Learn English through Shakespeare is everywhere | Christopher Gaze
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Hello.
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You've been eating Pop-Tarts.
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(Laughter)
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I resisted. It looks fantastic though.
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Well now, what a day we're having, absolutely inspirational, fantastic.
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I saw Romeo Dallaire remark on these geese earlier on,
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and I considered these geese, Canada geese.
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They're all over the world, you know.
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(Laughter)
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They're taking over the world. A bit like Shakespeare.
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Shakespeare surrounds us.
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The Shakespeare we're enormously familiar with,
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but the Shakespeare that we know and we don't know.
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And of course, every day, we're quoting Shakespeare but we don't know it.
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Shakespeare – We don't know a great deal about the man.
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What we know about him is generally through his works.
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He was a man, just like you and me,
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he lived his life, felt great joy and great sadness,
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tremendous success and great tragedy.
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In Canada – talk about Shakespeare surrounding us –
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we have the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario,
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that's the biggest theatre festival, I might add, in North America.
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We have... that's right!
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(Applause)
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We have Bard on the Beach Shakespeare here in Vancouver.
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We've got Shakespeare festivals in between. In America,
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Americans love their Shakespeare,
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they have Ashland, Oregon,
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lots of Shakespeare's festivals through America.
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You have The Globe in London,
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and, of course, The Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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So, Shakespeare is alive and well, but since you leapt out of bed this morning,
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and you've had this wonderful day here,
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I'm sure most of you are very much unaware
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that you've been quoting Shakespeare all day.
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Let me give you a bunch of examples.
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First of all, I want you to do something for a change.
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When I point at you and beckon you on,
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I want you to say, "Quoting Shakespeare".
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Now, come on, with all that energy from the Pop-Tarts,
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give it a go.
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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That's pretty good. Once more, even louder
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you cannot understand my argument and declare, "It's Greek to me", you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you claim to be, "More sinned against than sinning", you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you, "Recall your salad days", you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought,
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if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you've ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy,
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if you've been played fast and loose, been tongue-tied, a tower of strength,
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hoodwinked or in a pickle,
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if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity,
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insisted on fair play, slept not one wink,
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stood on ceremony, danced attendance on your lord and master,
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laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort
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or too much of a good thing.
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If you've seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise,
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why, be that as it may, the more fool you,
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for it is a foregone conclusion that you are,
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as good luck would have it...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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If you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage,
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if you think it is high time
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and that that is the long and the short of it, if you believe that the game is up
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and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood,
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if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play,
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if you have your teeth set on edge at one fell swoop without rhyme or reason,
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then, to give the devil his due,
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if the truth were known -- for surely you have a tongue in your head, you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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Even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing,
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if you wish I was as dead as a door-nail,
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if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate,
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a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then, by Jove!
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O Lord! Tut, tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens!
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But me no buts - it's all one to me, for you are...
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Audience: Quoting Shakespeare!
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There you are.
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(Applause)
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So, Shakespeare surrounds us.
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Let's look at the private man that I alluded to a moment ago.
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The private man,
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the playwright in London, the producer, the actor.
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There's a gorgeous little sonnet. A sonnet is a 14 line poem,
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and Shakespeare wrote over 150 of those.
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And this particular one – it's perhaps one of the best known pieces of poetry,
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I think, probably in the world –
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"Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day".
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Now generally this little piece of poetry
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is said, or recited, or written down, for great occasions,
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weddings, birthdays, celebrations.
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But there's a theory that in fact, nestling inside this poetry,
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if you think of it another way, Shakespeare, we didn't know,
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and the mystery that surrounds all that,
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that in fact, this little sonnet was a eulogy.
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Shakespeare had 3 children, one of them was a son.
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His little boy was called Hamnet,
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not Hamlet, this one is H-A-M-N-E-T.
