Cunk on Shakespeare (2016) - full transcript

This programme contains

some strong language.

400 years ago, this year,

the world famous play-writer William

Shakespeare stopped happening.

I've been studying Shakespeare ever since

I was asked to do this programme

and it turns out he's more than just a bald

man who could write with feathers.

And the story of whether he was best at writing

ever is more interesting than you'd imagine.

But why do we still talk about

Shakespeare?

We don't talk about Les Dennis

any more,

even though he's still alive

and hasn't done anything wrong.

Did Shakespeare write nothing but

boring gibberish with no relevance

to our modern world of Tinder

and Peri-Peri Fries?

Or does it just look, sound

and feel that way?

That's what I'm going on

a journey to find out.

About.

Along the way,

I'll probe Shakespeare's life,

study his Complete Works

and speak to Shakespearian experts

and actors.

Do you just learn the famous bits,

like "To be or not to be?"

Or do you learn all the bits

in-between, as well?

I have to learn all the bits

in between.

Are you fucking joking?

No, no, no.

I mean, it's big, but it takes

a bit of time...

Shut up.

So join me, Philomena Cunk,

as I go on a journey all the way into

into William Bartholomew Shakespeare,

the man they call

The King of the Bards.

Deep below Stratford And Avon, in a

secret location on Henley Street,

is a treasure trove

of Shakespearean proportions.

That looks really old. It is.

So, this book dates from 1600

and it has the records that

go back to 1558. Yeah.

It's written on the front

"Stratford-upon-Avon."

It's a bit wonky, in't it?

Like a... Suppose they didn't have

rulers, did they?

It's a very old book

that's made from animal skin

and then I'll just use the weights to keep...

It's sort of like waxy A4 paper, in't it?

It is a little bit waxy, yeah.

That's the, the, erm...

That's the juices of the animal...

Coming out, yeah.

And this is the page where we have

Shakespeare's baptism recorded.

And it's written in Latin, the

inscription... What does that say?

This baptism record is for William,

the son of John Shakespeare.

This is a bit like

Who Do You Think You Are?, isn't it?

It is in a way, yeah.

If you're tracing your family

history,

these are the records that will give

you the information you need.

But he'd, sort of, call it,

Who Dost Thou Thinkest Thou Art?

He might, yes.

And he'd go like that.

He may well have done, yes.

Flourish. Yeah.

This is the actual house

in which Shakespeare was born,

here, on our Planet Earth.

As a baby, Shakespeare showed

few signs of becoming

the most significant figure

in literary history,

so nobody bothered noting down

the details of his life.

That's why we can't be sure

about his date of birth

and don't know anything

about his childhood,

except that he probably had one,

otherwise he'd never have become

a grown-up.

The facts may be hazy, but we can

probably guess that Shakespeare

as a boy would have looked

much like boys today,

but bald and with a ruff instead

of an Angry Birds T-shirt.

This is the actual school

he probably went to.

School in Shakespeare's day and age

was vastly different to our own.

In fact, it was far easier

because you didn't have to

study Shakespeare.

At the age of 18,

Shakespeare married his teenage

sweetheart Anne Hathaway.

But when did Shakespeare stop

mooning about with his wife

and start doing plays?

We don't exactly know,

because what happened next

were Shakespeare's lost years.

We don't know what happened

during the lost years.

Shakespeare probably spent a lot

of his time staring wistfully

out of leaded windows

and pretending to think,

and then write things down

with a feather pen.

But we do know he eventually

came to London,

just like his most famous character,

Dick Whittington.

Almost immediately, he began to

make waves in the world of theatre.

It's hard to believe today,

but back then people really did

go to the theatre on purpose.

And they went to see something

called "plays".

In plays, things happen in front

of you, but at actual size.

Unlike television,

which is smaller,

or cinema, which is bigger.

You'd think that would make plays

the most realistic form

of entertainment in existence,

but instead they're nothing like

real life, at all.

And that's because everyone shouts.

Speak the speech, I pray you,

as I pronounced it to you,

trippingly on the tongue.

