> 01:50:55,719
Or, if thou wilt not,
be but sworn my love,

1841
01:50:55,840 --> 01:50:58,280
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

1842
01:51:00,240 --> 01:51:02,559
'Tis but thy name which is my enemy;

1843
01:51:02,680 --> 01:51:05,280
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

1844
01:51:06,040 --> 01:51:07,360
What is Montague?

1845
01:51:08,680 --> 01:51:12,719
It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor...

1846
01:51:13,960 --> 01:51:16,320
..any other part
Belonging to a man.

1847
01:51:16,440 --> 01:51:18,400
O, be some other name!

1848
01:51:18,520 --> 01:51:19,680
What's in a name?

1849
01:51:20,760 --> 01:51:25,800
That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

1850
01:51:25,920 --> 01:51:29,160
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,

1851
01:51:29,280 --> 01:51:32,160
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

1852
01:51:32,280 --> 01:51:34,080
Romeo, doff thy name,

1853
01:51:34,200 --> 01:51:38,840
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

1854
01:51:38,960 --> 01:51:41,600
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,

1855
01:51:41,719 --> 01:51:45,480
Towards Phoebus' lodging: such a wagoner

1856
01:51:45,600 --> 01:51:51,000
As Phaethon would whip you to the west,
And bring in cloudy night immediately.

1857
01:51:51,120 --> 01:51:54,360
Spread thy close curtain,
love-performing night...

1858
01:51:55,120 --> 01:51:59,520
..that runaway's eyes may wink and Romeo

1859
01:51:59,639 --> 01:52:03,080
Leap to these arms,
untalk'd of and unseen.

1860
01:52:03,200 --> 01:52:07,600
Come, night; come, Romeo.

1861
01:52:09,200 --> 01:52:12,000
Come, thou day in night;

1862
01:52:12,120 --> 01:52:19,840
For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night
Whiter than new snow on a raven's back.

1863
01:52:19,960 --> 01:52:25,280
Come, gentle night,
come, loving, black-brow'd night,

1864
01:52:25,400 --> 01:52:27,840
Give me my Romeo...

1865
01:52:30,639 --> 01:52:36,320
..and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars.

1866
01:52:38,559 --> 01:52:42,200
And he will make the face of heaven
so fine

1867
01:52:42,320 --> 01:52:47,320
That all the world
will be in love with night...

1868
01:52:48,639 --> 01:52:52,920
..and pay no worship
to the garish sun.

1869
01:52:55,200 --> 01:52:58,280
Of course, there were no girls allowed
in Shakespeare's original production.

1870
01:52:58,400 --> 01:53:01,280
I don't know what sort of lad it was
that was first entrusted

1871
01:53:01,400 --> 01:53:02,800
with playing Juliet,

1872
01:53:02,920 --> 01:53:06,000
then Rosalind and Imogen
and Viola and Mistress Quickly and...

1873
01:53:07,400 --> 01:53:10,680
..Cleopatra. A breed long gone.

1874
01:53:10,800 --> 01:53:12,080
Thank you.

1875
01:53:12,200 --> 01:53:15,240
[APPLAUSE]

1876
01:53:19,719 --> 01:53:22,960
― AUDIENCE MEMBER: Merchant of Venice.
― Merchant of Venice.

1877
01:53:23,080 --> 01:53:26,639
Well, that's a part
I still want to play. What's his name?

1878
01:53:27,800 --> 01:53:29,880
― Antonio.
― Shylock.

1879
01:53:30,000 --> 01:53:34,760
No, Shylock is the moneylender.
Antonio is the merchant.

1880
01:53:34,880 --> 01:53:36,240
And he's gay.

1881
01:53:36,960 --> 01:53:40,559
And the odd thing is, there's another
gay Antonio in Shakespeare.

1882
01:53:40,680 --> 01:53:43,400
Can you think where
he's in love with Sebastian?

1883
01:53:43,520 --> 01:53:45,160
― Twelfth Night.
― Twelfth Night, yeah.

1884
01:53:45,280 --> 01:53:47,080
"For I do love thee so."

1885
01:53:47,200 --> 01:53:49,760
Do you suppose Shakespeare
had a mate called Antonio?

1886
01:53:51,040 --> 01:53:53,840
♪ Oh, oh, Antonio!

1887
01:53:54,559 --> 01:53:55,880
♪ He's gone away

1888
01:53:56,000 --> 01:53:58,719
♪ Left me on my ownio. ♪

1889
01:54:00,920 --> 01:54:02,880
Antonio's got the first line of the play.

1890
01:54:03,000 --> 01:54:07,280
"In sooth, I know not why I am so sad."

1891
01:54:07,400 --> 01:54:09,320
Well, we soon find out, don't we?

1892
01:54:11,000 --> 01:54:15,400
Well, his boyfriend Bassanio's announced
he wants to get married to Portia,

1893
01:54:15,520 --> 01:54:18,080
and he's expecting
poor old Antonio to pay for the wedding.

1894
01:54:18,840 --> 01:54:21,240
The cheek of you young lads!

1895
01:54:21,960 --> 01:54:24,440
All right, Merchant of Venice.
Thank you. Next one.

1896
01:54:24,559 --> 01:54:26,960
― Antony and Cleopatra.
― Antony and Cleopatra.

1897
01:54:27,080 --> 01:54:28,400
We've had that one. Yeah.

1898
01:54:28,520 --> 01:54:30,680
― Taming of the Shrew.
― Taming of the Shrew?

1899
01:54:30,800 --> 01:54:33,240
Yeah, that was the first play
I saw at Stratford.

1900
01:54:33,360 --> 01:54:36,360
Keith Michell was Petruchio.

1901
01:54:37,000 --> 01:54:38,000
And...

1902
01:54:38,120 --> 01:54:39,880
Oh, the set for the show!

1903
01:54:40,000 --> 01:54:41,000
I've ever seen anything like it.

1904
01:54:41,120 --> 01:54:44,920
The stage at Stratford
was covered in...stuff.

1905
01:54:45,040 --> 01:54:48,680
And at the end, when the curtain fell,
as curtains used to do in those days,

1906
01:54:48,800 --> 01:54:50,880
what happened was
they just came very slowly down

1907
01:54:51,000 --> 01:54:52,960
and before it reached the bottom,

1908
01:54:53,080 --> 01:54:58,120
you could see the set started to move away
silently from the audience

1909
01:54:58,240 --> 01:55:01,000
till it vanished in the dark.

1910
01:55:02,559 --> 01:55:04,280
It was like being back at Peter Pan.

1911
01:55:05,600 --> 01:55:07,600
Taming of the Shrew. Yes. Another one?

1912
01:55:07,719 --> 01:55:11,360
― (AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT)
― King John, did I hear? Well...

1913
01:55:12,160 --> 01:55:15,760
I've been in King John.
I took over from Dickie Pasco.

1914
01:55:15,880 --> 01:55:18,080
He didn't want to transfer from Stratford.

1915
01:55:18,200 --> 01:55:21,880
So I got to play in London
the bastard with that wonderful speech...

1916
01:55:23,280 --> 01:55:25,440
..about England. Yep. Next one?

