What is it that still appeals to me about Shakespeare’s theatre? Its exultation in language, its broad sweep, its outrageousness, its lack of pedantry and its wild fancy, its use of music, colour and action, its robustness, its naivety and unpretentiousness in establishing a simple contract with its audience: ‘On your imaginary forces work . . . once upon a time . . .’ The fact that it played so much to its audience, shared their space and had a vital physical contact with them; that it set out to give pleasure and yet dealt with momentous issues . . . These are just a few of the factors that have made Shakespeare’s theatre the most vital and important since Sophocles and Aristophanes. It’s a writers’ and actors’ theatre. It encourages a freewheeling mix of styles and conventions and is the antithesis of the well-made drawing-room drama. It’s fantastically liberating, and modern audiences can still respond to that and thrill to high-flown rhetoric as long as it’s made comprehensible.

There is no worldwide conspiracy to keep Shakespeare alive. He survives because actors want to go on performing him and audiences want to listen—no matter how often the plays are trotted out and no matter that most productions fall short of excellence. Indeed, a great many performances and productions of Shakespeare (including a fair number of my own) have been mediocre if not downright woeful. But we keep coming back because there is so much worth grappling with.

A few years back I read about a judge somewhere in the United States who gave young first offenders the option of so many hours’ community service or doing a Shakespeare workshop. Many of them opted for the latter, seeing it as a soft cop. When quizzed by a journalist as to the wisdom of this course, the judge explained: ‘Most of these kids come from poor, depressed areas. When they do a couple of weeks in the Shakespeare workshop they learn a lot about empathy, about team spirit, about creating something. They can be transformed by it.’ When the same journalist went on to interview a couple of the kids in the program, one said: ‘When I go out there in front of my teacher, my folks or my probation officer and I’m doing Mark Antony or Julius Caesar, I feel I’m doing something big, something classy . . . you learn a bit of self-respect, and once you start to respect yourself, you start to respect other people.’

Something big, something classy . . .

I guess that’s what I responded to at about the age of fourteen and why I go on responding nearly sixty years later. Judi Dench says her family used to speak of Shakespeare as ‘the gentleman who pays the rent’, and I guess I too have a lot to thank Shakespeare for; not just all those years of transport and delight, but a career, a living and a goal in life culminating in my own Shakespeare company. Despite the many ups and downs and scary patches, it has been a most thrilling and satisfying adventure.

Bell Shakespeare continues to be a happy and inspiring place to be, and I look forward each day to stepping into the office or the rehearsal room. I count myself extremely fortunate in the friends and colleagues who have shared the adventure with me so far and equally privileged to devote my time and energies to exploring and performing the works of the greatest dramatist who ever lived. I hope the preceding pages have succeeded in conveying something of Shakespeare’s continuing fascination for me, the mystery and power of his works.

I can finish on no better note than by quoting the words of his dear friends and publishers of the First Folio, John Heminges and Henry Condell:

Read him, therefore; and againe, and againe: And then if you doe not like him, surely you are in some manifest danger, not to understand him.