Not proper shouting, like when

a bus won't let you on,

or shouting because of an emotion.

In plays, people shout no matter

how they're feeling,

because they put the seats

too far away.

There were many plays

written in ancient times,

but the plays Shakespeare wrote

echoed through the ages

and not just because

they were shouted -

but because they were good.

Now is the winter of our discontent

made glorious summer

by this sun of York.

We few,

we happy few,

we band of brothers.

To be, or not to be:

That is the question...

Shakespeare actually invented seven

different genres of play:

tragedy,

fantasy,

romance,

comedy,

horror

and historical.

And Shakespearean.

Throughout this programme,

I'm going to be taking a look at

each genre in turn,

in a sort of format point thing

they're making me do.

We'll start with horror.

Popular entertainment in Shakespeare's

day was often unpleasant,

involving public humiliation

and mindless cruelty to animals,

with no Ant and Dec

to take the edge off it all.

This brutality was reflected

in some of Shakespeare's

most horriblest plays.

For instance, his early work

Tightarse And Ronicus

is so jam-packed with violence

and murder,

it's basically

a posh Friday the 13th.

Here we see Titus himself slitting

the throats of his enemy's sons,

while his daughter collects

their blood.

All of it occurring in front of

a horrified Harry Potter.

Graphic scenes like this

were considered shocking

even in Shakespeare's day,

which is quite an achievement

considering people used to shit out

of their own windows back then.

But shitting out the window

wasn't all fun.

It encouraged rats,

who carried a devastating illness

called the Bionic Plague.

The plague killed about

10,000 people in London

and when they'd finished coughing,

the survivors needed cheering up.

And luckily, Shakespeare had just

invented a new type of play

called a comedy.

Some of Shakespeare's most

successful plays were comedies.

Critics say his comedies

aren't very funny,

but to be fair that's only because

jokes hadn't been invented

back then.

Of course, if you go to watch

a Shakespeare comedy today,

you'll hear the audience laughing

as though there are jokes in it,

even though there definitely aren't.

That's how clever Shakespeare is.

Even at this early stage

of his career,

there was no doubt Shakespeare

was the best at writing plays.

But there was enough doubt

that he had to start his own

theatre company to put them on.

He also built the Globe Theatre

from old bits of another theatre,

inventing upcycling, and he

probably made the word up as well.

He was a better playwright

than he was an architect.

That's why he didn't put

a roof on it.

But, to be fair, Wimbledon didn't

get a roof until a few years ago.

If you've never seen Shakespeare

at The Globe,

imagine a three-hour YouTube clip

happening outdoors,

a long way from you in a language

you barely understand.

And if I find it confusing,

it must have blown the minds off some

of Shakespeare's first audiences,

who were only slightly

more sophisticated than trees.

They might have been thick,

but Shakespeare's audiences

had loads of fun,

heckling the actors and cackling a

lot in a sort of mad peasanty way.

CACKLES

Like that.

RAUCOUS CACKLING

And that.

To tell me more about Shakespeare's

disgusting audiences,

I spoke to this man.

Who are you and what's your game?

I'm Iqbal Khan

and I'm a theatre director.

What was theatre like

in Shakespeare's day?

Were all the audiences

really rowdy then, you know?

Did they wear tunics

and have mud on their faces?

The audiences ranged from

the ordinary common working people,

who'd stand around the theatre here

and then they'd range to

the aristocrats,

who would sit at the top of

the theatre.

Right, so some of them had to

stand up. They didn't have chairs.

No. No, they'd be standing.

I've never had to stand for

a whole Shakespeare.

I don't think I could do it.

I'd be livid if

I didn't have a chair.

I think audiences quite enjoy it.

Particularly now...

I don't think they do enjoy

standing, do they?

They actually enjoy

the experience of standing.

Who's told you that?

Erm...

Shakespeare's works

are still performed now

and not just in theatres.

There are countless different ways

of interpreting Shakespeare's plays.

There's properly - with all wooden

furniture and beards and swords

and people dressed up as sort of

two-legged pageants.