1917
01:55:25,559 --> 01:55:27,160
― Julius Caesar.
― Julius Caesar.

1918
01:55:27,280 --> 01:55:31,240
Got that one. Here we are. Well,
not just Julius Caesar ― it's the lot.

1919
01:55:32,440 --> 01:55:36,680
Oxford University Press Complete
Works of William Shakespeare. My copy.

1920
01:55:39,040 --> 01:55:45,480
"Ian. With every good wish from
Granny and Grandpa. Christmas 1952."

1921
01:55:45,600 --> 01:55:46,840
AUDIENCE: Awww!

1922
01:55:47,680 --> 01:55:52,840
You know when they locked up
Nelson Mandela? Was it for 27 years?

1923
01:55:53,880 --> 01:55:58,960
On Robben Island, just across
the strait from Cape Town in South Africa.

1924
01:55:59,080 --> 01:56:03,800
They didn't allow them any books
unless they were holy books.

1925
01:56:04,880 --> 01:56:06,600
And some wit had the idea

1926
01:56:06,719 --> 01:56:10,400
of disguising the Oxford University Press
Complete Works of William Shakespeare

1927
01:56:10,520 --> 01:56:11,719
as a Bible.

1928
01:56:12,880 --> 01:56:16,080
And they successfully smuggled it
onto Robben Island

1929
01:56:16,200 --> 01:56:19,480
and it went around from cell to cell
and each inmate signed it.

1930
01:56:19,600 --> 01:56:23,120
And against the signature
of Nelson Mandela,

1931
01:56:23,240 --> 01:56:24,760
he'd underlined...

1932
01:56:25,880 --> 01:56:28,040
..a couplet from Julius Caesar ―

1933
01:56:28,160 --> 01:56:31,719
"Cowards die many times
before their death.

1934
01:56:32,320 --> 01:56:37,880
"The valiant
never taste of death but once."

1935
01:56:38,800 --> 01:56:41,680
The Robben Island Bible.

1936
01:56:45,480 --> 01:56:47,480
OK, next one?

1937
01:56:47,600 --> 01:56:49,520
― Merry Wives.
― Merry Wives of Windsor.

1938
01:56:50,240 --> 01:56:51,559
Well...

1939
01:56:52,840 --> 01:56:55,680
Shakespeare's full of quotations,
and the quote from this one is...

1940
01:56:56,840 --> 01:56:59,840
"The world is my oyster".
It comes from this play.

1941
01:56:59,960 --> 01:57:02,600
And it's an unusual play,
because it's about ordinary people,

1942
01:57:02,719 --> 01:57:04,719
and Shakespeare is normally writing about

1943
01:57:04,840 --> 01:57:07,360
the nobs, isn't he,
kings and queens and heirs to the throne.

1944
01:57:07,480 --> 01:57:10,040
Here, it's perfectly ordinary people
going about their merry way

1945
01:57:10,160 --> 01:57:12,480
in perfectly ordinary Windsor.

1946
01:57:13,040 --> 01:57:14,320
[LAUGHTER]

1947
01:57:16,840 --> 01:57:18,680
― Another play?
― (AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT)

1948
01:57:18,800 --> 01:57:20,639
All right, let's do the Henrys.

1949
01:57:21,280 --> 01:57:24,960
Henry the... (MUTTERS UNDER BREATH)

1950
01:57:27,840 --> 01:57:29,639
Henry... Oh, my...

1951
01:57:32,800 --> 01:57:35,920
All right. chronological order Henry...

1952
01:57:36,880 --> 01:57:38,680
― IV, part...?
― AUDIENCE: 1.

1953
01:57:38,800 --> 01:57:40,760
― Henry IV, part...
― 2.

1954
01:57:40,880 --> 01:57:41,960
Well done.

1955
01:57:44,120 --> 01:57:46,719
There's the fat knight, Falstaff.

1956
01:57:46,840 --> 01:57:49,639
I'm not going to play Falstaff.
It's not the padding.

1957
01:57:49,760 --> 01:57:52,480
It's just I've seen
too many wonderful Falstaffs,

1958
01:57:52,600 --> 01:57:57,639
most recently at the Globe Theatre
here in London ― Roger Allam.

1959
01:57:58,200 --> 01:57:59,360
Unbeatable.

1960
01:58:00,080 --> 01:58:01,160
So...

1961
01:58:01,760 --> 01:58:04,240
And then what's the next Henry
by Shakespeare? Henry...?

1962
01:58:04,360 --> 01:58:05,639
― V.
― V.

1963
01:58:05,760 --> 01:58:07,600
There's Kenneth Branagh.

1964
01:58:07,719 --> 01:58:09,280
He gets everywhere.

1965
01:58:13,559 --> 01:58:17,360
When I heard that he was going
to make a film of Henry V,

1966
01:58:17,480 --> 01:58:19,040
I thought...cheeky!

1967
01:58:19,160 --> 01:58:22,440
Well, because actors of my generation,

1968
01:58:22,559 --> 01:58:26,160
Laurence Olivier made his movie ―
we didn't need another one.

1969
01:58:26,280 --> 01:58:28,840
Well, I was wrong.
We did. It was wonderful.

1970
01:58:28,960 --> 01:58:32,080
And if it hadn't been, I doubt
if I would have had the chutzpah

1971
01:58:32,200 --> 01:58:36,040
to challenge Sir Laurence's memory
with my own film.

1972
01:58:37,120 --> 01:58:39,160
Of course these are
the best parts in Shakespeare.

1973
01:58:40,080 --> 01:58:41,280
The kings.

1974
01:58:41,400 --> 01:58:44,600
There's usually a throne,
and you get to sit on it.

1975
01:58:46,440 --> 01:58:47,440
And then of course all evening long,

1976
01:58:47,559 --> 01:58:50,320
messengers come along with bits of paper

1977
01:58:50,440 --> 01:58:52,120
with your part written down on them.

1978
01:58:52,240 --> 01:58:54,320
[LAUGHTER]

1979
01:58:56,120 --> 01:58:58,880
Well, I mean, that's all right
until something goes wrong.

1980
01:58:59,000 --> 01:59:02,360
There was an actor at Stratford
and he was playing Henry V.

1981
01:59:03,960 --> 01:59:08,320
And he reached that wonderful scene at
the end of the battle when the stage is...

1982
01:59:08,880 --> 01:59:11,440
..strewn with the dead French soldiers,

1983
01:59:11,559 --> 01:59:15,440
and then a messenger brings in the list
of the names of all the dead French,

1984
01:59:15,559 --> 01:59:17,240
which the king very movingly reads out.

1985
01:59:18,440 --> 01:59:22,320
Unfortunately on this occasion, the king
was presented with a blank sheet of paper.

1986
01:59:22,440 --> 01:59:27,440
This note doth tell me of 10,000 French
which in the field lie slain.

1987
01:59:27,559 --> 01:59:31,719
Of nobles in that number
there lie dead 126.

1988
01:59:31,840 --> 01:59:36,840
These the names of those
their nobles that lie dead.

1989
01:59:38,480 --> 01:59:40,200
[LAUGHTER]

1990
01:59:47,760 --> 01:59:49,040
(UNDER HIS BREATH) Well, fuck you!

