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0:50

Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me,

0:52

the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My

0:55

name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and

0:57

broadcaster. And I'm delighted that today

1:00

we're recording live from the beautiful Shakespeare

1:02

North Playhouse in Prescott. Which

1:04

means I get to say, hello, sorry, no, hey,

1:07

all fair audience, well met. Ooh,

1:17

what a lovely sound. Right, today we are

1:19

donning our ruffs, pulling on our tights and travelling back to early

1:21

modern England to learn all

1:23

about the life and legend of Mr William

1:26

Shakespeare, the Bard himself. And

1:28

to help craft this merry narrative, we have two

1:30

very special guests, co-stars in fact. In

1:33

History Corner, she's Professor of Shakespeare Studies

1:35

at King's College London, Director of

1:37

Education and Research at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, and

1:40

was recently President of the Shakespeare Association of America. She's

1:43

also the author of a fascinating new book, The Great White

1:46

Bard, Shakespeare, Race and the Future.

1:47

It's Professor Farrah Karim

1:49

Cooper. Welcome Farrah. Hi!

2:07

And in Comedy Corner, we have a fellow who is

2:09

wise enough to play the fool. His CV

2:11

is vast, he's a comedian, author, playwright,

2:13

blogger, podcast royalty. You'll

2:16

know him as a Taskmaster Champion from the brilliantly

2:18

funny Richard Herring-Lesser Square Theatre podcast,

2:20

which gives away who he is. It's

2:22

also got a spin-off show about books, which I love very

2:24

much. And of course, he was on our classic

2:27

episode of You're Dead To Me about Stonehenge.

2:29

It's none other than Richard Herring. Welcome

2:31

back,

2:31

people.

2:45

I didn't get the leather jacket mama, so... Sorry.

2:48

Yeah, they're actually in reception. Yeah,

2:50

OK. So you. Richard,

2:53

hello. Hello. Hello, it's good to

2:55

be here. Yeah, it's good to have you back. Thank you. Last

2:57

time on, you were talking about cats building Stonehenge. That's right,

3:00

yeah. It's quite weird. They also wrote

3:02

all the plays. Right, right. Not

3:04

Infinite Monkeys, not Infinite Cats. Richard,

3:08

you masked it well with your silliness, but you

3:10

studied history at Oxford. I mean, I'd say studied

3:12

was over explanation of what I did.

3:15

You attended Oxford University. I did a lot of comedy. OK. I

3:18

did a lot of drama, so I probably did some Shakespeare

3:20

at university. Do you know your Shakespeare? A little bit.

3:23

You know, luckily I'm not the

3:25

expert here. No, we wouldn't

3:27

have done that. That would

3:29

be an absolute booking disaster. I know

3:32

more about Shakespeare than I do about Stonehenge. OK,

3:35

well, in fairness, you need nothing about Stonehenge. Good.

3:40

And you're a playwright as well. You have written multiple

3:42

plays. Have you ever cheekily

3:44

taken inspiration from the bard or, you know, just lifted stuff entirely,

3:46

because that's allowed? No, well,

3:48

I've done some sketches about him. I

3:50

deconstructed the to be or not to be speech,

3:53

but I can't remember what I did. I can pretty much remember

3:55

most of that speech, but I

3:57

won't try. I'm going to, you know, probably won't.

4:00

do the best ever version of it if I try it in this

4:02

room. Where do you stand

4:04

on the debate? I think to be or not to be, first

4:06

of all that's the first and only question on the University

4:09

of BTB entrance exam.

4:13

The answer

4:15

is to be if you want to get in. But

4:19

also to be, that's where

4:21

I go on the to be or not to be. Okay. I

4:23

mean to be or not to be? No, to

4:24

be. So what do you know? All

4:35

right, well that brings us to the first segment of the

4:37

podcast. This is called the So What Do You Know? This

4:39

is where I have a go at guessing what you are, lovely

4:41

listener and indeed lovely audience. You

4:44

might know about today's subject. Audience,

4:46

give me a cheer if you've seen a Shakespeare play.

4:50

Got away with that one, didn't we? Yes,

4:52

he's probably the world's most famous playwright. His

4:55

legacy is absolutely everywhere. You can find it

4:57

in theatre, ballet, opera, TV,

5:00

songs, hip hop, memes, iconic

5:02

movies. You've got your Baz Luhrmann's swoon

5:04

worthy Romeo and Juliet. My fave, 10 things

5:07

I hate about you, which of course is

5:09

the taming of the shrew and of course audience

5:11

give us a shout for which Disney classic is based

5:13

on Hamlet. Very

5:16

good. Shakespeare wrote Hakuna Matata. It's

5:19

pronounced slightly differently back then. But

5:22

what about Shakespeare the Man? You may

5:24

know bits of his life from watching Upstart Crow

5:27

on the BBC, the sitcom. You may have seen

5:29

Shakespeare in Love, that great movie. You may

5:31

have read Maggie O'Farrill's heartbreaking novel

5:33

Hamlet. But what do we really need

5:35

to know about this great

5:37

man? And how did an ordinary boy

5:40

from the Midlands go global? Let's find

5:42

out. In tribute to Shakespearean storytelling,

5:45

we are structuring this episode in five

5:47

acts. Because we're nerds basically.

5:50

Okay, let's start with that one.

5:52

Where was little William born and what was his

5:54

family situation?

5:55

Okay, well we know he was born

5:57

in Stratford-upon-Avon. He was best

6:00

baptized on the 26th of April in 1564. We

6:02

celebrate his birthday on the 23rd

6:04

because obviously

6:06

it was tradition back then to baptize

6:09

somebody within three days of their

6:11

birth, but he may not have been born

6:13

on the 23rd of April. He could have been born on

6:15

the 24th of April or

6:17

the 25th of April, but

6:19

it's also St. George's Day. So it's a great way

6:21

to celebrate England as well as to celebrate Shakespeare.

6:24

He was the eldest of six surviving

6:26

children to John Shakespeare

6:29

and to Mary Arden. And John

6:31

Shakespeare was, you know, he was

6:33

a fortune hunter a little bit himself and

6:35

he was quite active in civic

6:37

duty. He was a bailiff. He was a constable.

6:40

Most famously he was a glove maker, which

6:43

Shakespeare kind of makes much of, I think, throughout

6:45

his works. But he was also Stratford's

6:48

ale taster, which is kind of interesting.

6:51

Now it's a much more prestigious role

6:53

than you think it is.

6:54

Good job. Yeah, it's a really

6:56

good

6:57

job. But he's, you know, he's checking the worth

6:59

of loads of bread as well

7:01

as whether or not the ale is wholesome. So

7:03

I think it was a pretty prestigious thing to be doing. How do you

7:05

get that job?

7:06

I have a qualification. That's

7:08

an ale. You

7:11

need to have some taste buds.

7:12

Okay. But he was fined

7:14

for not showing up in the court records a couple of times.

7:17

So he wasn't

7:17

always the most toward human.

7:20

Richard, he wasn't just fined for missing three

7:22

sittings of the court. He was fined also in 1552, John Shakespeare

7:26

for piling up the strquinium.

7:29

Okay, his front door. What

7:31

was a quinium? On

7:35

his front door. Yeah. I mean, you're

7:38

asking me if it's probably stone-based, but yeah.

7:40

That's a people answer everything,

7:43

isn't it? That's what I would do. Is it some kind

7:45

of poop? Oh, it

7:47

is some kind of poop. Well

7:50

done. Yeah. I hope it's his own,

7:52

but going and collecting

7:55

around the neighbourhood. You hope

7:57

it's his own. Really? Yeah,

8:00

yeah, I mean, yeah. It's good for the flat. I live in a village

8:03

and the Facebook group is full

8:06

of people complaining about horse poo

8:08

on the road and other people going, it's great

8:10

for the garden, what are you complaining about? Scoop it up,

8:13

so yeah, horse poo. Yep, you're bang

8:15

off. Yeah, Stochonium's the Latin name for it, manure.

8:17

It was a pile of animal dung, presumably because he's a glove

8:19

maker and that's used in the softening of the

8:21

leather, I think. But he's piling

8:24

it by his front door, which was not permitted. But

8:26

that does sort of tell us a little bit about William Shakespeare.

8:28

He wasn't born with a silver spoon in

8:30

his mouth, he was born with poo in his shoes.

8:32

Dad's middle class. But

8:34

his dad is sort of having

8:36

to bounce between jobs a bit. And he goes to

8:39

school, Shakespeare. He goes to a grammar school,

8:41

the King's New School in Stratford-upon-Avon.

8:43

What do you think's on the curriculum, Richard? Probably

8:45

not playwriting, that'll be useful. On

8:49

the curriculum, I guess, maths.

8:52

Do they do Latin? Mm-hmm. Because

8:54

there's some languages in there. Did they

8:57

do all the plays of the past that he then ripped

8:59

off when he wrote play? Which is basically

9:02

what he mainly did. It's not a bad game. It's

9:04

not bad. Professor Farrer, what's our...

9:06

We don't know exactly what's on the curriculum, but what's our

9:08

informed...

9:09

We don't know exactly, but we do know that there

9:11

was a lot of classical texts. So he would have

9:14

read Ovid, he would have read Seneca,

9:16

and he did rip off both of them. And

9:19

he probably would have come across Cicero and Virgil.