Or there's modern - where they speak

in Shakespearean gobbledegook

while dressed in

contemporary clothing -

a bit like Russell Brand.

You decentious rogues,

That rubbing the poor itch

of your opinion,

Make yourselves scabs?

And there's startlingly

avant garde productions,

which look and sound like this.

How now, spirit! Whither wander you?

Over hill, over dale,

Thorough bush, thorough brier,

Over park, over pale,

Thorough flood, thorough fire,

I do wander everywhere.

Incredibly, even today

people actually go to see

this sort of thing,

despite it being completely

fucking unwatchable.

SHRIEKS AND YELLS

Speak again, thou run away,

thou coward.

What sort of people come to see

Shakespeare today?

Is it mainly people

who wear glasses?

Um...

Yeah, I'm sure there are

a few people that wear glasses

that come to see it.

Yeah, I think all kinds of

people come to see it.

But a lot of short-sighted people.

Possibly? Not a lot though...

Yeah, loads!

Loads, I was looking around.

Right, 80% of the audience were

wearing glasses. I doubt that.

Are you saying I'm a liar?

No, I just said I doubt that 80% of

the audience were wearing glasses.

I think they were.

Right.

Maybe you need like a big bifocal

lens in front of the stage.

"Leave your glasses at home,

come to the theatre."

What about those people

that aren't short-sighted?

Oh, yeah, you'd need different

lenses, don't you.

Shakespeare's just as popular today

as he's always been.

There's even a Royal Shakespeare

Company named after him,

who insist on putting on his shows

whether people want them or not.

What is it about Shakespeare

that makes them bother?

Perhaps it's because he wrote

about universal human needs,

like wanting to murder a king,

or have a romance.

We don't know much about how love

and romance worked in olden times,

because back then people didn't write

blogs about their dating misadventures.

But thanks to Shakespeare,

what we do have is Romeo and Juliet,

easily the finest romance of the

pre-Dirty Dancing era.

Romeo and Juliet is about

these two rich, powerful families

who hate each other.

These two families are the

Montagues - who sound quite posh -

and the Capulets, who invented

the headache tablet.

They're perfectly happy having

their feud until the touching moment

Romeo, from one side, spots Juliet,

from the other.

It's love at first sight,

but from a distance -

just like on Tinder.

My lips, two blushing pilgrims,

ready stand

To smooth that rough touch

with a tender kiss.

Soon Romeo and Juliet are in love,

even though they come from

two different families,

which is how we know it isn't

set in Norfolk.

O Romeo, Romeo!

Wherefore art thou Romeo?

To find out more about

Romeo and Juliet,

I went to talk to Shakespearean

expert Stanley Wells.

Why do you think Romeo and Juliet is

the most successful romcom

of all time?

Well, it's very beautiful, isn't it?

The love story between

Romeo and Juliet.

It has some very beautiful

poetry in it.

People like a happy ending,

don't they?

Oh, they like a happy ending, yeah,

but they don't get it,

of course, here.

What do you mean?

Oh, you know, the ending -

they die.

You know, the lovers -

Romeo and Juliet, I mean...

They die at the end? Oh, yes.

Juliet poisons herself, then Romeo

comes in and he dies, too.

So, we should put a spoiler there,

should we?

OK.

But after that, their families are

reconciled, so that's quite nice.

I don't understand why

the Montagons and the Caplets

just won't let them muck about

together.

Well, they're not really adults,

are they?

I mean, Juliet's not yet 14.

You know, her nurse says so

in the play. What?

She's only a young girl.

She's 13 years old?!

That's right, yes.

I'm not surprised the families

are trying to split them up then.

I'd have rang the police.

With the success of Romeo and

Juliet, Shakespeare was on a roll.

He had respect and prestige

and he was coining it,

if they had coins back then.

I haven't checked.

As his reputation grew, Shakespeare

became popular with royalty.

So, he wrote stuff they'd enjoy

in the hope of gaining power

and influence,

like Gary Barlow does now.

Shakespeare's first royal fan

was Queen Elizabeth One.