1991
01:59:49,160 --> 01:59:50,680
[LAUGHTER]

1992
01:59:57,440 --> 01:59:59,800
Charles Beaujolais.

1993
02:00:05,320 --> 02:00:06,680
And Saint-Émilion.

1994
02:00:10,880 --> 02:00:12,480
Pouilly-Fuissé.

1995
02:00:16,040 --> 02:00:19,720
Nuits-Saint-Georges...

1996
02:00:23,160 --> 02:00:24,520
Champagne.

1997
02:00:27,280 --> 02:00:28,800
Veuve Clicquot.

1998
02:00:31,800 --> 02:00:33,480
Moët...and Chandon.

1999
02:00:40,120 --> 02:00:41,520
Dom Perignon.

2000
02:00:42,440 --> 02:00:45,600
And Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

2001
02:00:52,120 --> 02:00:53,200
So what are these three Henrys?

2002
02:00:53,320 --> 02:00:54,320
― Henry...?
― VI.

2003
02:00:54,440 --> 02:00:55,440
― Part?
― 1.

2004
02:00:55,560 --> 02:00:57,120
― Henry VI. Part...?
― 2.

2005
02:00:57,240 --> 02:00:58,800
― Henry VI. Part...?
― 3.

2006
02:00:58,920 --> 02:01:02,320
And at Cambridge, my best mate Corin,
Vanessa Redgrave's younger brother,

2007
02:01:02,440 --> 02:01:04,440
he adapted the three plays into two

2008
02:01:04,560 --> 02:01:06,320
and he directed them,
asked me to play King Henry,

2009
02:01:06,440 --> 02:01:07,920
and that's how I got to play

2010
02:01:08,040 --> 02:01:10,480
two-thirds of Henry VI.

2011
02:01:11,840 --> 02:01:15,680
And that leaves just one other Henry
by Shakespeare ― Henry...?

2012
02:01:15,800 --> 02:01:17,160
― VIII.
― VIII.

2013
02:01:17,280 --> 02:01:20,480
And what other title
did Shakespeare give it, do you know?

2014
02:01:23,080 --> 02:01:26,760
All Is True. Which is the title of...

2015
02:01:27,520 --> 02:01:30,520
..a newish film
about Shakespeare in retirement.

2016
02:01:30,640 --> 02:01:32,560
It was produced by Kenneth Branagh.

2017
02:01:32,680 --> 02:01:34,200
[LAUGHTER]

2018
02:01:36,240 --> 02:01:39,160
And directed by Kenneth Branagh.

2019
02:01:39,280 --> 02:01:40,880
And of course, it stars...

2020
02:01:45,640 --> 02:01:47,120
..Judi Dench.

2021
02:01:50,560 --> 02:01:52,000
And Kenneth Branagh.

2022
02:01:53,440 --> 02:01:57,200
And I'm in it somewhere.
And, oh, Ken had the wonderful idea...

2023
02:01:58,040 --> 02:02:00,640
He illuminated
all the interior scenes of the film

2024
02:02:00,760 --> 02:02:03,440
not with electric light,
but with candlelight.

2025
02:02:04,080 --> 02:02:07,320
Ah! The effect was wonderful.

2026
02:02:07,440 --> 02:02:10,120
Great words too by Ben Elton.

2027
02:02:10,240 --> 02:02:11,960
All Is True.

2028
02:02:12,080 --> 02:02:14,320
― Come on, you're doing well. Yes?
― Richard II.

2029
02:02:14,440 --> 02:02:18,360
Richard II.
Well, when we were doing Edward II,

2030
02:02:18,480 --> 02:02:19,840
I was doing Richard II

2031
02:02:19,960 --> 02:02:21,520
on alternate nights in London.

2032
02:02:21,640 --> 02:02:26,200
But before that, on the road.
Big theatres, 2,000-3,000... No.

2033
02:02:27,480 --> 02:02:31,400
(SIGHS) Too big, really.
It's so difficult trying to make sure

2034
02:02:31,520 --> 02:02:36,120
that everybody in a large, large
theatre has a shared experience,

2035
02:02:36,240 --> 02:02:38,480
particularly people way up there,

2036
02:02:38,600 --> 02:02:42,120
who of course haven't paid anywhere near
as much as people down...

2037
02:02:42,240 --> 02:02:43,800
[LAUGHTER]

2038
02:02:46,480 --> 02:02:47,880
But I was a young actor,

2039
02:02:48,000 --> 02:02:52,600
trying to keep in touch,
gesticulating, shouting,

2040
02:02:52,720 --> 02:02:55,880
running alongside the character,
trying to explain to you.

2041
02:02:56,000 --> 02:02:58,800
People down here
thought I'd gone bananas.

2042
02:02:58,920 --> 02:03:02,600
And the performance
was full of effects, like...

2043
02:03:02,720 --> 02:03:07,160
(BELLOWING) We are...amazed!

2044
02:03:08,200 --> 02:03:09,320
(MOUTHS)

2045
02:03:15,560 --> 02:03:16,920
OK, next one?

2046
02:03:17,040 --> 02:03:21,320
Comedy of Errors? That's the shortest
play he wrote. The only farce.

2047
02:03:22,080 --> 02:03:23,600
Laughter machine.

2048
02:03:23,720 --> 02:03:25,760
Mistaken identities.

2049
02:03:25,880 --> 02:03:27,120
Twins.

2050
02:03:28,680 --> 02:03:31,280
And the best version I saw
was at Stratford.

2051
02:03:32,600 --> 02:03:34,720
As a musical.
And it was put together by Trevor Nunn.

2052
02:03:34,840 --> 02:03:36,440
The first musical he'd done.

2053
02:03:36,560 --> 02:03:39,320
If he hadn't done that,
there may have been no Cats.

2054
02:03:40,120 --> 02:03:41,320
No Les Mis.

2055
02:03:41,440 --> 02:03:44,480
Judi was in it, and so was
her late husband Mike Williams.

2056
02:03:44,600 --> 02:03:47,640
I was in the company but not in the play.
So when I'd finished my show,

2057
02:03:47,760 --> 02:03:50,960
I'd go and stand at the back
and hear them sing and dance,

2058
02:03:51,080 --> 02:03:55,200
And you can still
hear them sing and watch them dance.

2059
02:03:55,320 --> 02:03:56,520
It's all on video.

2060
02:03:57,240 --> 02:04:01,160
Comedy of Errors,
Royal Shakespeare Company, 1976.

2061
02:04:02,440 --> 02:04:03,720
Give yourselves a treat.

2062
02:04:04,840 --> 02:04:07,280
OK. Good. Now?

2063
02:04:07,400 --> 02:04:08,920
(AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT)

2064
02:04:09,760 --> 02:04:11,640
― Say it again.
― Love's Labour's Lost.

2065
02:04:11,760 --> 02:04:13,200
Love's Labour's Lost. Yep.

2066
02:04:13,320 --> 02:04:16,560
Well, another play that I did at Cambridge
as a musical.

2067
02:04:17,800 --> 02:04:20,120
Clive Swift wrote the music.
He played the piano.

2068
02:04:20,240 --> 02:04:22,040
Derek sang Berowne.