9:22

So all the great classical writers. And

9:24

they had to memorize it, which is good for an acting

9:27

career, a career in the future. You can see

9:29

from some bits of Shakespeare, as

9:31

you like it, that he may not have loved school

9:34

because it was quite punishing. It was punishing

9:36

in terms of the schedule because you would have to

9:39

attend school from dawn to dusk, including

9:41

on Saturdays. So it's six days a week. But

9:44

also corporal punishment was a massive part

9:46

of education in that time period.

9:49

There's a really great quote that comes from a

9:51

preacher in that time period. He says, apparently

9:54

God invented buttocks to ensure that schoolboys

9:56

learned their Latin.

10:02

I'm not sure what to do

10:04

with that. There's

10:07

a lot of different ways to go, and a

10:10

couple of them aren't radio for us. Maybe

10:15

we'll move on from the buttocks. OK,

10:17

so Shakespeare probably

10:20

learned some Latin. I think your guess is probably decent

10:22

enough in it, and I think he's getting a bit

10:24

of a classical education. He survived

10:26

school, and in 1582 Shakespeare married Anne

10:28

Hathaway. No, not that one. She's 26.

10:33

How old do you think he is? What year was it? 1582, are

10:35

you going to work backwards? No, I can't remember

10:37

when he was born. I'm

10:40

going to say he was 15. Oh,

10:42

that's quite good. He was 18. Oh wow, OK. Older

10:45

woman. Older woman, shotgun wedding.

10:48

Right. Because six months later,

10:50

baby appears, so he's clearly gone. Oh,

10:52

OK. OK, let's make this

10:55

one official. How are you picturing the relationship?

10:57

She's 26 and he's 18. Posh

10:59

and Bex is what I'm thinking about this. He's

11:03

the one with the natural talent, and she's woots

11:05

in and is acting like a mum towards him

11:07

a little bit. I've just been watching

11:09

David Beckham. She's watching the

11:12

documentary. She claims she's working class,

11:14

but her dad drove her to school and enrolled. I

11:19

mean, I think Richard's guess is as good as

11:21

we know, because we don't really know much about their

11:23

relationship.

11:24

We don't. Right, in that Susanna

11:27

was born six months later after

11:29

they got married, and then they had twins, Hamnet

11:31

and Judith. Unfortunately, Hamnet didn't

11:33

survive past 11, and we think he may

11:35

have died of the plague. That's what the novel Hamnet

11:38

is about. There are no surviving love letters.

11:40

There may be a sonnet where she's referenced a few

11:43

times, but it's really unclear how they

11:45

felt about each other. And of course, he spent most of his time away.

11:48

But there's a lot of anecdotes about his life

11:51

and about his relationship, and a lot of people like to fantasize.

11:53

For example, there was an anecdote that he

11:56

might have been caught deer poaching. There's

11:58

a lot of sort of fan fiction. about Shakespeare and

12:00

I think the same is true for their relationship.

12:03

You talked about that seven years gap where

12:06

we don't have any records of Shakespeare's life and

12:08

so you can imagine the amount of speculation

12:10

about his life in that period. Some

12:12

people think he may have travelled to Italy which is why

12:14

he's set so many plays there but then he surfaces

12:17

magically in 1592.

12:18

He does. He's off to seek his fortune

12:21

in the Big Smoke in London which brings

12:23

us to Act Two, Shakespeare the Actor.

12:26

Now in London he joins a theatre company

12:28

called The Lord, Chamberlain's Men and

12:31

how are you imagining his life as a

12:33

Elizabethan era actor in London

12:35

compared to experiences of a gigging

12:38

comedian? I imagine

12:40

it was a lot harder. There can't

12:44

have been many theatres going on. It must

12:46

have been hard to break into although being an actor

12:49

was probably less people from eating at that time I'm

12:51

guessing. It was sort

12:56

of people who had nothing else to do thinking

12:58

let's give this a crack. Doesn't

13:00

matter if you're bald mate come on in. Yeah

13:04

and there were no female actors right

13:06

that's what I know about it. Based on Shakespeare

13:08

in Love you have to dress up as a man and then

13:11

sort of weirdly get off with Shakespeare anyway. I

13:13

don't

13:18

know if he was happy

13:19

or not when it turns out to be a bit

13:21

counter. I'm guessing

13:27

it was quite a tricky time to be an

13:33

actor. That's a good point actually. It hadn't occurred

13:35

to me about breaking into the industry. He's not a nepo

13:37

baby but he's working in

13:39

Sudbrook which is how would

13:42

an estate agent describe it? Lively.

13:46

Yeah

13:47

it was lively. I mean I've never

13:49

been there in the 16th century but I work

13:51

there now. It's

13:54

on the South Bank of the River Thames obviously

13:57

and it was at that time a manufacturing

13:59

district. but also the major

14:01

entertainment district. So there

14:04

were other theaters there as well, but there

14:06

were also bull rings, cockpits,

14:08

bear-baiting arenas, and brothels.

14:10

And it- I mean, I'm not going to the

14:13

theater in this time. I'm telling you that right

14:14

now. But also to get

14:16

there,

14:18

you'd have to cross the One Bridge across

14:20

the Thames and a London Bridge. And on

14:22

the gatehouse were heads of

14:25

traders that had been tarred and boiled.

14:28

So that was kind of a gruesome sight

14:30

as you're coming over to go to the theater. But

14:33

also what's really extraordinary about this place

14:35

is that it was multi-ethnic. There were

14:37

people from all parts of Europe and all over

14:40

the world who were living in

14:42

this part of London, and Shakespeare would

14:44

have encountered them.

14:45

Yeah, it's a sort of bustling hotspot. It's where

14:47

people are hanging out. It's fun. You can

14:49

go see animal cruelty. You can go see a play. You can

14:52

go and see other stuff. You know, it's all

14:54

the things you could possibly want. It

14:57

says in the script, sounds like a hoot, but I don't think I'm allowed to endorse...

15:00

LAUGHTER ..murdering

15:02

a bear. So I'm just going to say, lively,

15:05

lively. He finds

15:07

himself in with a theater lovie. And

15:10

we might describe it as a bit of a feisty

15:12

crowd because it's quite a lot of professional rivalry. He's

15:14

not welcomed in by all. There's a

15:16

guy called Robert Green who calls

15:19

Shakespeare... This is the famous quote. This is the Ben Elton

15:21

sitcom title. He calls

15:23

him an upstart crow, beautified

15:25

with our feathers. So

15:28

that's a slightly subtle way of saying,

15:30

he's an oik who doesn't belong. We're

15:32

the kind of university-educated boys,

15:35

and here's this middle-class kid from the

15:37

Midlands. So it is, Ethan. It is the Atonians.

15:40

Slightly. He's turning up, yeah. Yeah.

15:43

So he's got to sort of make his way through that

15:45

sort of resistance. And it's not just the

15:47

waspish insults that are being sort

15:49

of, you know, whipped out. Actual knives are

15:52

coming out.

15:53

The knives came out, yeah.

15:56

But street-frawling and violence was

15:58

pretty common. in Elizabethan England

16:01

and funnily enough between playwrights and actors.

16:03

So Christopher Marlow got into it

16:05

with the poet Thomas Watson. They had their weapons

16:08

out and Thomas actually killed somebody. So

16:10

they both went to prison. And then of course we all

16:12

know that Christopher Marlow was killed in Deptford

16:15

in a tavern over a bull. Then

16:18

Johnson got into, with Ben Johnson in Shakespeare's

16:20

For Enemy. And he

16:23

was, he killed a rising star, George

16:25

Spencer of the Lord Admiral's Men, which is kind of

16:27

a rival company. And Gabriel

16:30

Spencer. Yeah, and he

16:32

himself had stabbed somebody

16:35

two years before.

16:35

Is it like conquer this if you...

16:37

I mean... Yeah,

16:41

I think his winner stays on, I think. Yeah. Yeah.

16:43

Like snooker, isn't it? You put a

16:47

pound down and then you stab something

16:49

up. But Johnson actually

16:51

killed Gabriel Spencer. Yeah. Yeah, and

16:53

he went to prison and he was tried for it, but then

16:55

he managed to get off by quoting some Latin.

16:57

Yeah. There's a legal loophole

16:59

at the time. If you could quote a certain verse called the

17:02

next verse, they'd be like, well, he knows

17:04

Latin, so he can't be that

17:05

Latin. That seems

17:07

like a mistake to her. That seems like an easy

17:09

thing for a murderous to do. Basically

17:12

for the clergy, for the benefit of clergy. You

17:14

could claim to be a churchman. I know this bit of Latin,

17:17

I must be a churchman. Okay. And so then it's alright

17:19

if you kill someone. It's alright to kill someone. Isn't it in the Bible

17:21

that you're not meant to kill people? I can't

17:23

remember. I can't remember. I can't remember.

17:26

I mean, Richard, comedians

17:28

are... I mean, the rivalries, I think

17:31

comedians sort of muttering about who's on knocked

17:33

the weight or not on knocked the weight that way. So I've seen

17:35

sort of a little jealously, what's your experience?

17:38

It's me that I'm acting and I'm going out and killing a whole

17:40

lot. I mean, it's

17:46

quite, you know, it is actually, it's

17:48

not too backstabbing in the comedy industry. We

17:50

are quite supportive of each other. But yeah, it'd

17:52

be interesting to know if it was

17:54

allowed or if it was, if lots of people were doing

17:57

it. We would pre-motor the year. Yeah, I think

17:59

so. I mean, there's definitely

18:01

some. I mean, there's definitely some comedians who just should

18:03

be killed by the state anyway. Just

18:08

for the protection of society. It is

18:10

about just talent and who's getting the work.

