anenlighteningellipsis reblogged
You don’t become Shakespeare by sitting underneath a willow tree writing away with a feather. You become Shakespare by falling in love, and by drinking, and by having women and affairs and falling in love and breaking your heart, and watching other people falling in love and breaking their heart.
[In ‘The Shakespeare Code’] we do actually write him as massively intelligent. That kind of gets lost in the Liam Gallagher side of it. ‘Cause actually, he’s the one person ever who just looks at the Doctor and kind of knows who the Doctor is. Kind of works him out, studies him for a bit, gets him immediately. ‘Cause that’s surely what Shakespeare was like.
Any good writer simply understands human nature, that’s the only talent a writer ever needs to have. They don’t need to know A-stories and B-stories, and three-act-structures and the history of the original version of ‘The Tempest’ and stuff like that, they just need to know why people do what they do.
And that’s why Shakespeare’s plays are still performed, ‘cause everything Rosalind says in that forest is still true. “Men have died from time to time, worms have eaten them, but not for love”. The most cynical and most brilliant and true line ever written. And to have written that Shakespeare was just full of salt, and sweat and beer and dirt and ordinary people. That’s what he was.
[…] And that’s who Shakespeare is in the end. That’s who he is. He must have been. He must have been like that. He must have been that down-to-earth, he must have been that much of a laugh. He’s writing comedies - great, big, knockaround comedies with clowns and things like that - AND tragedies. Must have been.
Russell T Davies on Shakespeare. Toby Hadoke’s Who’s Round ep 124.