2069
02:04:24,960 --> 02:04:28,640
I was the old schoolmaster, and shared...

2070
02:04:30,560 --> 02:04:34,560
..a song about the greatest, longest word
in the play ― one of those nonsense words.

2071
02:04:34,680 --> 02:04:36,680
Maybe the longest word
in the English language, I don't know.

2072
02:04:37,640 --> 02:04:38,920
And it went something like...

2073
02:04:39,040 --> 02:04:41,880
♪ All over the world, wherever you go

2074
02:04:42,000 --> 02:04:45,840
♪ From the pygmy in the south
to the Eskimo

2075
02:04:45,960 --> 02:04:49,040
♪ People should be governed,
don't you know

2076
02:04:49,160 --> 02:04:50,280
♪ By

2077
02:04:50,400 --> 02:04:55,360
♪ Honorificabilitudinitatibo

2078
02:04:55,960 --> 02:04:58,440
♪ And whenever you go on the land or sea

2079
02:04:58,560 --> 02:05:01,080
♪ From the Elephant and Castle
to the Ritz for tea

2080
02:05:01,200 --> 02:05:04,600
♪ Upper-crusted people will agree on

2081
02:05:06,040 --> 02:05:09,680
♪ Honorificabilitudinitatibee

2082
02:05:09,800 --> 02:05:11,680
♪ You may feel faintly nervous

2083
02:05:11,800 --> 02:05:14,040
♪ With only initatibus

2084
02:05:14,160 --> 02:05:16,560
♪ But just add on an honorif

2085
02:05:16,680 --> 02:05:19,600
♪ And we think you will agree with us that

2086
02:05:19,720 --> 02:05:21,800
♪ If a card may be rather hard

2087
02:05:21,920 --> 02:05:24,160
♪ When if you're suffering from the blues

2088
02:05:24,280 --> 02:05:27,200
♪ But add a cardilif to your honorif

2089
02:05:27,320 --> 02:05:31,040
♪ And after brooding, pop in udin

2090
02:05:31,160 --> 02:05:32,880
♪ Then go the whole hog

2091
02:05:33,000 --> 02:05:36,440
♪ Singing with us

2092
02:05:36,560 --> 02:05:42,680
♪ Honorificabilitudinitatibus! ♪

2093
02:05:42,800 --> 02:05:43,800
Altogether now!

2094
02:05:43,920 --> 02:05:46,360
♪ Honorificabilitudinitatibus! ♪

2095
02:05:47,200 --> 02:05:49,400
[APPLAUSE]

2096
02:05:52,440 --> 02:05:54,000
Thank you.

2097
02:05:54,120 --> 02:05:56,240
― Yes, come on.
― Two Gentlemen of Verona.

2098
02:05:56,360 --> 02:05:57,920
Two Gentlemen of Verona.

2099
02:05:58,040 --> 02:06:01,320
That's the... Ah, where are we?

2100
02:06:01,880 --> 02:06:04,560
It's the one play of Shakespeare
I've never seen. Have you seen it?

2101
02:06:05,600 --> 02:06:08,800
Yes. Where have you seen it,
can you remember?

2102
02:06:08,920 --> 02:06:10,720
― Drama school.
― Drama school. Yeah.

2103
02:06:11,440 --> 02:06:13,920
Well, I want to see it,
because there's a dog in it.

2104
02:06:15,640 --> 02:06:17,040
Crab.

2105
02:06:17,160 --> 02:06:18,760
It behaves rather badly.

2106
02:06:18,880 --> 02:06:20,640
What's the other play
of Shakespeare's with a dog in it?

2107
02:06:20,760 --> 02:06:23,480
Don't say Macbeth ― "Out, out, damn Spot!"

2108
02:06:23,600 --> 02:06:25,000
[LAUGHTER]

2109
02:06:29,720 --> 02:06:32,120
"This lanthorn
doth the horned moon present."

2110
02:06:32,960 --> 02:06:34,200
Midsummer Night's Dream.

2111
02:06:34,320 --> 02:06:38,240
Yes, this dog, my dog ―
it's usually a toy dog.

2112
02:06:38,360 --> 02:06:41,240
But in Two Gents, it's the real thing ―
woof, woof.

2113
02:06:41,360 --> 02:06:42,520
I can't wait.

2114
02:06:43,640 --> 02:06:44,880
OK, good.

2115
02:06:45,000 --> 02:06:48,320
― Timon of Athens.
― Timon of Athens.

2116
02:06:52,160 --> 02:06:54,400
I can never forget
and I will never forgive myself.

2117
02:06:54,520 --> 02:06:58,440
I didn't go and see Paul Scofield
play Timon of Athens.

2118
02:06:58,560 --> 02:07:01,880
Look, if you hear
there's an actor who you admire

2119
02:07:02,000 --> 02:07:05,280
going to be in a play
that you admire or don't admire or...

2120
02:07:06,080 --> 02:07:07,560
Go.

2121
02:07:07,680 --> 02:07:09,560
Because one day it'll be too late.

2122
02:07:11,080 --> 02:07:14,920
And I feel that
about other great performers.

2123
02:07:15,040 --> 02:07:16,640
When I was on tour in the United States,

2124
02:07:16,760 --> 02:07:18,720
some of the company
went down to Las Vegas.

2125
02:07:18,840 --> 02:07:22,680
I didn't go with them.
So I never saw Elvis on stage.

2126
02:07:24,120 --> 02:07:28,320
I didn't hear Sinatra singing
in the Royal Albert Hall here in London.

2127
02:07:29,040 --> 02:07:32,440
And when I was a lad,
I bought a ticket specially for a...

2128
02:07:33,160 --> 02:07:35,920
..very, very famous local comic
from Wigan.

2129
02:07:36,040 --> 02:07:39,120
He was a film star. He was
on the end of the pier at Blackpool ―

2130
02:07:39,240 --> 02:07:40,920
George Formby.

2131
02:07:42,040 --> 02:07:45,200
And it was a nice afternoon.
So I didn't bother going.

2132
02:07:47,080 --> 02:07:49,320
And I had a ticket
for the last performance

2133
02:07:49,440 --> 02:07:53,400
that Judy Garland was scheduled
to give here in London at the...

2134
02:07:54,240 --> 02:08:00,040
..Hippodrome, a Matcham theatre, and
I called up beforehand and they said no...

2135
02:08:00,800 --> 02:08:04,240
..Judy wasn't well enough
and she would not be singing that night.

2136
02:08:04,360 --> 02:08:07,360
And she never sang publicly again.

2137
02:08:10,280 --> 02:08:13,080
Which is partly why,
a couple of weeks ago in London,

2138
02:08:13,200 --> 02:08:14,840
I went to see Cher.

2139
02:08:14,960 --> 02:08:16,800
[LAUGHTER]

2140
02:08:25,480 --> 02:08:29,840
She's about my age, Cher,
but my God, you'd never know.

2141
02:08:29,960 --> 02:08:33,120
(CHUCKLES) She's looking great.

2142
02:08:33,240 --> 02:08:35,920
And I loved her line to the audience.
There she was,

2143
02:08:36,040 --> 02:08:37,800
looking a million dollars, and she said,

2144
02:08:37,920 --> 02:08:41,000
"So what's your granny doing tonight?"