18:15

Yeah, I think there is a bit of rivalry

18:17

at the top there. Fair enough. Okay. Well, apparently

18:19

our sensible William Shakespeare,

18:22

he dodged all of the debauchery and all the violence

18:24

because whenever he was invited to the pub, he'd

18:26

say he had a headache and wouldn't go along.

18:30

So which people are saying, how do you make Shakespeare

18:32

relatable? Well, I'm a teetotaler who's sort of got

18:34

an introvert. So that for me is the most relatable

18:36

thing about it. Do you want

18:39

to go to a party? No. Please

18:41

leave me alone. He's basically a hardworking

18:43

guy who's not doing all the boozing and he's not doing the hardcore

18:45

violence. So will he make it as a writer? Well,

18:48

maybe he will. So in the 1590s Shakespeare,

18:50

he's in London. He's making a name for himself as an actor.

18:54

But instead of boozing with Marlow and Johnson, he's safely indoors

18:56

scribbling by candle lights. Hashtag self

18:58

care. Hashtag writer life. Which

19:01

means it's time for act three, the one we've all

19:03

been waiting for. Shakespeare, the writer and

19:06

Richard, you have written some lovely plays. Thank

19:08

you. Some historical plays, in fact. You've

19:11

written your own history plays. How

19:13

quickly can you knock one out? Hang on, I'm already afraid.

19:18

How fast do you work as a playwright? I

19:22

do tend to work fairly quickly, I have to say, because

19:24

I usually work up to the... ...Edinburgh Fringe

19:26

is a deadline. And certainly

19:28

a couple of those plays I was writing as

19:31

we were sitting in Edinburgh waiting to go on. So

19:33

my actors weren't very happy. So

19:35

I could write play in two months, I would say. Well,

19:38

it was quick. I mean, they weren't very good. They

19:41

didn't do well, but I wrote them fast.

19:44

That's pretty good. OK, all right. Shakespeare

19:46

was cranking out two plays per year. Right. Which

19:48

sounds rubbish, but I can be in comparison to you. Lightweight.

19:52

He's almost as prolific as Jacqueline Wilson. Her standards

19:54

are pretty high and Shakespeare's

19:58

also pretty high. Yours,

20:00

you know, obviously high too, but I'm not sure yours is gonna stand

20:02

the test of time 400 years on. We'll come

20:04

back in... We'll see, we'll see. All right, okay. So

20:08

you see it building theatres too there? That

20:10

was mean of me. Maybe you will. Maybe you'll get discovered.

20:14

Question for you actually. How many plays did Shakespeare

20:16

write in his career? Oh, I mean,

20:18

it's a lot because he didn't write for very long if we're talking

20:20

about... If you're saying he started in 1492... 1592, I

20:24

mean, yes. Well, he would have had 100 extra years

20:26

if I were... Tim and Columbus.

20:28

It was only... It was... Yeah,

20:31

so... Well, if it's two a year... Uh...

20:34

32 plus... Uh... 48, please.

20:39

Oh, that's kind of a guess. Not bad. I

20:41

mean, it's wrong, but... Farrah,

20:44

what's our safe number? And

20:47

then what's the debatable number?

20:49

So safe number is like 37. But

20:52

a lot of scholars have put forward other

20:55

plays that have been either called anonymous

20:58

or written by other people that have now been attributed

21:00

to Shakespeare. So some people have it as

21:02

high as 42. But I'm on the 37 side, I think.

21:06

Oh, are you? Yeah. Yeah.

21:08

Yeah. I think people just want there to be more plays.

21:10

Yeah, we do. Yeah. That

21:15

was quite a good guess, though. Well done on the map. And he must have started

21:17

a few that he didn't... Really, really? Oh, sure. He

21:19

must have started a few that didn't come to an event. Hamlet

21:22

two. The revenge job. This time it's

21:24

personal. He made

21:26

the mistake of killing most people. It'd have to be a prequel

21:28

for that one. Yeah, that's true. Young

21:31

Hamlet. Rise of Hamlet. I don't know. Hamlet

21:34

babies. Hamlet babies. Lovely. All

21:38

right. So we've got 37 safe ones

21:40

and then five that people like to argue about.

21:42

I love the way you were like, nope. But

21:46

we've got four here that I want you to choose

21:48

between, Richard, that are maybe

21:50

lesser than one of these. Probably

21:52

not a play. So which one is not the

21:54

play, we think. So you've got Cymbeline,

21:58

King John, loves Labour. Love

22:00

Labours One, Pericles. Which

22:02

one? Probably not a play. I would

22:04

say, I mean it seems like a trick question, but

22:06

Love Labours One is what I'm going

22:09

for. You would be correct. Well done. Well

22:11

done. Yeah, Pericles is a legit play. King

22:14

John, Simba is in the plays. Love Labours One

22:17

sounds like a lazy sequel that he's sort of gone,

22:19

that was good, let's do more. Is

22:21

it a play? Is it a title that's in a notebook

22:24

somewhere? What is

22:24

it? I mean we don't know. We don't know. It

22:27

is a title that shows up. There's been this book called Whits

22:29

Treasury, which is listed among some of Shakespeare's

22:32

other plays, but it could

22:34

be a sequel to Love Labours Lost, or

22:36

it could just be another

22:38

name for a play that exists. It's

22:41

not a play. It would be weird if it was King Liz's alternative

22:43

name, wouldn't it? It would be weird. It's a

22:46

tragedy, but with a charming title, Lizzlin'

22:49

in, and then everyone dies. So

22:51

Love's Labours Lost, we have. We have

22:53

that one, yes. And then Love Labours One, who made... It makes sense

22:56

that there would be a sequel to that, because it kind of ends

22:58

unsatisfactorily. So... Half?

23:01

Okay. Sorry. But

23:04

might something turn... Is it possible that

23:07

every now and again in a library in some old

23:09

house they find books of... that

23:12

we've all forgotten about? Is it possible that something else would

23:14

turn

23:15

up? Something could turn up somewhere. I

23:17

just want people to keep looking. Keep looking.

23:19

Yeah. The

23:24

benefit of radio listeners, Richard is currently looking under

23:26

the table. I

23:28

think they got that. I think they're only starting

23:31

to be pandered to the people who make it. I

23:34

mean, there were fake this. There were fake plays

23:36

written, supposedly, by Shakespeare in the 18th century.

23:39

Yeah, there was a lot of what they call apocrypha

23:41

plays. What is he writing, then, Farrah? What

23:44

range of genre is he working in?

23:47

Richard Zorrie said he's ripping off plots. Is he a great

23:49

originator? Or is he just working with established

23:51

stories and just making them better?

23:53

Well, it's kind of a little bit of both. So he writes...

23:55

I mean, we have it traditionally split

23:57

into comedies, tragedies, and histories.

23:59

do that himself or is that how we

24:01

know that's how the folio is described

24:04

yeah and actually since then scholars

24:06

have described you know some of them

24:08

as tragic comedies or

24:10

romances so we kind of play with genre

24:12

a little bit I call

24:13

them comedies yeah

24:17

you could do the air quotes on the radio I think you I

24:19

think the people on the

24:22

radio got that they got it yeah

24:27

I mean having seen succession which is written by a comedy

24:30

writers but is a drama I think we're increasingly we're

24:32

blurring the lines of it

24:33

and he definitely did but he was

24:36

you know he was inspired I mean in

24:38

the 1590s histories were really popular so he wrote quite

24:40

a few histories there were lots of other history plays

24:42

being performed he was inspired

24:44

by all sorts of things so he also he obviously

24:47

found sources for a lot of his work

24:49

but there could be contemporary events you know there

24:51

was the plague which then

24:53

shows up in different ways and some of the plays like

24:56

Romeo and Juliet and then there

24:58

was actually this I found really interesting

25:00

because I hadn't heard this before but there was a story

25:02

about a young woman named Catherine Hamlet

25:05

who died in 1575 in Stratford-upon-Avon drowning

25:09

in the river and some

25:11

people think that she may have inspired

25:13

or haunted Shakespeare's imagination

25:15

and so he writes about Ophelia's

25:18

death quite hauntingly and

25:20

poetically

25:20

she was called Hamlet

25:21

she was called Catherine Hamlet with

25:23

two T's yeah so

25:25

who knows

25:26

and you mentioned Romeo and Juliet that's

25:28

not his original story

25:29

no no no it says it's a

25:31

story by Arthur Brooke which

25:34

was written in

25:35

the 1560s

25:36

Romeo's and Juliet but obviously it was

25:38

based

25:39

on it and

25:42

we're happy Romeo's Romeo's never I was stunned to

25:44

discover Hamlet he didn't

25:54

create Hamlet there was a Hamlet already well

25:57

he did a hamlet he just did a hamlet he

25:59

did well

25:59

Kind of, kind of. I mean, some

26:02

people, he, it's a revenge tragedy

26:04

that potentially draws on the Spanish

26:06

tragedy by Thomas Kidd, but then some people think

26:08

there's this ur-hamlet

26:10

or original hamlet or pre-hamlet

26:12

that existed. And that Shakespeare may have

26:14

lifted from that. You know, had the typical

26:16

revenge tragedy things like a ghost

26:18

and, you

26:20

know, wanting to kill somebody. Is

26:23

that the plot? It's

26:26

a ghost and then you want to kill someone for flight back.

26:28

He was playing within a play. He was playing within a play.

26:31

He was playing within a play. Yeah. It's a

26:33

hamlet, shamlet. He's

26:35

a fraud. He's a hack, Richard. What

26:38

other sources have we got? Because you said history plays.