The person, not the boat.

Shakespeare wrote loads of plays

about royals,

known as his History plays.

It was his way of pleasing

the king and queen

by doing stuff about their families.

A bit like when your mum buys

the local paper

because your brother's

court appearance is in it.

Perhaps Shakespeare's best history

play is Richard Three,

which is about this sort of

Elephant Man king.

He'd be done in computers now

by Andy Serkis covered in balls,

but in the original he was just

a man with a pillow up his jumper.

It's quite modern because it's

a lead part for a disabled actor,

providing they don't mind being

depicted as the most evil man ever.

I am determin'ed to prove a villain.

Richard Three is actually based

on the real King Richard of Third,

who was in the Wars of the Roses.

A horse! A Horse!

My kingdom for a horse!

At the end he loses his horse and

ends up wandering around a car park

looking for it,

where he eventually dies.

Because in those days

you couldn't find your horse

just by beeping your keys

and making its arse light up.

It's quite moving and human,

because we've all worried we might

die in a car park, if we, like,

lose the ticket and can't get the

barrier up and just die in there.

Shakespeare makes you think

about those things,

and that's hard.

When Queen Elizabeth died,

James One took over.

He was Scottish

and dead into witches,

which Shakespeare put straight

into Macbeth.

Like an arsekisser.

Macbeth is a tale of paranoia

and king-murder set in Scotland,

probably for tax reasons.

It's about a man called Macbeth,

who's so famous

he's only got one name.

Like Brangelina.

Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!

Macbeth also has a female sidekick

called Lady Macbeth,

who was very much the Ms. Pac-Man

to Macbeth's Pac-Man.

In a spooky encounter,

Macbeth meets some witches,

who tell him he's going to become

king of Scotchland.

Which back then was apparently

considered a good thing.

The witches aren't in it

as much as you'd expect,

quite a lot of it's about

ordinary murder.

This is a sorry sight!

It seems a shame to introduce

witches in it

and then make all the murders normal

with just knives and swords.

Maybe if Shakespeare

had thought a bit harder

he'd have put

some magic murders in.

Like a big magic hand

coming out a toilet

and pulling someone's arse

inside out.

Nevertheless, there's plenty of

violence and bloodshed

and an iconic scene in which

Macbeth is startled at dinner

by the unexpected appearance

of Banquo's Ghost,

played here for some reason

by the letter H.

Which of you have done this?

What, my good lord?

Thou canst not say I did it:

never shake

thy gory locks at me.

By now, Shakespeare had built

a considerable body of work,

which is collected in something

called the First Folio.

This is the actual book Shakespeare

wrote with his bare hands,

the only remaining copy

of any of his plays.

It's amazing to think that

if anything happened to this,

the entire works of Shakespeare

would be lost forever.

So, before I touch it, I need to

put on special white gloves.

Well, we don't actually need

to wear white gloves, Philomena.

The advice we have and the best

practice we follow

is not wear gloves, because you lose

the sensitivity in your fingers

and you're more likely to damage the

book by wearing gloves than not.

Well, they're here now. If you've got clean hands,

take the gloves off, we don't need them at all.

Well, I've brought them, so... It's very good

of you to bring them, but we don't need them

and we can't let you turn the pages

of the book if you've got them on.

Simon Schama gets to wear gloves.

Well, he doesn't wear them here.

Why not?

Because when we're handling books and

documents we don't need to wear gloves, at all.

SHE SIGHS DEEPLY

So what's the difference between

a book and a folio?

A folio's the name that's given to

the paper that's in the book.

It implies it's been folded once,

which is where the name folio

comes from.

So, why don't we just call it

a book?

We can call it a book.

That's absolutely fine. OK.

You know when you read

a word in a book

and you sort of hear that word

in your head? Mm-hm.

How did they get the sounds into the

ink to make it play in your head?

Well, what they're doing is they've

got all the words written down

and spelled out and they put those

letters into the printing process

and then print them on the page.

And then it's as you're reading it,

you're making the sounds

in your head.