2145
02:08:41,120 --> 02:08:42,720
[LAUGHTER]

2146
02:08:45,320 --> 02:08:48,280
OK. Come on,
we've only got three left. What are they?

2147
02:08:48,400 --> 02:08:50,080
(AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT)

2148
02:08:50,200 --> 02:08:52,520
Much Ado? Yes, About Nothing.

2149
02:08:52,640 --> 02:08:54,760
Oh, well, I've been in that twice,

2150
02:08:54,880 --> 02:08:58,280
but I never played Benedick,
and I'm too old now.

2151
02:08:58,400 --> 02:08:59,640
AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, you're not!

2152
02:09:05,120 --> 02:09:06,640
Oh, yes. I am.

2153
02:09:08,200 --> 02:09:11,840
But, you know, it's such an easy part,
Benedick.

2154
02:09:12,720 --> 02:09:16,520
But you never see a bad Benedick, do you?
It's like Romeo and Juliet.

2155
02:09:16,640 --> 02:09:19,320
Oh, lads, don't play Romeo.
No, you want to play Mercutio.

2156
02:09:19,440 --> 02:09:20,760
That's the part.

2157
02:09:21,480 --> 02:09:24,200
Yeah. Well, you never see
a bad Mercutio, do you?

2158
02:09:24,320 --> 02:09:26,000
And of course you're dead by the interval.

2159
02:09:26,120 --> 02:09:27,480
So you get to go home.

2160
02:09:31,480 --> 02:09:33,560
― What are these two plays?
― Pericles.

2161
02:09:33,680 --> 02:09:35,200
Pericles, yes.

2162
02:09:36,080 --> 02:09:41,120
Well, that's the last of the four late
plays. And they've all got the same plot.

2163
02:09:41,880 --> 02:09:44,320
It's all about reconciliation
between fathers and daughters.

2164
02:09:44,440 --> 02:09:48,000
So, Pericles, a great play
to take your daughter to.

2165
02:09:48,120 --> 02:09:50,120
A great play
to take your father to, really.

2166
02:09:50,240 --> 02:09:51,640
Happy ending.

2167
02:09:54,400 --> 02:09:56,400
And talking of endings,
what's this last play?

2168
02:09:56,520 --> 02:09:58,080
― Merchant of Venice.
― No.

2169
02:09:58,200 --> 02:10:00,000
(AUDIENCE SHOUTS OUT)

2170
02:10:00,120 --> 02:10:01,960
Troilus and Cressida.

2171
02:10:03,000 --> 02:10:04,200
And you know...

2172
02:10:06,720 --> 02:10:08,960
I have nothing to say
about Troilus and Cressida.

2173
02:10:09,080 --> 02:10:10,880
[LAUGHTER]

2174
02:10:16,120 --> 02:10:19,480
Well, congratulations.
I think you've scored a record there.

2175
02:10:20,960 --> 02:10:23,680
Well, there's the Tempest ― the last play.

2176
02:10:25,800 --> 02:10:26,920
Then there's this one.

2177
02:10:27,040 --> 02:10:29,920
After all that shouting in large theatres,

2178
02:10:30,040 --> 02:10:32,200
we came to do Macbeth in a small one.

2179
02:10:32,840 --> 02:10:34,160
The Other Place at Stratford.

2180
02:10:34,280 --> 02:10:36,880
120 people scattered around a magic circle

2181
02:10:37,000 --> 02:10:39,280
that John Napier had chalked
on the bare board.

2182
02:10:40,160 --> 02:10:43,240
Very cheap production. It cost £250.

2183
02:10:43,360 --> 02:10:47,320
All the costumes came from
second-hand shops. Judi wore a tea towel.

2184
02:10:48,200 --> 02:10:49,600
If you look closely at the video,

2185
02:10:49,720 --> 02:10:53,200
you can see on my tunic, it says

2186
02:10:53,320 --> 02:10:55,880
"Birmingham Fire Brigade."

2187
02:11:00,160 --> 02:11:03,680
At times, the play
seems to be almost happening just...

2188
02:11:03,800 --> 02:11:06,800
inside his head, which he opens up

2189
02:11:06,920 --> 02:11:11,600
for inspection and shows you
his fears and his conscience.

2190
02:11:12,840 --> 02:11:14,840
It's not a part to be shouted.

2191
02:11:16,800 --> 02:11:19,360
And doing it in The Other Place was the...

2192
02:11:19,480 --> 02:11:23,200
best preparation possible
for the closest audience of all,

2193
02:11:23,320 --> 02:11:25,200
which is the film camera.

2194
02:11:26,240 --> 02:11:28,520
At the outset, you know,
the Macbeths are the golden couple,

2195
02:11:28,640 --> 02:11:29,720
everybody adores them.

2196
02:11:29,840 --> 02:11:33,760
Single-handedly he saved his nation
from defeat on the battlefield.

2197
02:11:33,880 --> 02:11:36,760
He's coming back
and he meets the three weird sisters,

2198
02:11:36,880 --> 02:11:39,600
who give him
their supernatural solicitation,

2199
02:11:39,720 --> 02:11:42,880
and then in the arms
of his beloved wife...

2200
02:11:43,760 --> 02:11:47,160
..he begins to plot the death
of the good king, Duncan,

2201
02:11:47,280 --> 02:11:51,560
and at that moment, their marriage
begins to crack and splinter...

2202
02:11:52,200 --> 02:11:55,760
..till, by the end,
there is between them...nothing.

2203
02:12:00,680 --> 02:12:04,000
This supernatural soliciting
Cannot be ill...

2204
02:12:07,280 --> 02:12:08,800
..cannot be good.

2205
02:12:09,800 --> 02:12:14,240
If ill,
Why hath it given me earnest of success...

2206
02:12:15,280 --> 02:12:18,280
Commencing in a truth?
I am thane of Cawdor.

2207
02:12:21,240 --> 02:12:26,400
If good, why do I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair...

2208
02:12:28,440 --> 02:12:32,160
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?

2209
02:12:33,760 --> 02:12:36,800
Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings:

2210
02:12:36,920 --> 02:12:39,200
My thought, whose murder...

2211
02:12:45,360 --> 02:12:46,800
..yet is but fantastical,

2212
02:12:46,920 --> 02:12:49,320
Shakes so my single state of man
that function

2213
02:12:49,440 --> 02:12:51,600
Is smother'd in surmise...

2214
02:12:54,560 --> 02:12:57,520
..and nothing is
But what is not.

2215
02:13:01,720 --> 02:13:03,680
If it were done when 'tis done,
then 'twere well

2216
02:13:03,800 --> 02:13:05,520
It were done quickly.

2217
02:13:08,160 --> 02:13:09,400
If the assassination...