26:41

What history is he reading to write his history play?

26:43

You know, he's not on Wikipedia. So what's he reading?

26:45

So he, I mean, Hamlet comes

26:47

from a Danish history called Saxo-Gromaticus.

26:50

And he read Holland Shed's Chronicles

26:53

of England, Scotland and Ireland. Classic. Yeah,

26:55

classic. That's where he got his histories and

26:58

also a play I won't mention in theatre.

27:01

And yeah, so that was,

27:03

I mean, he, and he read classical sources

27:06

like Plutarch where he got Antoni Cleopatra

27:08

and Julius Caesar.

27:10

And you said at school he read Seneca and Ovid and Virgil. So

27:12

he knows a little bit of that. And

27:14

Titus comes, you know, after Seneca.

27:17

Titus

27:17

is your favorite play. It is. Sorry.

27:20

Are there any other Titus fans out

27:22

there? Thank you.

27:23

Thank you. You absolute weirdo.

27:27

What's wrong with you? There's nice plays about

27:29

love and stuff. And,

27:32

you know, Shakespeare, we think of him

27:34

then as someone who's building

27:36

off other stuff. He's borrowing, he's reinterpreting,

27:39

he's adding his own twist. It's all very interesting. But

27:41

he's not the lone genius,

27:44

Richard. I mean, you know, in comedy, right?

27:46

Co-writing is very common. It's,

27:49

lots of standups have writers. Yes, they do. So you

27:51

were in a sketch group in a TV show, you co-writing

27:53

with your comedy partner at the time.

27:56

Collaborating is normal, right,

27:58

in comedy? Yeah, I suppose, I

28:01

think even if you do a play, obviously, and especially

28:04

as it sounds like this, as a company of actors,

28:06

if you come with a

28:08

play, especially a comedy, then people

28:10

are chipping in ideas all the time and you take

28:12

the ones you like and you ignore the ones that don't work. But

28:14

yeah, I don't think any play really

28:17

would be entirely, I guess

28:19

some of the things that are set text maybe,

28:21

but the first time you're doing

28:24

it, I think if you're not listening to what

28:26

the actors are saying, the actors are feeling, you want your actors

28:28

to know the characters better than you

28:30

really. So they've got to dig in and go,

28:33

well, I don't think my character would say this, and then you

28:36

have to go, yes, I bloody would, or

28:39

just say the line, what's my motivation?

28:42

My motivation is say it. No bitterness

28:44

there, they can see it,

28:47

yeah. But

28:50

you know, you listen, and definitely with jokes,

28:52

you know, you will find that

28:55

things build in the rehearsal room for sure. And

28:57

that's a really lovely point, actually, a crucial

28:59

point actually, because they have lived experience. And

29:02

I think scholars, well, maybe not recently, but certainly

29:04

now we don't say Shakespeare is the lone genius

29:06

who single-handedly sat in his room banging

29:08

out 37 plays plus five maybe, but

29:11

he's collaborating. Yeah, absolutely.

29:12

And I think that's a

29:14

later construction, a really romantic notion

29:17

about Shakespeare writing in an attic

29:19

in Stratford that actually he

29:22

was getting kind of messy writing

29:24

in London in Southwark. And he collaborated

29:26

with other playwrights. We now know

29:28

that Thomas Middleton co-wrote

29:31

bits and pieces of the Scottish

29:33

play. And...

29:34

Is everybody okay? I

29:37

didn't say it, I didn't

29:39

say it. Any lights come down.

29:44

As well as Simon of Athens,

29:46

and then we know that Titus, yay,

29:49

was co-written with George Peele, or

29:51

at least George Peele may have written one, the first act.

29:54

And then we know that John Fletcher

29:57

wrote to Noble Kinsman and Henry

29:59

the with Shakespeare. It's kind of training

30:02

John Fletcher. But as you say, the way which the

30:05

rest of the kind of theatre making apparatus

30:08

contributes to the making of the

30:10

play is something that we shouldn't

30:12

lose sight of.

30:13

Yeah. And that's obviously so important.

30:15

We're here because the anniversary of the first folio where the plays

30:17

get set in stone. Yeah. Up to that

30:19

point, they're being negotiated.

30:21

Yeah, absolutely. By actors, by censors.

30:23

And Shakespeare, you know,

30:25

we're getting a sense of him performing in London, acting

30:28

in London, writing in London. But

30:30

he's got a wife and kids back home. So he's

30:32

away for weeks and months. He's travelling back to see his family.

30:34

It's sort of the life of a touring comedian a bit, Richard.

30:36

This is hard graft. Yeah.

30:39

I mean, I think he sounds like he's away. I mean,

30:42

I guess the trains weren't as good in those days.

30:44

They were probably better. Maybe, yeah. Maybe

30:47

better. Yeah, the horse and cart might have

30:49

been the fastest.

30:51

But yeah, that's difficult. But it sounds like maybe

30:54

he didn't mind that so much once

30:56

he's left. I mean, what

30:58

happens on tour stays on tour. That's

31:01

the mantra. So maybe he was

31:03

happy to be away on tour permanently. Maybe,

31:05

yeah. But we have to think of him, I think, as a

31:07

man from Stratford, but a man working in London, primarily.

31:10

Yeah. And he's working incredibly hard.

31:12

So the question, I suppose we can ask is,

31:15

is he successful? Is he a star?

31:17

You know, is he selling out? Everyone wants to come

31:19

see him?

31:21

Well, he was successful,

31:23

I would say, and his theater company was successful.

31:26

So he wouldn't necessarily have stood out. But

31:28

he was certainly an admired writer at this time.

31:31

And you can see that on the dedication versus

31:33

to the folio. But he wasn't the

31:35

colossus that he is today.

31:38

You know, we've constructed a much bigger Shakespeare

31:41

than perhaps was around in his in his own

31:43

time. Plays would have sold out, no

31:45

doubt. But then Christopher Marlow might have

31:47

sold outplays at the Rose. In fact, they kept coming

31:49

back to the Rose, which meant that Marlow

31:51

was popular too. And so with Webster's,

31:54

so with Middleton. Middleton was the one who

31:56

sold completely sold out 3000 people

31:58

in the globe to watch. A game

32:01

at chess which was his most popular

32:03

play

32:03

never heard of it And

32:15

Shakespeare's also working with stars, I mean Richard

32:17

Burbage is sort of the the

32:20

go-to booking

32:21

Yeah, I mean Richard Burbage was his star actor

32:24

with the Lord Chamberlain's men and they later

32:26

became the King's men He was the first

32:29

ever King Lear first ever Hamlet

32:31

first ever Othello So she

32:33

was huge and people loved him and when he died

32:35

in 1619. There was this amazing poem written

32:38

in his honor Shakespeare was working

32:40

with the best was

32:41

the only good as an actor though Do we know what

32:43

he what part see did he pay parts in his

32:45

own plays and was he any was the any good? Did

32:47

he get a good one? We

32:48

don't know. I mean we think that

32:50

Shakespeare played some old man parts

32:53

That he may have played the ghost in a hamlet Yeah,

32:57

yeah potentially

32:57

yeah, cuz I just write parts for myself.

33:00

That's what I Think

33:03

I'm not very good. So that's that's what

33:06

the character of Richard So

33:10

he's sort of he's slightly Hitchcock he's like he puts he

33:12

gives himself cameos and plays in his

33:14

but he's primarily he's writing Yeah,

33:16

he Hitchcock's a really good

33:18

analogy So if he's selling

33:20

out playhouses does that mean Shakespeare's giving

33:22

the public what they crave? or

33:25

is he writing plays that are challenging

33:27

and you know pushing against the Taste

33:30

of the time or the prejudices at the time,

33:32

you know Is he trying to change people's minds or is

33:34

he actually going what you all want sex and violence?

33:36

All of it. I think all

33:38

of it. I think he what's really Clever

33:41

about Shakespeare is that he's he's working

33:43

sometimes he works in the these things in by

33:45

stealth and he doesn't give the audience

33:48

answers He's always giving them more questions

33:50

more ideas and conflicts and dilemmas

33:52

to be thinking about So she

33:55

doesn't always give them what they want,

33:57

but he makes

33:58

them think he's giving them what they want Yes.

34:01

That's how I like to fix it.

34:02

Yeah, because there are themes in Shakespeare

34:04

that are laudable. Yeah.

34:07

And there are those that we go...

34:08

Yeah, so then, you know, you'll have these troubling

34:10

moments. You have bits of, you know, you find racism

34:13

in his plays, anti-Semitism. But

34:16

also then you see these incredible

34:18

pleas for justice and

34:20

for equality that emerge in different plays.

34:23

And then you've got extraordinary female characters

34:26

who seem to be incredibly powerful.

34:29

But at the same time, women are

34:31

oppressed in a lot of his plays.

34:34

So it's complex.

34:36

And he's writing about foreigners, strangers.

34:38

Yeah. This is London, but he's writing

34:40

about Verona and Greece

34:43

and various parts

34:44

of Europe. Yeah. He doesn't set any

34:46

of his plays in London. He sets them afar.

34:48

But he is very conscious of

34:51

the multicultural and multiethnic

34:54

character of London. It was an incredibly diverse

34:56

city. We tend not to think of it that way

34:58

because period dramas don't really depict that.

35:00

But it was. There were people living in London

35:03

from all over. There were black people living in London

35:05

at the time. So, and Shakespeare was

35:07

aware of this. And you can feel that

35:09

kind of diverse immediacy

35:11

in his work. Richard, Shakespeare

35:13

was living through a time of great political turbulence,

35:15

obviously. And, you know, the Tudors,

35:18

that era, you've got plays and pandemics.