And you can hear them talking,

can't you?

Yeah, because you know what

the words mean and how they sound,

you can then play it back

to yourself, if you like.

Are these plays like computer code

and the actors like characters

in a computer game?

I suppose that's one way

of looking at it.

The words are the lines

- so they're telling the actors

what they need to say -

and then you'll find stage

directions telling them what to do.

So, in a way, they're like

a set of instructions.

So, in a way, Shakespeare invented

computer games?

I don't think he'd have seen it like that and

that's not quite the case with what it is,

but you can make a comparison

or an analogy between the two.

So, he invented computer games.

No, not really, no.

That's amazing.

Most of Shakespeare's plays

are about stuff that actually

happened, like kings.

Or could happen, like a prince

talking to a ghost.

But some of his plays are more

magical. They're fantasies.

The Tempest is about

this shipwreck,

which happens at the beginning,

not at the end like Titanic,

which is a brave move.

The survivors get stuck on this

island where this wizard lives

with his daughter

and these monsters.

What's interesting about The Tempest

is that usually Shakespeare's

stories sort of make sense,

even though all the talking's

in gibberish.

But in The Tempest,

the story doesn't make sense either.

THUNDERCLAP

You are three men of sin,

whom Destiny,

That hath to instrument

this lower world

And what is in't, the never-

surfeited sea

hath caused to belch up you.

It's like Shakespeare squared,

which is probably why hardcore

Shakespeare fans like it,

because it shows they understand it,

which they can't.

The way Shakespeare's written makes

it hard to wrap your head around,

which is why it's taught in school

when your brain's at its bendiest,

by people like this man,

the fictional English teacher

from TV drama Educating Yorkshire.

When you teach a kid Shakespeare, do

their heads grow physically bigger?

No. They don't, no.

How does iambic pente-meter work?

I think you're talking about

iambic pentameter,

which is the way that, kind of...

Iambic pente-meter.

Pentameter, yeah.

Pente-meter.

Well, pentameter, so...

It would be a line of prose

that would have ten syllables

with five particular stresses on.

Not pente-meter?

No, not pente-meter.

No, it's pentameter. Right.

Someone told me...

I was misinformed, it's fine.

Who told you?

See him, over there? Oh, right.

Erm... No, it's pentameter, yeah.

Iambic pentameter.

Just to clarify.

I wonder if all of Shakespeare's

plays are suitable for kids.

Because there's that one about

the dairymaid, isn't there,

with the special pump.

I'm not aware that that's

a Shakespeare play.

She works on a farm.

She's got a special pump.

No, I don't think that's

a Shakespeare play, at all.

No, it doesn't sound very much like

a Shakespeare play, at all.

It's disgusting.

Shakespeare once said,

"Every dog will have his day."

and with his own theatre

and lots of plays,

he was certainly having his.

But soon that day would turn

to night. A long, dark night.

Like in Finland.

In 1596, Shakespeare's son Hamnet

shuffled off this mortal coil,

then he died.

And a few years later,

his father John kicked the bucket

and also died.

As Shakespeare's life went sad,

so did his plays.

If you were asked to pick

what Shakespeare did best,

most people would say tragedy,

which is one of the few things

he has in common with Steps.

Shakespeare's tragedy plays are the

most performed of all his works.

None more so than Hamlet,

with its famous speech about bees.

To be, or not to be:

that is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the

slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Or to take arms against a sea of

troubles, And by opposing end them?

To die: to sleep, no more.

And by a sleep to say

we end the heart-ache

and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to,

tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish'd.

To die, to sleep.

To sleep: perchance to dream:

ay, there's the rub.

For in that sleep of death

what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off

this mortal coil,

Must give us pause.

What was all that about then?

Alas, poor Yorick.

Most people have heard of Hamlet,

even if they haven't seen it

because it sounds quite boring.

So, what's it about?

Well, I have seen it

and it's about four hours long.

The main character, who is Hamlet,

is visited by his father,

who is a ghost.

Remember me.