2218
02:13:12,560 --> 02:13:17,160
Could trammel up the consequence,
and catch

2219
02:13:17,280 --> 02:13:21,280
With his surcease success;
that but this blow

2220
02:13:21,400 --> 02:13:23,760
Might be the be-all and the end-all here,

2221
02:13:23,880 --> 02:13:27,520
But here,
upon this bank and shoal of time,

2222
02:13:29,200 --> 02:13:32,200
We'ld jump the life to come.
But in these cases

2223
02:13:32,320 --> 02:13:34,840
We still have judgment here;

2224
02:13:34,960 --> 02:13:37,880
that we but teach bloody instructions,

2225
02:13:38,000 --> 02:13:40,640
which, being taught, return

2226
02:13:40,760 --> 02:13:43,160
To plague the inventor.

2227
02:13:43,280 --> 02:13:45,080
He's here in double trust;

2228
02:13:45,200 --> 02:13:48,960
First, as I am his kinsman
and his subject,

2229
02:13:49,080 --> 02:13:53,320
Strong both against the deed;
then, as his host,

2230
02:13:53,440 --> 02:13:55,640
Who should against his murderer
shut the door,

2231
02:13:55,760 --> 02:13:57,040
Not bear the knife myself.

2232
02:13:58,360 --> 02:13:59,360
Besides...

2233
02:14:01,280 --> 02:14:02,280
..this Duncan

2234
02:14:02,400 --> 02:14:04,560
Hath borne his faculties so meek,
hath been

2235
02:14:04,680 --> 02:14:07,480
So clear in his great office,
that his virtues

2236
02:14:07,600 --> 02:14:11,920
Will plead like angels,
trumpet-tongued, against

2237
02:14:12,040 --> 02:14:15,360
The deep damnation of his taking-off;

2238
02:14:15,480 --> 02:14:19,480
And pity, like a naked new-born babe,

2239
02:14:19,600 --> 02:14:23,440
Striding the blast,
or heaven's cherubim, horsed

2240
02:14:23,560 --> 02:14:26,000
Upon the sightless couriers of the air,

2241
02:14:26,120 --> 02:14:29,000
Will blow the horrid deed in every eye,

2242
02:14:29,120 --> 02:14:34,600
That tears will drown the wind.

2243
02:14:36,000 --> 02:14:38,040
I have no spur

2244
02:14:38,160 --> 02:14:43,760
To prick the sides of my intent, but only
Vaulting ambition...

2245
02:14:44,920 --> 02:14:47,960
..which o'erleaps itself
and falls on the other.

2246
02:14:54,120 --> 02:14:56,080
Is this a dagger

2247
02:14:56,200 --> 02:15:01,080
which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand?

2248
02:15:01,200 --> 02:15:02,360
Come...

2249
02:15:05,240 --> 02:15:06,680
..let me clutch thee.

2250
02:15:08,720 --> 02:15:09,720
I have thee not...

2251
02:15:11,600 --> 02:15:12,680
..and yet I see thee still.

2252
02:15:12,800 --> 02:15:16,200
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight?

2253
02:15:16,320 --> 02:15:18,960
Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

2254
02:15:19,080 --> 02:15:21,920
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

2255
02:15:24,600 --> 02:15:30,400
I see thee still, in form as palpable
As this which now I draw.

2256
02:15:30,520 --> 02:15:34,600
Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps,

2257
02:15:34,720 --> 02:15:39,840
which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

2258
02:15:39,960 --> 02:15:44,600
And take this present horror
from the time, which now suits with it.

2259
02:15:44,720 --> 02:15:47,280
I go, and it is done.

2260
02:15:47,400 --> 02:15:49,160
(BELL TOLLS)

2261
02:15:49,280 --> 02:15:50,720
The bell invites me.

2262
02:15:52,240 --> 02:15:57,080
Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

2263
02:16:05,240 --> 02:16:07,080
We have scotch'd the snake...

2264
02:16:09,760 --> 02:16:11,120
..not kill'd it!

2265
02:16:14,720 --> 02:16:18,600
She'll close and be herself...

2266
02:16:21,120 --> 02:16:25,240
..whilst our poor malice
Remains in danger of her former tooth.

2267
02:16:25,360 --> 02:16:30,640
But let the frame of things disjoint,
and both the worlds suffer,

2268
02:16:30,760 --> 02:16:33,920
Ere we will eat our meal in fear...

2269
02:16:35,920 --> 02:16:39,480
..and sleep in the affliction
of these terrible dreams

2270
02:16:39,600 --> 02:16:42,480
That shake us nightly:
better be with the dead,

2271
02:16:42,600 --> 02:16:45,160
Whom we, to gain our peace,
have sent to peace,

2272
02:16:45,279 --> 02:16:50,760
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.

2273
02:16:50,880 --> 02:16:53,000
Duncan's in his grave;

2274
02:16:53,119 --> 02:16:58,799
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well.

2275
02:16:58,920 --> 02:17:00,480
Nor steel, nor poison,

2276
02:17:00,600 --> 02:17:06,360
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
Can touch him further.

2277
02:17:13,560 --> 02:17:16,160
I have almost forgot the taste of fears.

2278
02:17:19,439 --> 02:17:22,320
The time has been,
my senses would have cool'd

2279
02:17:22,439 --> 02:17:25,959
To hear a night-shriek;
and my fell of hair

2280
02:17:26,080 --> 02:17:32,639
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir
As life were in't:

2281
02:17:32,760 --> 02:17:37,959
I have supp'd full with horrors;

2282
02:17:38,080 --> 02:17:42,200
Direness, familiar
to my slaughterous thoughts

2283
02:17:42,320 --> 02:17:46,279
Cannot once start me.

2284
02:17:51,119 --> 02:17:53,200
Wherefore was that cry?

2285
02:17:54,920 --> 02:17:57,200
The queen, my lord, is dead.

2286
02:18:05,920 --> 02:18:11,119
She should have died...hereafter.

2287
02:18:12,799 --> 02:18:16,400
There would have been a time
for such a word.

2288
02:18:20,560 --> 02:18:22,000
To-morrow...

2289
02:18:24,880 --> 02:18:32,520
and to-morrow, and to-morrow...

2290
02:18:33,720 --> 02:18:37,360
Creeps in this petty pace

2291
02:18:37,480 --> 02:18:39,799
from day to day

2292
02:18:39,920 --> 02:18:43,119
To the last syllable of recorded time,

2293
02:18:43,240 --> 02:18:49,639
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.

2294
02:18:49,760 --> 02:18:52,240
Out, out...

2295
02:18:54,279 --> 02:18:56,720
..brief candle!

2296
02:19:01,160 --> 02:19:06,240
Life's but a walking shadow...

2297
02:19:09,480 --> 02:19:11,160
..a poor player...

2298
02:19:13,279 --> 02:19:17,320
..that struts and frets his hour
upon the stage

2299
02:19:17,439 --> 02:19:21,320
And then is heard no more: it is a tale

2300
02:19:21,439 --> 02:19:23,880
Told by an idiot,

2301
02:19:24,000 --> 02:19:26,959
full of sound and fury,

2302
02:19:27,080 --> 02:19:29,600
Signifying...

2303
02:19:29,720 --> 02:19:32,720
nothing.

2304
02:19:38,840 --> 02:19:41,320
Our revels now are ended.

2305
02:19:41,439 --> 02:19:44,360
These our actors,
As I foretold you...

2306
02:19:45,840 --> 02:19:51,240
..were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air.

