I mean he first and foremost brings a very, very complex study of the human condition. And he
can make you laugh and he can make you cry. And he can make you consider political realities
in new ways. And he never dies. It’s always relevant. But for me, what was important about
Shakespeare was the fact that it all was in the words. All the action was in the words. All of the
humanity he was trying to share was in words. And in fact, in words that were designed in a
certain way. So I was interested in the design of Shakespeare’s words, and how that design led to
anybody saying those words a deeper understanding, a profound and deep understanding about
the human being they were portraying. And in fact that led me directly to thinking that if I were
to study the words of a so-called common walking man, and treat it and study it the way that I
treated and studied Shakespeare that I would find something inside of what we call a
commonplace person which could be on the stage. And not really in that way that you say, Truth
is stranger than fiction, but that someone in the course of an hour would come upon something
that was so meaningful to them that it could be heroic; and that it could capture the attention of
an audience. And so pretty much, Shakespeare led me right to my experiment. What I had was a
question that occupied me for a very long time. So I can tell you what the question was, and I can
tell you that even as I still practice around that question, it’s led me to another question that I
don’t even know how to work on. But the question I’ve been trying to answer since the first time
I ever picked up a Shakespearean text to speak it under the gaze of an authority on Shakespeare.
I had spoken some Shakespearean words in other informal ways; but the first time anybody was
sort of ever listening to me attempt to speak in Shakespeare was in 1972 or something like that.
And so the question that came from that was what is the relationship of language to identity?
And that’s what you and I have been talking about. And that question has occupied me for a long
time. And now I have a new question, which is, what is the gap between understanding and
action? And what does it take to bridge that gap? And I don’t know the answer to it. That’s the
question that I suspect will occupy me now for some years.