The ghost tells Hamlet

to take revenge,

but Hamlet doesn't know what to do

and that's why the play is so long.

I do not know why,

yet I live to say:

this thing's to do.

In something gritty like Taken,

Liam Neeson knows

exactly what to do.

I will look for you,

I will find you...

...and I will kill you.

So you're - bang -

straight down to action.

Which makes the film really

exciting and over quite quickly.

If Shakespeare had written Taken,

it'd be four hours long

and be mainly Liam Neeson fretting

and pacing and talking to bones.

That's the basic difference between

Hamlet and Taken.

Liam Neeson makes up his mind.

I told you I would find you.

Shakespeare never wrote anything

even close to this

white-knuckle knife fight

in a kitchen.

Instead, he wrote incredibly

long speeches full of words.

How important are the words

in a Shakespeare play?

Like, could you do it

without the words?

Um...

without the words, there isn't

much left, to be honest.

So I think probably that's

the bedrock of what we do.

And to be fair, Shakespeare was

no ordinary word-monger.

He didn't just use words,

he invented them, too.

Shakespeare made up words,

didn't he?

He did that all the time.

Mm-hm. He made up so many words.

He made up about a thousand words

that we still use today.

Did he? Mm-hm.

Right, I've got a list of words...

OK. ..that he might or might not

have made up. OK.

And you tell me if Shakespeare

made them up or not. OK.

Cuckoo.

No, I don't think so.

Ukulele.

No.

Truffle-balling.

No.

Ceefax.

No.

Omnishambles.

No.

Nutribullet.

No.

Mix-tape.

No.

Spork.

No.

Roflcopter.

No.

Bumbaclart.

No.

Zhuzh.

No.

Potatoey.

No.

Bromance.

No.

Sushi.

No.

Tit-wank.

No.

Hobnob.

Yes!

Suppose it makes sense that he came

up with hobnob, doesn't it?

Because it's sort of the most

old-fashioned of biscuits.

It's got, like, bits of hay in it

and stuff.

It's like eating a thatched roof.

By the end of his life,

Shakespeare had reinvented theatre,

created memorable characters,

built a playhouse,

invented a language

and secured a legacy.

But the Swan of Avon still had

one last trick up his sleeve.

Throughout this programme, we've

seen how Shakespeare's genius spans

seven different genres of play.

But all of these pale into

insignificance against Shakespeare's

most greatest work:

Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones is a proper

bloodthirsty, action-packed epic,

which skilfully combines

all the genres

Shakespeare invented

into one coherent work.

It's got everything.

It's got history, comedy,

Shakespearean...

Have you ever held a sword before?

I was the best archer in our hamlet.

..tragedy.

SHE SCREAMS

Horror...

..fantasy.

DRAGON ROARS

And romance.

SHE MOANS

Game of Thrones also has one of

Shakespeare's best kings in it,

Queen Joffrey.

Surely there are others out there

who still dare to challenge

my reign?

Queen Joffrey,

like all Shakespeare's queens,

is played by a young boy in a dress.

And they stuck with that when they

adapted it for television.

Game of Thrones

remains the most popular

of all of Shakespeare's plays

and the only one to have been made

into a television series,

which proves it's the best.

It's almost as if

at the end of his life,

Shakespeare finally worked out how

to write something really good.

His final masterpiece accomplished,

Shakespeare's work on our planet

was complete.

He died on his birthday,

which must have been depressing

for his family,

who would have had to

finish his cake with tears

in their little Shakespearean eyes.

We don't know what Shakespeare's

last words were -

probably made-up ones.

Nobody wrote them down, so they

couldn't have been all that.

I used to think Shakespeare was

stuffy and pointless and not for me,

but exploring his world and works

for the past half-hour

has really brought him to life,

so I'm gutted he's just died.

He remains the best and only bard

this country has ever produced.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

I'm loving angels instead.

MUSIC: Zadok the Priest by Handel

♪ Zadok the priest ♪

♪ And Nathan the prophet ♪

♪ Anointed Solomon king. ♪

Re-synced and corrected by Mr_Bramble