Exploring English:
Shakespeare

WEEK 1: SHAKESPEARE AND HIS WORLD

STEP 1.4

TRANSCRIPT

ANTHONY In the videos in the next steps, we join Shakespearean actor and
director Ben Crystal, as he goes to some of the important places in
Shakespeareʼs life.

BEN CRYSTAL This is Stratford-upon-Avon, a town that gets millions of visitors a

year, thousands per day and they all come for one reason: William
Shakespeare. Iʼm Ben Crystal, a Shakespearian actor and director.
Iʼm here to find out what it was about this small town in the centre of
England, which produced one of the finest ever playwrights in the
English language, and why people are still visiting Stratford-upon-
Avon 400 years after Shakespeareʼs death.

ACTORS ʻWhen shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain.

When the hurly burly is done, when the battle is lost and won.ʼ

JANA KUKLA I just love Shakespeare, always have, as a little kid too.

YICHUN CHAO Romeo and Juliet – It was a love story and it was very romantic.

ROSE HACKL He has the ability to show into the heart into the soul of the human
beings.

RAND & GERALDINE They are kind of cross cultural you know. Everyone and
everywhere you go people put on Shakespearean shows. Thereʼs a
timelessness to it.

BEN CRYSTAL Iʼm starting my journey at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford where in
1564, Shakespeare was baptised and then 52 years later, laid to
rest. The words you can see in black and white are actually written
on his grave. Theyʼre a curse warning us never to move his bones.
This bust was created soon after Shakespeareʼs death – itʼs
believed to be one of the best likenesses of him. The next part of
my quest takes me to Shakespeareʼs family home.

LISA PETER This is the house where Shakespeare was born in April 1564, just
upstairs in one of the bedrooms.

BEN CRYSTAL They seem to be in a big nice house. They seem to be doing well.
What did his father do?

LISA PETER Shakespeareʼs father was actually a glove maker. And he did not
only live in this house, he also worked here.

BEN CRYSTAL He worked here?

Exploring English: Shakespeare 1  

© British Council 2015
      
Exploring English:
Shakespeare

LISA PETER Yes, so itʼs not just a family home its also his workplace. His father
was a craftsman, and William Shakespeare probably helped his
father in the glove workshop so he would have learned the trade of
a glove maker himself. And he also managed to get quite a lot of
references into his plays about gloves and leather making.

BEN CRYSTAL Romeo and Juliet: ʻOh that I were a glove upon that hand.ʼ

Weʼre pretty sure Shakespeare came to school here – at King

Edwards, just around the corner from the family home. Williamʼs
father was a town councillor and was entitled to send his son here
for free.

DR MILTON What do you think of that?

BEN CRYSTAL Oh my goodness! What type of education would he have received

here?

DR MILTON The teaching was all about Latin and Greek. Translating Latin and
Greek into English and writing speeches in Latin. Writing stories in
Latin.

BEN CRYSTAL Would you say the education he received here shows in his plays,
in his poetry?

DR MILTON Absolutely undoubtedly. The plays are full of all those classical
references, and all those great stories from Latin and Greek
classical literature.

BEN CRYSTAL Most leading playwrights of the time went to University, but by the
time Shakespeare left St Edwards at 15, his father had run into
financial difficulties.

Did it harm Shakespeareʼs career as a playwright that he didnʼt go

to university?

DR MILTON Well we think perhaps the opposite. At university you were taught
how to write plays so his style when he came into writing plays was
completely new. The text had that lovely lyrical style. It was
beautiful poetry, and all the stories that heʼd learnt here at the
school were put into his plays. He certainly broke through this
whole formal way of making plays, and suddenly the whole of
theatre is opened up for everybody to come and see, a new way of
looking at theatre.

BEN CRYSTAL Stratford in Shakespeareʼs time was a busy place. It was a market
town, people would have travelled far and wide to be here, bringing
their life stories with them. If Shakespeare heard them they would
have fired his imagination and been great ground for playwriting.

At 18 William married a local woman, Ann Hathaway.

Exploring English: Shakespeare 2  

© British Council 2015
      
Exploring English:
Shakespeare

DR CHOUHAN Anne was three months pregnant on their wedding day, so six
months later she gave birth to their first child, a daughter, Susanna.
And two years after Susanna, twins were born, Hamnet and Judith,
a boy and a girl. So heʼs twenty two, and heʼs got three children
and a wife. Itʼs a lot of pressure on him. And between having his
three children, and turning up in London a few years later in the
1590ʼs, Shakespeare goes missing. There is no record of him. So
those years in between are called the lost years and there are lots
of strange ideas about what Shakespeare did during those lost
years.

BEN CRYSTAL What are some of your favorite ideas about where he went, what
happened to him over these years?

DR CHOUHAN I think that William was inspired by travelling groups of actors who
came to visit Stratford-upon-Avon when he was living here, and I
think that he saw some of their plays when they set up in the
streets and in the taverns and he thought thatʼs for me and travelled
to London with them.

BEN CRYSTAL Did Stratford have a great influence on his writing?

DR CHOUHAN Stratford had a really important influence on Shakespeareʼs writing.

He was inspired by the tradespeople he saw here, the
schoolmasters, and especially the countryside. He writes a lot
about trees and forests and flowers and herbs in all of his plays, so
he is inspired by all of the things that are happening around him.

BEN CRYSTAL There are so many questions about Shakespeare that weʼll never
get answers to, but coming here to Stratford, seeing where he grew
up, where he went to school, where he was buried. It brings the
man that most of us were introduced to on the page in a book, back
to life.

Exploring English: Shakespeare 3  

© British Council 2015