Interviewer: Where did you first encounter Shakespeare? Was it love at first sight? KB: It was not love at first sight. It was perplexity at first hearing. Standing up in a school classroom and being asked to read aloud from The Merchant of Venice and finding it makes no sense at all. So, that was good, because I realized, okay. Well, this is sometimes, and maybe often, what it’s like for other people. And here it is for me. And then, not long after that, I was taken by the school to a riotous production of Romeo & Juliet. A thousand thirteen-year-olds all watching a fight start at the beginning of the play. Sparks fly off the blades. And in the case of myself, a very beautiful young lady walks on as Juliet and that did it for me. The rest of the afternoon was just a riot of the audience responding to everything they saw. These thirteen-year-olds have no other agenda, but are they interested? Is their attention caught? And ours very much was, by the passion, and the violence, and the sex. Better to watch it or hear it or feel it than necessarily merely to read it.
Shakespeare in Cinema + (directed by) Kenneth Branagh