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The other one H-A-M-L-E-T is a very good play he wrote. (Laughter)
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But his son was called Hamnet
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and he got word, when he was working away in London,
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that Hamnet was very sick.
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Now, here's the man, the man like you and me,
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living his life and now crisis hits.
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And of course he has to go. He has to go from London.
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If we were to drive from central London to Stratford-upon-Avon now,
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where his family were, that would probably take us, if we had a good run, a little over 90 minutes.
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But in those days, it was 3 days!
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So, Shakespeare took off and he got there,
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and when he got to Stratford,
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he was met by his family
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and he found out that his son was dead, buried.
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There was nothing left to do.
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But, what could he do apart from comfort his family?
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But to survive it, what was he going to do?
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You imagine the heartache.
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I like to imagine that perhaps, after everyone had gone to bed,
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he stayed up, with a candle and his quill pen.
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And he wrote and he did what Shakespeare could do best of all.
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Through words, he could express his feelings.
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And I like to think he wrote this little poem "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day",
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and he talks about eternity in the poem,
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and as long as men can breathe and eyes can see, this lives forever.
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That this froze little Hamnet in time in his mind,
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to be an immortal in Shakespeare's lifetime.
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Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
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Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
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Rough winds do break the darling buds of May,
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And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
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Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
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And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
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And every fair from fair sometime declines,
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By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
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But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
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Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
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Nor shall Death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
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When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
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So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
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So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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A eulogy? I don't know. It's beautiful.
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There's a mystery about it, as there is about so much of Shakespeare,
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and I think that's part of the magic of it all.
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Now is the winter of our discontent.
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How is the winter of our discontent?
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My goodness gracious! Look at Europe right now.
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Occupy Wall Street, occupy everywhere else...
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(Laughter)
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Well, it sounds positively Shakespearean,
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but in times like this,
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when there's so much going on in the world,
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and it's all so deeply complicated,
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this is a time, I think, that if we could skip back, skip forward 400 years
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that Shakespeare would thrive.
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This is a time for great initiative, great inspiration, great leadership.
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This is time for heroes, I think, to help to show us the way.
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Shakespeare was rich in heroes too.
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Look at Henry V – We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
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Wonderful stuff. And then,
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"Now is the winter of our discontent." Who was that?
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Richard, Duke of Gloucester. It's the opening line of Richard III.
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Richard III, what does he want?
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He wants trouble. He wants trouble and he doesn't care.
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He's willing to risk everything. Talk about being bold!
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His elder brother is the king, there's another brother in between.
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The king, he has two prince sons. So Richard, Duke of Gloucester,
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the younger brother, is never going to be king!
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Not unless something fantastic happens.
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But he's gonna force that. And he tells us all about it.
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of the top of Richard III, malevolent, dangerous,
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but nevertheless, we as an audience,
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he seduces us,
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we become complicit in his dreadful plans.
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And it's the most extraordinary feeling, sitting in the audience watching him,
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Richard, lay waste to all these people, and sitting there thinking,
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"Yes! Yes! Yes!" It's an awful feeling.
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(Laughter)
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Richard III, deformed, as he calls himself.
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The traditional withered left side, the crook back,
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"Now is the winter of our discontent.
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Made glorious summer by this son of York;
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And all the clouds that low'r'd upon our house.
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In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
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Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
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Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
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Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
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Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
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Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
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And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds
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To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
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He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
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To the lascivious pleasings of a lute.
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But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
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Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
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I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
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To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
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I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
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Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
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Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
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Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
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And that so lamely and unfashionable
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That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
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And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
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To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
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I am determined to prove a villain
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And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
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It has been a hard day's night
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and I've been working like a dog! (Laughter)
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It's been a hard day's night
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and I should be sleeping like a log!
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But when I get home to you, I find the things that you do
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will make me feel alright.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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So that, perhaps, was the Shakespeare you did not know.
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(Laughter)
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Tweet that!
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(Laughter)
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Thank you very much!
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(Applause)