2307
02:19:53,800 --> 02:19:57,600
And, like the baseless fabric
of this vision,

2308
02:19:57,720 --> 02:19:59,920
The cloud-capp'd towers...

2309
02:20:02,800 --> 02:20:04,279
..the gorgeous palaces,

2310
02:20:04,400 --> 02:20:08,800
The solemn temples,
the great globe itself,

2311
02:20:08,920 --> 02:20:12,360
Ye all which it inherit...

2312
02:20:16,960 --> 02:20:18,720
..shall dissolve.

2313
02:20:23,360 --> 02:20:25,800
And, like this insubstantial
pageant faded,

2314
02:20:25,920 --> 02:20:29,600
Leave not a rack behind.

2315
02:20:29,720 --> 02:20:31,760
We are such stuff...

2316
02:20:33,920 --> 02:20:37,240
..As dreams are made on.

2317
02:20:42,279 --> 02:20:47,080
And our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

2318
02:20:58,240 --> 02:21:00,840
[APPLAUSE]

2319
02:21:12,360 --> 02:21:15,480
[CHEERING]

2320
02:21:24,480 --> 02:21:27,320
[CHEERING CONTINUES]

2321
02:21:36,320 --> 02:21:37,960
Thank you.

2322
02:21:49,560 --> 02:21:51,960
How does he remember all those words?

2323
02:21:52,080 --> 02:21:54,400
[LAUGHTER]

2324
02:21:58,040 --> 02:22:01,480
It's astonishing,
but most plays were written

2325
02:22:01,600 --> 02:22:04,360
not by one person but by a group.

2326
02:22:05,480 --> 02:22:07,840
A team. How could that be?

2327
02:22:07,960 --> 02:22:12,480
Well, I used to think...
and then I did Coronation Street.

2328
02:22:12,600 --> 02:22:14,800
Ten episodes, and each episode was written

2329
02:22:14,920 --> 02:22:18,720
by a different screenplay writer,
and you could not tell. Well, I couldn't.

2330
02:22:19,800 --> 02:22:22,040
So it can be done.

2331
02:22:22,160 --> 02:22:26,920
And one of the plays
that Shakespeare contributed a speech to

2332
02:22:27,040 --> 02:22:31,640
was called Sir Thomas More. And the speech
is special, and not just for what it said.

2333
02:22:31,760 --> 02:22:33,160
But because...

2334
02:22:34,960 --> 02:22:36,960
..you can see it in his own handwriting.

2335
02:22:37,080 --> 02:22:40,680
Uniquely, of all his works, plays, poems,

2336
02:22:40,800 --> 02:22:44,640
the only speech that we have
in his actual manuscript...

2337
02:22:45,600 --> 02:22:47,600
..is this one from Sir Thomas More.

2338
02:22:47,720 --> 02:22:50,920
And you can see it in London
at the British Library.

2339
02:22:51,040 --> 02:22:53,960
It's on permanent display.

2340
02:22:54,880 --> 02:22:56,760
And Thomas More's a lucky play for me,

2341
02:22:56,880 --> 02:23:00,560
because it wasn't performed
during Shakespeare's lifetime.

2342
02:23:00,680 --> 02:23:02,360
I suppose with a Catholic martyr,

2343
02:23:02,480 --> 02:23:04,640
Sir Thomas, as the hero,

2344
02:23:04,760 --> 02:23:06,439
perhaps the Protestant authorities

2345
02:23:06,560 --> 02:23:08,560
wouldn't have quite approved.

2346
02:23:08,680 --> 02:23:11,920
And so it had to wait
till the 20th century, 1964,

2347
02:23:12,040 --> 02:23:16,960
for the first public performance.

2348
02:23:17,080 --> 02:23:20,400
This was in Nottingham
at the Playhouse, and...

2349
02:23:21,800 --> 02:23:24,600
..I was in the company
and they cast me as Sir Thomas More.

2350
02:23:24,720 --> 02:23:27,960
So you're looking perhaps at the
last actor who will ever be able to say

2351
02:23:28,080 --> 02:23:30,520
I created a part by William Shakespeare.

2352
02:23:30,640 --> 02:23:32,840
[APPLAUSE]

2353
02:23:34,680 --> 02:23:38,880
So the plot of the play
is taken from real life.

2354
02:23:39,000 --> 02:23:42,560
The Apprentice Boys of London
are out on the town,

2355
02:23:42,680 --> 02:23:44,880
shouting the odds. They're demonstrating
just around the corner

2356
02:23:45,000 --> 02:23:46,800
in what is now Trafalgar Square,

2357
02:23:46,920 --> 02:23:50,680
and they're complaining about
the immigrants in London.

2358
02:23:51,200 --> 02:23:53,880
Usual complaint about foreigners ―
they take our jobs.

2359
02:23:54,000 --> 02:23:56,320
They wear odd clothes, they eat odd food.

2360
02:23:56,439 --> 02:23:57,920
Better send them back
wherever they came from.

2361
02:23:58,040 --> 02:24:00,560
And that is the cry ―
remove the strangers.

2362
02:24:00,680 --> 02:24:03,439
And Thomas More, who's a lawyer,
is set out by the authorities...

2363
02:24:03,560 --> 02:24:06,920
sent out by the authorities
to put down the riot,

2364
02:24:07,040 --> 02:24:08,040
which he does in two ways.

2365
02:24:08,160 --> 02:24:11,320
One by reading them the Riot Act.

2366
02:24:12,040 --> 02:24:13,760
And then with an appeal to humanity,

2367
02:24:13,880 --> 02:24:18,240
which you might think
not inappropriate 400 years on.

2368
02:24:19,400 --> 02:24:20,960
So, now, the crowd....

2369
02:24:21,080 --> 02:24:23,200
Would you be the crowd?

2370
02:24:23,320 --> 02:24:24,840
Shouting "Remove the strangers!"

2371
02:24:25,800 --> 02:24:27,880
AUDIENCE: Remove the strangers!

2372
02:24:28,000 --> 02:24:29,880
Remove the strangers!

2373
02:24:30,000 --> 02:24:33,800
Grant them removed,
and grant that this your noise

2374
02:24:33,920 --> 02:24:37,560
Hath chid down all the majesty of England.

2375
02:24:41,800 --> 02:24:42,800
Imagine...

2376
02:24:45,600 --> 02:24:47,840
..that you see the wretched strangers,

2377
02:24:47,960 --> 02:24:51,360
Their babies at their backs
with their poor luggage,

2378
02:24:51,480 --> 02:24:56,040
Plodding to th' ports
and coasts for transportation,

2379
02:24:56,160 --> 02:24:59,560
And that you sit as kings in your desires,

2380
02:24:59,680 --> 02:25:02,279
Authority quite silenced by your brawl,

2381
02:25:02,400 --> 02:25:05,920
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;

2382
02:25:06,040 --> 02:25:10,320
What had you got?
I'll tell you: you had taught

2383
02:25:10,439 --> 02:25:14,360
How insolence and strong hand
should prevail,

2384
02:25:14,480 --> 02:25:17,760
How order should be quelled;
and by this pattern

2385
02:25:17,880 --> 02:25:20,360
Not one of you should live an aged man,

2386
02:25:20,480 --> 02:25:23,200
For other ruffians,
as their fancies wrought,

2387
02:25:23,320 --> 02:25:27,400
With self same hand,
self reasons, and self right,

2388
02:25:27,520 --> 02:25:29,640
Would shark on you.