35:20

You've got the kind of persecution of the Catholics.

35:22

You've got a lot of stuff going on. And then you've got dynastic struggles.

35:25

There's coups against Elizabeth I. So do you

35:27

think, in your deep knowledge

35:29

of Shakespeare, do you think he's a bit of a provocateur

35:32

or do you think he's playing it safe when he was writing?

35:34

Where do you think he lands on the risk-taking

35:36

line? I feel like from this,

35:39

only from films, I've watched that he's quite

35:41

a suck-up. Ah. The

35:44

royalty and everything. So whoever's in charge, I

35:47

don't think he's very revolutionary in that sense. But

35:49

maybe I'm wrong. Interesting. That's interesting. You

35:52

want to defend his honour?

35:54

I mean, we don't really have any record of him being

35:57

hauled in front of the Privy Council. But

35:59

Ben John... Johnson did. In 1603 he wrote The Janus. I like to

36:01

forget because it's such

36:04

a bad play. But

36:07

he wrote two tragedies which didn't do very well.

36:10

But one of them getting him into trouble. Johnson

36:13

had been imprisoned twice for his political

36:15

commentary. Shakespeare doesn't

36:18

get into trouble in the same way. In fact, the opposite

36:20

happens. He becomes patron. His company

36:22

is patron by King James. And

36:25

that's when they become the King's Men.

36:26

Yes, not the Colin First movie, sadly.

36:29

Well, I like the idea of Shakespeare

36:31

with a gun. James

36:33

VI of Scotland becomes James I of England, 1603.

36:37

That's a moment of tension because the end of the

36:39

Tudor dynasty, in comes a foreign king.

36:42

Scotland's a different country. But

36:45

he gets to be renamed.

36:47

The King's Men is the new troupe, which

36:49

is rather glamorous. They get a lovely welcome gift

36:52

from the King. Do you want to guess what it was? Was

36:54

it a really big haggis? No. The

37:02

butt

37:02

of mum's, whatever that

37:04

stuff's called. Oh,

37:10

mum's rewind. That's nice Shakespearean

37:12

illusion. Well done. Very good. To

37:14

drown someone in. No,

37:17

it's four and a half yards of red cloth.

37:21

Because they want Shakespeare's company to

37:24

line the route during a royal procession in 1604.

37:26

The King is going to parade through. They

37:29

want the company to wear the red cloth. But

37:32

basically, he's making Shakespeare wear the red carpet.

37:34

He's like, you are the carpet down

37:37

there. I don't know if it's a gift or if it's

37:39

a little slightly like, just lie down and

37:41

make me look good. But is this a boost

37:44

to Shakespeare's renown and approval? I mean, it must

37:47

be. The King's saying, you're my guy.

37:49

Absolutely. I mean, the King's men are

37:51

a really prominent company at this point.

37:53

They were already performing at court for Queen

37:55

Elizabeth I, but they really do

37:57

get to monopolize the court at stage.

38:00

I think it was something like seven out of 11 plays

38:03

performed in 1604 were written by

38:07

Shakespeare. And then they were performing

38:09

at court up to about 107 times by the time Shakespeare

38:13

died. So they were pretty prolific

38:15

at court.

38:16

Yeah.

38:17

And of course, James being

38:20

Scottish King then gives us the Scottish play.

38:22

Yeah, we know that there is a certain link there,

38:24

isn't

38:24

it? Yeah, I mean, you see in his

38:27

Jacobean plays, a bit of

38:29

political commentary coming through. And

38:31

certainly in the Scottish play, King James

38:34

was obsessed with witches and witchcraft.

38:36

And he was he was convinced that witches

38:38

were stalking him, were coming after him. And

38:41

so Shakespeare writes this play

38:43

and it feels pretty provocative, you know,

38:46

with the weird sisters, it's kind of a nod

38:48

to that. And with James

38:50

related to Banquo? Yes, yes,

38:52

yes. Yeah. Yeah.

38:53

So there's a sort of genius, kind of a genealogy

38:55

of saying, absolutely complimentary,

38:58

but at the same time, the other

39:00

thing that Shakespeare gets a little earlier

39:02

in 1596, that during Elizabeth's reign, Shakespeare

39:05

gets a family coat of arms,

39:08

something his dad had long craves, you know, ale

39:10

tasting and making gloves and all that always on the

39:12

mate. Finally, the family gets its official

39:15

coat of arms, which is gonna guess what it is.

39:17

I'd say this is a joke, but I think

39:19

it might be on there. Is there a spear that's shaking

39:22

on there? Look at you, are you not?

39:26

Oh, fancy. Some guessing

39:28

on that. And it is it's

39:33

a it's a it looks to me like a kind of jousting

39:36

lance rather than a spear. But yeah, and

39:39

it's on a yellow backing.

39:41

It looks like it's going to be gold. It looks like mustard. Yeah.

39:45

I have to ask Richard, what would the herring coat

39:47

of arms be? Well,

39:50

there's the obvious. Yeah, I mean,

39:52

I thought it would just

39:54

be

40:00

I've had the only one testicle now. The

40:07

mono ball. Yeah, mono ball. I mean

40:09

that's my autograph has essentially developed.

40:11

I just used to draw a cock and balls and then

40:13

I've sadly lost a ball if you are not aware.

40:17

So now it's just a cock and ball. Maybe

40:20

both moving from early life

40:22

to late life. I had range.

40:26

Great. Lovely. I'm

40:30

glad I asked. You knew

40:33

what you were going to get. I did. I

40:35

did. OK, so we

40:37

have Shakespeare. He was a prolific playwright,

40:40

you know, 37 plays at least. We haven't mentioned

40:42

poetry yet, of course. And in the movie Shakespeare

40:44

in Love, which I think is lots of people sort of touchstone

40:47

on the personal story of the man

40:49

as the author, he's relating

40:52

his sonnets and it's all about a

40:54

fantasy. It's an outro. But

40:56

is that are these all love

40:58

poems? Is there a particular person they're

41:00

aimed at?

41:02

Yeah, I think that's one of the big things

41:04

that scholars are searching for is who were

41:07

the people that are being addressed in the sonnets. So he

41:09

wrote 154 of them. Some

41:11

of them are written or addressed to a fair

41:13

youth, a young man. And

41:16

a lot of them, there's some that are referred

41:18

to as the procreation sonnets where they're trying to

41:20

urge. He's trying to urge this young man to get

41:23

married and have kids to preserve. They're immortalized,

41:25

his beauty. And then there's some sonnets

41:28

addressed to a dark lady. And I think what he's

41:30

doing with that is providing a

41:32

kind of radical intervention

41:34

into what sonnet making is. Because

41:37

the usual sonnet mistress is this kind of fair

41:40

high born woman with golden

41:42

hair and rosy cheeks and fair

41:44

skin. And his dark lady is

41:46

the opposite of that. But some people are still trying

41:49

to figure out who this dark lady is. She

41:51

may be nobody. She's just somebody in his imagination.

41:56

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43:14

Today we are looking for the real Shakespeare, and when we

43:16

read his poetry, we're still looking for the real... You want

43:18

to find the biography in the poetry.

43:20

Yeah, exactly. There's a real tension there. We

43:23

do the same with Dickens. We were always looking for the autobiographical,

43:25

but 154 sonnets, I'm

43:28

slightly... The idea of a young man trying

43:30

to procreate to preserve beauty, I can't tell if that's

43:32

a beautiful idea or creepy as hell.

43:35

I'm still on the fence. Richard, do you want to vote? I

43:38

think it's creepy. Writing

43:40

poetry is creepy anyway. But

43:46

there's a practical reason for writing poetry.

43:48

It's shorter, so it's easier to do. Plays

43:52

are really long and poems are tiny. I don't even

43:54

know how many lines in the sonnet. Is it eight? 14. 14. That's

43:56

harder than I thought. The

44:05

practical reason is plague. He

44:08

has his own pandemic story. He's in lockdown.

44:11

In 1592, the theatre's shut. There

44:13

is a bubonic plague. Everyone stays

44:15

at home. He's trying to make a

44:17

buck and keep working while he can't

44:20

perform anymore. I mean, that tells us there's

44:22

the real man here. He's trying to earn some money. He's trying

44:24

to keep working.

44:24

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, every plague

44:27

year, the theatres are shut. So the companies

44:29

either go on tour or

44:31

they kind of sit at home and watch

44:34

Netflix. But Shakespeare would have

44:39

penned some of his poetry. He also wrote

44:41

narrative poetry as well.

44:42

I did ventriloquism during lockdown. So

44:44

that's actually better, I think, than writing

44:47

poems is better than ventriloquism. Yeah.

44:49

I mean, politely, I would say, you lost your

44:51

mind. You

44:54

were clearing stones out of fields. I was thinking

44:56

about it before a lot. Yeah.

45:01

So we have the great sonnets, 154 of

45:03

them. Can people read them and buy them? Are

45:06

they published? The sonnets were published in 1609. Yeah.

45:09

And it's very likely Shakespeare oversaw

45:12

the publication of them. So he wanted them out

45:13

there. Great. All

45:15

right. Well, that brings us to act four, Shakespeare

45:18

the businessman. And I feel like we should probably

45:20

play the intro music to The Apprentice because that's obviously

45:23

inspired by Romeo Juliet. But I'm

45:25

not allowed to for copyright reasons.

