And people do enjoy the plays at completely different levels. And, likewise, they enjoy the authorship question… at completely different levels.

Moments are incredible, but in my fantasy mind I see a Globe company which is renowned throughout the world for what it does with pure storytelling. So that people come and say: it’s not just...

Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth.

Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the...

But I don’t sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.

So there’s a lot of people tied into believing that the traditional response to the authorship question. In terms of actors, some people get very angry about it.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of...

There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible.

It just came into my soul that the time and place was changing and that I wasn’t the right leader for the Globe anymore.

But to me I find Francis Bacon the most likely candidate to be the author.

Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it’s true, it’s very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say… it would...

If something happened to Erin or Erin’s job, they would be in serious trouble.

Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.

You know, I don’t think you need to be educated to be a great actor.

You would no sooner ask me to play Shakespeare away from the Globe than you’d ask some rock star to make his new record on eight-track tape.

I think that was very important to Bacon… personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it...

This situation has given them an opportunity to really set themselves up.

I think the most absolute truth is only as good as the time that it’s told. It’s only as good as where the person, the receiver of that, is.

So whoever you believe wrote the plays, they felt it was important to mask them, to mask the identity, the personality of the author.

In terms of pure acting, it’s a gift.

There’s a weak place in every plot, ladies and gentleman, (and) in this case, the weak place is the plot,

It’s an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.

It’s difficult for me to say, but I don’t think the sex scenes are particularly erotic.