2389
02:25:31,040 --> 02:25:35,880
And men like ravenous fishes
Feed on one another.

2390
02:25:36,000 --> 02:25:38,720
You'll put down strangers...

2391
02:25:40,800 --> 02:25:42,400
Kill them.

2392
02:25:43,480 --> 02:25:45,800
Cut their throats.

2393
02:25:47,760 --> 02:25:52,119
And lead the majesty of law in line,
To slip him like a hound.

2394
02:25:52,240 --> 02:25:56,400
O, desperate as you are
wash your foul minds with tears,

2395
02:25:56,520 --> 02:26:00,800
And those same hands that you
like the rebels lift against the peace,

2396
02:26:00,920 --> 02:26:02,480
Lift up for peace

2397
02:26:02,600 --> 02:26:07,880
And your unreverent knees make them
your feet to kneel to be forgiven

2398
02:26:08,000 --> 02:26:11,000
And say now the king
As he is clement,

2399
02:26:11,119 --> 02:26:13,360
If th' offender mourn

2400
02:26:13,480 --> 02:26:17,520
Should so much come to short
of your great trespass

2401
02:26:17,640 --> 02:26:19,960
As but to banish you,

2402
02:26:20,080 --> 02:26:22,760
whither would you go?

2403
02:26:24,439 --> 02:26:28,040
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour?

2404
02:26:29,720 --> 02:26:32,600
Go you to France or Flanders,

2405
02:26:32,720 --> 02:26:35,600
To any German province,

2406
02:26:35,720 --> 02:26:37,880
Spain or Portugal,

2407
02:26:38,000 --> 02:26:40,000
Nay, anywhere that not adheres to England,

2408
02:26:40,119 --> 02:26:44,320
Why, you must needs be strangers.

2409
02:26:47,600 --> 02:26:51,400
Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

2410
02:26:51,520 --> 02:26:53,680
That, breaking out in hideous violence,

2411
02:26:53,800 --> 02:26:56,200
Would not afford you an abode on earth,

2412
02:26:56,320 --> 02:26:59,439
Whet their detested knives
against your throats...

2413
02:27:01,240 --> 02:27:04,439
Spurn you like dogs,
and like as if that God

2414
02:27:04,560 --> 02:27:08,040
Made not nor owned not you,
nor that the elements

2415
02:27:08,160 --> 02:27:12,320
Were not all appropriate to your comforts,
But chartered unto them,

2416
02:27:12,439 --> 02:27:14,600
what would you think...

2417
02:27:16,480 --> 02:27:17,840
..to be thus used?

2418
02:27:19,520 --> 02:27:22,160
This is the stranger's case.

2419
02:27:24,800 --> 02:27:28,720
And this your mountainish...

2420
02:27:29,520 --> 02:27:32,040
..inhumanity.

2421
02:27:36,800 --> 02:27:38,840
[APPLAUSE]

2422
02:27:51,200 --> 02:27:53,560
[APPLAUSE CONTINUES]

2423
02:27:59,680 --> 02:28:01,960
[LAUGHTER]

2424
02:28:03,279 --> 02:28:05,960
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

2425
02:28:08,400 --> 02:28:10,279
(IAN CHUCKLES)

2426
02:28:35,040 --> 02:28:37,560
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE CONTINUES]

2427
02:28:43,600 --> 02:28:46,640
Why, why am I in the box?!

2428
02:28:46,760 --> 02:28:47,920
[LAUGHTER]

2429
02:28:48,040 --> 02:28:50,279
Because, as Sean said,
you would like it.

2430
02:28:51,360 --> 02:28:53,320
And why am I in the box?

2431
02:28:53,439 --> 02:28:56,000
Well, I'm hiding from Alan Badel.

2432
02:28:56,119 --> 02:28:57,640
[LAUGHTER]

2433
02:28:58,360 --> 02:29:00,400
Actually, I was looking for this.

2434
02:29:01,000 --> 02:29:02,240
Whether you know it or not,

2435
02:29:02,360 --> 02:29:04,800
today we've been raising funds.

2436
02:29:04,920 --> 02:29:09,279
Money ― your money, you paid to get in
and you paid for the brochure ―

2437
02:29:09,400 --> 02:29:12,560
and I hope you're going to
put in my bucket something.

2438
02:29:12,680 --> 02:29:16,400
In the words of my compatriot
from Ballymena,

2439
02:29:16,520 --> 02:29:18,160
the Reverend Ian Paisley...

2440
02:29:18,279 --> 02:29:20,840
(NORTHERN IRISH ACCENT)
I would like a silent collection.

2441
02:29:20,960 --> 02:29:23,000
[LAUGHTER]

2442
02:29:23,119 --> 02:29:29,240
Because the causes are good ones, and
today there will be more to come, but...

2443
02:29:29,360 --> 02:29:32,400
you've been raising funds
for the English Touring Theatre,

2444
02:29:32,520 --> 02:29:33,680
for the National Youth Theatre,

2445
02:29:33,800 --> 02:29:38,040
that brings young people from across
the country to discover the delights

2446
02:29:38,160 --> 02:29:42,480
of working on live theatre in London, and
some of them can't afford to live here.

2447
02:29:42,600 --> 02:29:44,080
That's where your money will go.

2448
02:29:44,200 --> 02:29:48,080
Today you have actually
made two scholarships

2449
02:29:48,200 --> 02:29:50,800
at the Welsh College of Opera and Drama,

2450
02:29:50,920 --> 02:29:53,080
and money will be going to people
who work with blind people,

2451
02:29:53,200 --> 02:29:56,000
deaf people and disadvantaged...
disabled people,

2452
02:29:56,119 --> 02:30:00,200
who can discover the healing joys
of being involved in...

2453
02:30:01,560 --> 02:30:04,760
..a theatre production.
And at the other end of the age scale...

2454
02:30:06,119 --> 02:30:08,360
..friends in Denville Hall,

2455
02:30:08,480 --> 02:30:12,600
where old colleagues and actors
often end their days.

2456
02:30:12,720 --> 02:30:14,200
Thank you on behalf of them all.

2457
02:30:14,320 --> 02:30:16,600
And one last thing before I go.

2458
02:30:17,279 --> 02:30:18,400
Here we are.

2459
02:30:19,920 --> 02:30:25,040
Just so I remember we were
all here at the Harold Pinter Theatre.

2460
02:30:25,160 --> 02:30:26,279
All right.

2461
02:30:27,480 --> 02:30:30,200
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]

2462
02:30:36,320 --> 02:30:38,920
[CHEERING CONTINUES]

2463
02:30:40,600 --> 02:30:41,800
Bless you!

2464
02:30:44,520 --> 02:30:46,080
Bye-bye!

2465
02:30:47,160 --> 02:30:48,520
Bye-bye.

2466
02:31:02,480 --> 02:31:05,360
(PIANO PLAYS)

2467
02:31:08,080 --> 02:31:10,840
(HUM OF CONVERSATION)