45:28

I suppose far at the beginning, we talked about

45:31

John Shakespeare being a bit of a hustler, you

45:33

know, middle class trying to work his way up with

45:36

always sort of slightly Delboy

45:38

esque trying to get this always with all the plans.

45:42

Shakespeare, William Shakespeare seems like

45:44

he's better at it than his dad. Is

45:46

that fair? I think he may have had more opportunity,

45:48

but he owned quite a bit of property.

45:51

He had some properties in Stratford and he had some acres

45:54

as well. Just before he left London,

45:56

he bought a property in the Blackfriars,

45:59

which is where his indoor theater was.

46:01

It was where the Tempest and the Wintersdale

46:04

first debuted, for example. It's also,

46:06

well, it's been said that he would

46:08

chase after people who owed him money

46:10

as well.

46:12

So he cared about money. He was commercially

46:14

savvy.

46:15

Yeah. I think one thing we know is in 1604,

46:18

his lawyers chased someone for 35 shillings,

46:21

10 pence. It's not a lot. So

46:23

he's quite like, you owe me.

46:27

The less surprising thing would be his investment in the

46:29

Globe Theater, where you work now. So

46:32

can you tell us more about how that comes into being?

46:33

Yeah. So originally, Shakespeare's

46:36

company were performing across the river

46:38

in Shoreditch in a purpose, the

46:40

first purpose built play house, which was called

46:42

the theater. Just in case

46:44

you got confused.

46:47

The lease ran out. They got kicked out. And so they

46:49

decided to build the Globe, but in order to build the

46:51

Globe, yet to invest in the actual playhouse

46:54

itself. So he was a sharer

46:56

in the company. He was a house playwright,

46:59

but then he became a householder as

47:01

well, which means that he would have made money

47:04

at the box office. That was very commercially

47:06

savvy, but it was the only way that really you

47:09

could build a Globe, which was finally emerged in 1599. It

47:11

was a very technologically

47:14

advanced theater. It was considered one

47:16

of the most exciting theaters

47:18

that got built. But

47:18

there are only two, so. Well, there are

47:20

a few more. At that

47:21

point, the Swan, the Rose, the Swan.

47:26

Yeah, eventually they had quite a bit of technology.

47:28

You know, they had special effects, fireworks and

47:31

thunderstorms and that kind of thing. But

47:33

they also had a cannon. And for, I

47:35

think it's the 29th of June, 1613. I remember it well.

47:40

They were doing a production of Henry VIII,

47:43

and that cannon went off and sparks caught

47:45

the thatch on fire and the whole

47:47

thing came down. But fortunately,

47:49

nobody was killed. But one guy's pants

47:52

caught

47:52

fire. And

47:55

don't forget that. Yeah, apparently

47:57

someone put it out with some ale. us

48:00

in a ballad. Ayl keeps emerging because

48:02

of theme.

48:05

But was it good quality

48:08

Ayl? No, probably not.

48:10

That's what you need to know, isn't it?

48:11

Then they rebuilt the globe,

48:14

the second globe, 1614, with

48:16

a tile roof this time. But Shakespeare

48:19

didn't invest in that one.

48:20

That's interesting. So the second time around, either

48:23

he'd lost money and gone, oh, I've been burned, literally,

48:25

I've been burned before. Or he...

48:28

He's just

48:28

ready to go home, I guess. Yeah, yeah, I guess.

48:31

Nobody really knows why.

48:32

Interesting. So I can't unset

48:34

fire to the theatre. Richard, what's the most dramatic

48:36

thing that's happened at one of your gigs? I was

48:38

doing a show, Christ on a Bike, which was about my relationship

48:41

with Jesus, and I think just at a bit where I was

48:44

being the most blasphemous. All the lights were

48:46

down in the theatre.

48:50

And it wasn't someone messing around. It actually happened.

48:52

There's been a few fire alarms. I fell

48:54

off when we talked about this stage being precarious. I've fallen

48:56

off a stage in Tring, which was quite high, but

48:59

I bounced, luckily. I'm not going

49:02

to risk it here, so if you fall off

49:04

here, you'll roll down the stairs. I mean, it'd be

49:06

funny, but it would definitely kill me. Yeah,

49:08

there's not been... There's been a fire alarm,

49:11

but there was no fire. So

49:13

I don't think I've had anything... I like the fact God

49:15

intervened at one point. No,

49:18

I've said a lot against

49:20

him, so he probably just got a point where, oh,

49:22

that's enough.

49:24

The most I can do is turn the lights off. That's my only power.

49:26

Bernie could

49:29

properly get him. He'll bite his time. So, 1614 was

49:32

the rebuilding of the globe that Shakespeare

49:39

did not invest, which I suggest then

49:42

he's back home. He's gone back to Stratford for

49:44

Avon. So what's the last stages

49:46

of his life like?

49:47

Well, I mean, some people think

49:50

he came out of retirement slightly

49:52

to write, to co-write the two noble kinsmen,

49:55

and Henry VIII would have been his last play.

49:57

So it's his last play?

49:58

Yeah, not the tempest. which is what

50:00

everybody thinks. Really? Yeah, it wasn't his

50:03

last.

50:03

I love the way you were like, well, I'd love

50:05

to say this. He is crucial information.

50:07

Did I give that away? Sorry. Um,

50:10

Well, he's the last good one, though. Well, maybe.

50:12

The last, maybe it's solely authored, maybe.

50:15

Yeah.

50:15

He moved into New Place, which

50:17

is, um, the second largest house,

50:20

or was second largest house in Stratford. Pretty expensive.

50:22

That's proper marketing. Yeah.

50:24

Old place, new place. Yeah. The

50:26

other theatre.

50:26

No, you're right. This is what we want. You're right. The other

50:28

place. Yeah. New place. Yeah. He

50:30

didn't really get involved, like his dad was, in civic

50:33

duty. He was more interested in sort of preserving

50:35

his, his own legacy, as well

50:37

as his financial interests. And

50:40

some people think he might have been even a little

50:42

miserly towards the end. I don't

50:44

like to think so. I mean, I don't know. Who knows? Um,

50:47

but, uh, there was a story that, there

50:49

was a huge fire in Stratford, I think it was around 1614, and

50:53

that provoked sort of, um, land

50:55

enclosures, and that somehow, Shakespeare would

50:57

have been an advantage for that, and,

51:00

uh, the poor would have been a disadvantage, quite

51:02

significantly. But, I just

51:05

don't know.

51:05

He hates the poor. Ah,

51:08

that's not what I'm saying. It's official. William

51:11

Shakespeare. Bastard. No,

51:13

no. Alright, maybe

51:15

not. Okay. Um, not

51:17

necessarily miserly, but certainly

51:20

self-interested. Self-interested, yeah. Self-interested

51:22

William Shakespeare died on the 23rd of April, 1616, which

51:26

might have been his birthday. Yeah. May

51:29

not have been, but certainly birthday week. Yeah.

51:32

He was 52. Uh,

51:35

Richard, how do you think he died? Did

51:37

his coat of arms fall on him when he got spiked through the head

51:39

by the spear? If only.

51:42

If only. If only. If

51:44

only. That would be a lovely sort of stupid death, wouldn't

51:46

it, for the horrible histories. Um, no,

51:50

he sort of, he went against type a little bit. He

51:52

got, he got hammered. He got drunk.

51:55

That's weird. With his old drinking funny. Yeah.

51:58

Ben Johnson. And another fella called my... Michael

52:00

Drake through. He went for a boozy night out, and

52:02

he had to hang over from hell, and it killed

52:05

him. That's what they say. Some people say that.

52:07

Yes, yeah. It could have been anything. In

52:09

fact, it's true. Let's go with that. It's true. All

52:13

right. Maybe the next one. But the story goes. It's

52:16

a good story. So what does Will's will, the

52:18

last Will and Testament of Will, Shakespeare, what

52:21

is it? I'm

52:21

sure he would have been really aware of the punning

52:23

as he was writing

52:24

his will. Yeah. What

52:26

does it tell him? Well, you know, who's he

52:28

leaving stuff to?

52:30

Well, you said he didn't care about the poor, but

52:32

he left 10 pounds

52:33

to the poor. Oh, that's nice.

52:35

Is that good? Is that a lot? A huge

52:38

amount, but it's the math. Okay, so he's bastard. Tell me.

52:41

His lawyer got 13 pounds,

52:44

six showings, and he had-

52:45

His lawyer got more than the poor. Lawyer's

52:48

a lot of work.

52:50

The bulk of his property was left

52:52

to his daughters. Okay. And he

52:54

weirdly left his clothes to his sister,

52:57

Joan.

53:00

She could have sold and made some money

53:02

if he had really nice clothes.

53:05

And then of course we know famously, he

53:07

left his second best bed to his wife, Anne.

53:10

And of course a lot of people think that that means he

53:12

didn't really care about her very much or it was slightly

53:14

insulting, but a lot of the phrasing

53:16

of Will's at that time talks about the best this,

53:18

and it was just a way of designating something. It

53:20

didn't necessarily mean it was the second

53:23

best. Yeah, it did. We

53:25

don't. But then of course- He's been quoted

53:27

the second best. That doesn't mean it's the second

53:29

best. It doesn't mean it's the third best bed.

53:32

My first best bed? I was buried with me

53:34

though, so no one can- Buried

53:37

in a bed, I can't hear. What a great coffin there would

53:39

be.

53:39

I mean, some people think that the best bed is

53:42

the one you give to your guests. The second best

53:44

is the one that you sleep in yourself. So it could have been

53:46

their bed.

53:46

I'd rather have both beds. That's right.

53:50

And the house and stuff. And the money.

53:53

She raised a hand. I agree, I agree.

53:55

I mean, honestly-

53:57

He's not very endearing in the

53:59

will to- to his wife, but to

54:01

his fellow players, you know, Burbage

54:04

and Hemings and Condole, he leaves him some money.

54:06

And he also leaves him money to buy morning rings.

54:08

That's a really intimate gesture, which tells

54:11

you something about the relationship that theatre companies

54:12

have. He leaves money for them to buy rings

54:15

to mourn him. Mm. That's a really, yeah,

54:17

morning rings. That's quite big-headed, no? Okay,

54:22

well, we've come to the end of his life.

54:24

William Shakespeare is dead, we've killed him off, and

54:26

we've come to Act 5. This is about

54:28

the first folio and the legacy. But what is the

54:30

first folio, Farah?

54:32

So the first folio is the first

54:34

collected edition of Shakespeare's

54:36

plays. So prior to that, Shakespeare's plays were

54:39

published in single format called

54:41

quartos. Some of them are

54:44

kind of considered bad quartos, and he

54:46

didn't necessarily oversee the publishing

54:48

of those. But the folio,

54:50

it refers to Mr. William Shakespeare's

54:53

comedies, histories, and tragedies. And

54:55

it was edited and put together

54:57

by Hemings and Condole, who were his best friends

54:59

in the company. It's pretty trustworthy.

55:02

There are 18 plays that have never

55:05

seen the light of day. So without the

55:07

first folio, we wouldn't have those plays. We

55:09

wouldn't have The Tempest. We

55:12

wouldn't have Comedy of Errors. We wouldn't

55:14

have Twelfth Night. We wouldn't have

55:16

the Scottish play. Oh, really? Yeah,

55:18

there's only one edition of those plays. It kind

55:20

of gives you a full picture of Shakespeare's

55:23

career. If we didn't have it, we would have

55:25

a very different Shakespeare.

55:27

And we think it's published

55:29

in November.

55:30

November 1623. So this is the

55:32

400th anniversary. Yay.

55:35

Yay. Can we have a cheer for the first

55:38

folio?

55:38

You

55:44

absolute nerds. You

55:47

just cheered a book. What's

55:49

wrong with you? No, it is good. There's one in here.

55:51

There's one in the building today. There is a gorgeous

55:53

copy.

55:54

One of the very few. How many in

55:56

circulation in the world? I don't got

55:58

I mean... 235, I

56:01

think.

56:02

83 in the United States in the folder.

56:04

Okay. So there's one in this very

56:07

building. So if it goes missing,

56:09

we know who to blame, Richard. And

56:13

that's a huge artistic legacy he leaves behind,

56:15

but actually it's amazing. If we didn't have that folio, we'd have

56:18

half of his plays. As you said before, Richard, there

56:20

might be some missing. Who's going to curate

56:22

your masterworks? Yeah, I don't know. I think

56:24

it might be. I might be in trouble. I haven't made any friends.

56:29

I'm not sure if I've got copies of most of my copies, to

56:31

be honest. It might

56:33

be more lust than Shakespeare's ones. Yeah.

56:36

Yeah. My wife, maybe. I'm

56:38

planning on her outliving me. I'm

56:43

giving her my second best bet. My

56:48

blog, which I've written every day for 22 years, is

56:50

in the British Library. So

56:52

that might be something. So

56:55

you sort of never know, do you? No. I

56:58

mean, because it's sort of actually better

57:00

off being a sort of middling, unknown person, and

57:02

then you're writing about more interesting things, and

57:04

it might be more interesting to see. You might be

57:06

the voice of the 21st century. It might be. So

57:09

Farah, I mean, the first folio is published

57:11

in 1623. It's been edited

57:14

and put together by his friends. We trust it. It's got

57:16

all these wonderful plays in it. It does it automatically

57:19

and immediately transform Shakespeare into the

57:21

genius that we know today. You know, Mr. Shakespeare,

57:24

the greatest playwright in world history.

57:26

Yeah, no, I don't think it happens immediately. I

57:28

mean, I think it's something that's kind of a slow burn. It happens

57:31

over time. When Shakespeare retired,

57:34

the kind of writing he was doing was

57:36

kind of being outmoded, and other

57:38

playwrights like John Fletcher were coming on board. And,

57:41

you know, Shakespeare's career was

57:43

kind of maybe flailing. Maybe

57:46

that's why he retired. And

57:49

I often describe it as sort

57:51

of what Pulp Fiction did for John Travolta's

57:53

career, and that's what the folio

57:55

kind of does. It brings Shakespeare back into the

57:57

imagination, and people get really excited about

57:59

that. Shakespeare as you move particularly into the

58:02

restoration period. But then because

58:05

they're all in print, they've become more scrutinizable.

58:08

And so people, even though John Dryden,

58:10

for example, loved Shakespeare, he

58:12

also found him sometimes insipid, as

58:15

he called it, or full of too much bum-bassed.

58:20

And also his plays were kind of criticized

58:22

a bit in this time in the restoration period

58:25

for implausible plots, which of course

58:27

Shakespeare didn't invent many of his plots. That's

58:30

a great defense. Don't blame

58:32

me, I stole them. But also, that's

58:34

supernatural. Yeah, yeah, that's

58:37

true. The high-refhaning in the ghost. Yeah, exactly.

58:40

If you pay for a ghost costume, you've got to use it. You've

58:42

got to use it. So Dryden

58:44

is the poet laureate in the 1660s. By

58:47

the 1700s, that's when we get

58:49

the kind of burnished Shakespeare.

58:50

That is. Shakespeare gets a whole

58:53

new lease on life, and he becomes

58:55

sort of lauded as

58:58

the nation's poet. And you see

59:00

a whole different approach

59:03

to Shakespeare. It becomes worship, and statues

59:05

start emerging all over the country.

59:07

Have you ever heard of David Garrick?

59:09

Yeah, it's Garrick Theatre. Yeah. So

59:12

yeah, I don't know much about him. He

59:14

had

59:14

a big Jubilee celebration

59:17

in Stratford, and they

59:19

wanted to bring, you know, put Stratford on the map

59:21

as a literary pilgrimage site, and

59:24

erect another statue to Shakespeare. But

59:26

no Shakespeare play was actually performed

59:28

during that period. Yeah, they did a three-day

59:30

Shakespeare Jubilee, and forgot to put any

59:32

play there. The

59:34

nuance window!

59:40

We covered all sorts of things about William Shakespeare, and I

59:42

think it's time now for the nuance window.

59:45

This is the part of the show where the spotlight

59:47

falls on Professor Farah, as she tells

59:49

us something we need to know about Shakespeare and his

59:52

legacy. So without much further ado, Professor

59:54

Farah, the nuance window, please.

59:55

Thank you. So, Ben Johnson

59:57

said that Shakespeare was not of an age.

1:00:00

but for all time. I agree,

1:00:03

but I guess this means Shakespeare is universal,

1:00:05

right? His plays appeal to seemingly

1:00:08

everyone, which would make him the greatest writer

1:00:10

in the world, in history, in

1:00:12

fact. The critic Harold Bloom went

1:00:14

so far as to say, Shakespeare invented

1:00:16

us humans. This would make Shakespeare

1:00:19

a God. Or as David

1:00:21

Garrett said in 1769, the God

1:00:23

of our idolatry. Hmm,

1:00:26

if this is true,

1:00:27

why is it that Shakespeare, whose

1:00:29

plays speak to different experiences

1:00:31

across time and geography, can

1:00:34

still feel inaccessible and exclusive

1:00:37

to so many? At what point

1:00:40

in the history of his reception did

1:00:42

he become the unassailable beacon

1:00:44

of English civility and culture? An

1:00:47

identity that is still very much woven

1:00:49

into the way we perform, teach, and

1:00:52

talk about Shakespeare to this day. In his

1:00:54

own time, Shakespeare, as we've heard,

1:00:57

was a middle-class playwright from Warwickshire

1:00:59

who came to London to become part of a thrilling

1:01:02

but scrappy and unrefined enterprise

1:01:05

of making theater. He made plays

1:01:08

not as a lone

1:01:08

literary genius in Stratford,

1:01:10

but with a company of players in Southwark.

1:01:13

Something happened, though, in the 18th

1:01:16

century, the period of enlightenment,

1:01:18

when Shakespeare was first christened the bard,

1:01:21

referred to as a native genius,

1:01:24

celebrated for his particular English

1:01:26

sublimity and wit, called

1:01:28

an instrument of nature, his

1:01:30

talent viewed as natural and

1:01:33

rooted in his English heritage.

1:01:34

Statues

1:01:36

and busts appear that seem to

1:01:38

whitewash his image, his face chiseled

1:01:40

in the neoclassical fashion. The

1:01:43

messiness of theater and collaboration

1:01:46

redacted from his work, and

1:01:48

he's hypothesized as being apart

1:01:51

from every other mortal, as one

1:01:53

minister argued. This was

1:01:55

at a time when English culture

1:01:57

was getting a makeover, a heightened appreciation

1:01:59

of the world, and a initiation of art, literature,

1:02:02

and music emerges, along

1:02:04

with theories of aesthetics

1:02:05

and taste,

1:02:07

all leveraged as the chief symbols of

1:02:09

a civilized society.

1:02:11

Harmless, right?

1:02:12

Not when you consider the simultaneous

1:02:15

escalation of maritime commerce

1:02:18

and the full realization of England's

1:02:20

role in the slave trade and empire.

1:02:23

How do we reconcile the fact that Shakespeare

1:02:25

is being lauded as a native genius

1:02:27

while Britain was enslaving and colonizing people

1:02:29

overseas? So maybe best

1:02:32

to topple that icon then and go back

1:02:34

to Shakespeare's words and stories. We

1:02:36

might find troubling things there sometimes,

1:02:39

but nothing we can't grapple with if we don't

1:02:41

mind a bit of discomfort.

1:02:43

Thank you very much. Thoughts,

1:02:46

Richard? Yeah, well, it's very good. I don't know

1:02:48

any of the opinions of that. Yeah,

1:02:55

I mean, I always found him

1:02:57

as a kid, like impenetrable and, you

1:02:59

know, and being forced

1:03:08

to learn it and study

1:03:10

it before you could even understand any

1:03:12

of it. I mean, I did measure for measure for A-level,

1:03:14

and I found that a slog, I have to say.

1:03:17

You know, I think him being held up

1:03:19

as this beacon, it probably

1:03:22

wouldn't be what he would want. I

1:03:25

mean, he would love it, but,

1:03:27

you know, it changes it to a different, to make

1:03:29

it holy and make it, you know, this

1:03:32

unchangeable thing. It's sort of, I think, against

1:03:35

the nature. But yeah, that's interesting. Yeah.

1:03:38

Yeah, I mean, I've just enjoyed learning

1:03:40

sort of about, scrappy is a good word.

1:03:42

Yeah, it's really scrappy. He sort of was, he

1:03:45

worked hard, he tried stuff. Yeah. Not

1:03:47

really works. It's exciting and thrilling, and actually the urgency

1:03:50

of his moment is in his plays,

1:03:52

and it's so resonant with the things

1:03:54

that we're grappling with today. And I think

1:03:56

if we just see him as this benign genius all the

1:03:58

time, we miss so much. that's in

1:04:00

those texts. Yeah.

1:04:03

Very good. Just

1:04:06

saying. So

1:04:08

what do you know now?

1:04:15

It's time now for our... Quick!

1:04:18

Well, Greg called us. So what do you know now? This

1:04:20

is our quick five quiz for Richard to see how much he's

1:04:22

learned. Richard, I

1:04:25

feel like we've had a good time. Oh, yeah.

1:04:27

That's a bit mean to you sometimes. Sorry. I do notice. It's

1:04:30

the adrenaline. Sorry. But

1:04:33

it's been really interesting. So do you

1:04:35

feel like... You know Shakespeare and do you feel confident

1:04:37

in this quiz? I do. Apart from me, it didn't

1:04:39

exist. So

1:04:42

I'll answer your questions. This was

1:04:45

a booking error. He's fancy making it. We

1:04:48

should have got to working. All

1:04:51

right. Not bacon, no. Not the

1:04:53

olive oxford. Let's do a quiz. All right. Here

1:04:55

we go. Ten questions. Question one. On what

1:04:57

date is supposedly with both

1:05:00

Shakespeare's birth and death date? April

1:05:02

the 23rd. Very good. Very

1:05:04

good. Question two. What was the name of Shakespeare's wife

1:05:07

with whom he had three children? Anne Hathaway. Not

1:05:09

that one. Question

1:05:12

three. What was Shakespeare's first job after moving

1:05:14

from Stratford upon Avon to London? God,

1:05:17

it wasn't his name. I

1:05:22

really wanted to get ten out of ten as well. What

1:05:25

was he doing? He joined what? He

1:05:27

joined the Merchant Navy. No! Who

1:05:31

went around the world. He joined... He was

1:05:33

an actor. Yeah.

1:05:40

He put me off. That's his only job. Sure.

1:05:44

Still. Question four.

1:05:46

Before changing its name to the King's Men,

1:05:49

what was the name of Shakespeare's theatre troupe? The...

1:05:54

The... Yeah. Make him

1:05:56

out of the... The Chamberlain's

1:05:58

Men. Yeah. I'll have you have a good one. No one chamber

1:06:00

lives there. The

1:06:03

chamber pop boys, no. Question

1:06:06

five, what event might have led Shakespeare

1:06:08

to take up a sonic lighting? The plague.

1:06:11

Yeah, it said plague in the 50s and 90s. Question

1:06:14

six, what happened to the original Globe Theatre in 1613? It

1:06:17

was burnt down by air cannon during

1:06:19

their performance of Henry VIII. Oh, good knowledge.

1:06:22

A thousand-stop bomb. A

1:06:24

round of applause. That was organic. Question

1:06:27

seven, what insulting nickname did writer

1:06:30

Robert Green give to a young, starting out,

1:06:32

William Shakespeare? Upstart Crow. He was upstart

1:06:34

Crow. Question eight, according to a local priest,

1:06:37

how did Shakespeare die? Well,

1:06:39

he was drinking with his mates in the

1:06:41

pub. And unfortunately, I should

1:06:43

have made this joke at the time, he wasn't barred.

1:06:46

Thank you.

1:06:50

You should hurry, everyone. Question

1:06:55

nine, what was unusual about the Shakespeare Festival

1:06:57

organised by David Garrick in 1769? There

1:07:00

was no Shakespeare play there. Kind

1:07:04

of Shakespeare play, I reckon.

1:07:05

I'm joking, I like Shakespeare.

1:07:09

And question ten, this for a perfect ten-hour turn. In

1:07:11

what year was Mr William Shakespeare's comedies,

1:07:14

histories and tragedies, also known as the first folio,

1:07:16

first published? Well, just have

1:07:19

to take 400 years off of this

1:07:21

year. 1623, November 1623.

1:07:26

Richard Haring, ten out of

1:07:27

ten.

1:07:37

Well done, Richard, very good.

1:07:40

I mean, I really enjoyed that. Do

1:07:43

you enjoy Shakespeare more now, you know this stuff? I

1:07:46

mean, I loved him already. Thank you.

1:07:50

Yeah, but no, it is very interesting. And

1:07:53

also, I think that fact that he's like

1:07:55

a working class man made good,

1:07:57

I think is what's really... Middle class, probably. Not

1:08:00

posh. Not pom-pom-pom-pom. Not the Earl of

1:08:02

Oxford. They're not that, you know. It's

1:08:05

a sort of inspiring story of what Britain should

1:08:07

be and is unfortunately becoming less

1:08:09

like again. Yeah. But, you know, it's good,

1:08:11

yeah. Listener, if you want more Richard

1:08:13

in your life, of course you do. Check out our

1:08:15

episode on Stonehenge as one of our bestest.

1:08:18

For more theatre history, we have episodes on superstar

1:08:20

actresses, Nell Gwyn, Josephine Baker

1:08:22

and Sarah Bernhardt. All really good

1:08:24

fun. And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave

1:08:27

a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe

1:08:29

to Your Dead To Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode

1:08:32

because we do these sneaky specials sometimes that

1:08:34

just come out of nowhere like this one. But

1:08:37

all that's left for me to say is a huge thank you. First,

1:08:39

to our wonderful hosts, the Shakespeare

1:08:42

North Playhouse up here in Tocklott.

1:08:43

Thank you so much. Whoo!

1:08:52

Secondly, to our gorgeous audience, thank you so

1:08:54

much, audience, to give yourself a round of applause.

1:08:59

And then of course, in History Corner, we have

1:09:01

the Queen of the Dramatic Arts, Professor Farah

1:09:04

Karim-Cooper. Thank you so much, all.

1:09:05

Whoo!

1:09:12

And in Comedy Corner, we have the King of Comedy himself,

1:09:14

Richard Herring. Thank you, Richard. Whoo!

1:09:22

And to you lovely listener, join me next time

1:09:25

as we perform a new history play with another

1:09:27

troupe of players. But for now, I'm off to go and

1:09:29

design the Jenner Coat of Arms. I'm thinking

1:09:31

a weasel in a tuxedo being loaded into a

1:09:33

circus cannon. Perfect. Bye!

1:09:48

What purpose I did you say to me with research by John Mason?

1:09:50

He's in here somewhere, hopefully. Hi, John! It

1:09:55

was written by Emmy Rose Post-Dibfellow. Over

1:09:57

there!

1:09:59

I'm a nagoo

1:10:01

and me

1:10:04

The audio producer

1:10:07

with Steve Hankey

1:10:10

production coordinator with Kaitlin Hobbs

1:10:15

It was produced by Emmy Rose Price Goodfellow

1:10:17

and me our senior producer was Emma Nagoose, you're not getting

1:10:19

a second one and our executive

1:10:22

editor was Chris Ledyard over there

1:10:23

Whoo!

1:10:28

I've run out of words so I think

1:10:30

that's the end of the thing now

1:10:32

Bye I'm

1:10:34

about 2.30 in the morning

1:10:56

and every time in that moment of waking I would see the man

1:10:58

standing in the corner

1:10:59

It here, uncanny Hey,

1:11:02

her three, she was just walking non-responsive, without talking, without

1:11:05

blinking it seemed like something had just been gone terrifying

1:11:08

real life encounters with the supernatural what I saw

1:11:10

in that house frightens me and I wish

1:11:12

I'd never seen it listen

1:11:15

on me please Hans if you dare I'm

1:11:18

not going to be able to see you I'm not

1:11:20

going to be able to see you I'm not going to

1:11:22

be able to see you

1:11:23

I'm not going to be able to see you I'm

1:11:26

not going to be able to see you I can't I

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