Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - She Speaks!: What Shakespeare's Women Might Have Said by Harriet Walter (Live at the London Literature Festival)

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

This week's book guest is She Speaks!: What Shakespeare's Women Might Have Said by Harriet Walter.In a truly special episode live from Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Literature Festival 2024 Sara and Cariad are joined by the one and only Dame Harriet Walter to talk about her new collection of speeches for thirty of Shakespeare’s women.Harriet is one of Britain's most esteemed Shakespearean actors, a stalwart of the RSC she has won an Olivier Award, been nominated for both Tony and Emmy Awards and has starred in the likes of Killing Eve, Ted Lasso and Succession.Her new book re-imagines what some of Shakespeare's women might have been secretly thinking and lets them speak their minds. In this episode they discuss Shakespeare for Breakfast, acting, croissants, the Edinburgh Festival and Patrick Stewart's wig.Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you!Trigger warning: In this episode we discuss suicide and death.Harriet's book She Speaks!: What Shakespeare's Women Might Have Said is available to buy here. Follow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded live at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall as part of the London Literature Festival 2024 and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdos Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is She Speaks, what Shakespeare's women might have said by Harriet Water, and it was recorded live at the South Bank Centre as part of the London Literature Festival. What's it about?

It's a collection of new monologues based on what's been left out of history's most famous female characters. The title is taken from Romeo and Juliette, because as Romeo sees Juliet's and says, she speaks. And yet, of course, as we all know from the play, she says nothing. Harriet has proved for this amazing new book that perhaps these women did have a lot more to say. What qualifies it for the weirdos book club? Well, there's witches. In this episode we discuss Shakespeare for breakfast, acting, croissons, Edinburgh Festival, and Patrick Stewart's wig. And joining us this week

is Harriet Walter. Dame Harriet Walter is one of the most beloved actresses of her generation. She's appeared on stage, screen, film, radio and has also written her own work as well. She's performed with the RSC won in Olivier, been nominated for a Tony Award, five Emmys and a Screen Guild Award. She appeared in Killing Eve, Senses and Sensibility, Ted Lasso, and of course, perhaps most famously, she's the most English of repressed mothers to Kendall, Shiv and Roman as Lady Caroline Collingwood in succession. She's also written several other incredible books, other people's shoes, Facing It, and Brutus and Other Heroines. Harriet has performed Shakespeare throughout her career. If he wrote it, it's very likely Harriet Water.

has starred in it. Welcome to the Weirdo's Book Club Harriet Walter! Dame Harriet Water, sorry, should we say the Dame? Do you prefer it? You're like, you're fine with Harriet. Has her.

I guess you can be very humble once you have a Dame. Yeah, yeah. It's, no, no, no, don't call me Dame, no. But I'm glad you suggested it. I can't. It must be fun to choose it on the drop-down menu. You can't, you can't.

It doesn't exist. Actually, it's kind of annoying that because usually they go prof, doctor, Ms. Mazzes, you know, they're all programmed by Americans and they don't have titles. But occasionally, if you're shopping at Fortnames like I so seldom do,

it's about the only place, I think Fortnoms and Harrod's the only ones that have dames. They've got sort of countess, princess, king, but they haven't got dame. Oh. I don't know. They've got sir, but they haven't got dame.

So that's a bit of, you know, a bit annoying. We can all relate to that. That's a real classic bug thing. If I was a Dame, I would write to them to complain about it. Yeah, I would as well. Yeah. I should. Yeah.

Who do you think? Email, Dame Harrippwater at gmail.com. It was done. It was so excited to have you here. I first read your first book, Other People's Shoes, a long time ago, which if you haven't read, is an amazing, amazing book on acting. And it stayed with me so much. I vividly remember you describing a situation where you were,

crying in a difficult situation dealing with directors and very stressful and you said the phrase something like ignore my tears I'm like I'm a woman I'm crying but I want you to listen to me I'm going to be really honest I was quoting somebody else when I wrote that so but it but it impressed me yeah because we were kind of we were sort of political or politically oriented communal kind of decisions kind of theater in the 70s and this woman you know, was feeling passionate about something, but she was very sort of politically strict, and she said, listen to what I've got to say, ignore my tears, and I thought that was so strong.

Yeah, so, and I think it's important when we're, you know, I remember sort of playing Cleopatra, and that final act when she's doing what could be just a lot of beautiful arias with tears pouring down her face, she's actually being extremely strategic and political and, you know, manipulative. in a very difficult situation. So it's like emotional is a sort of, it's fuel,

but it's sometimes just a byproduct that you don't want to focus on and you won't focus on what you're saying and your argument, particularly with Shakespeare. It's all about the argument, really. Harriet, I love that you talking to you, you can drop into conversation when I played Cleopatra.

In your career, how early did it occur to you that the women perhaps had more to say? Pretty early. I mean, I remember playing Ophelia and Jonathan Price was playing Hamlet and he was so exciting to watch that I, instead of sitting in my dressing room, there was acres of time when I wasn't on stage, I went into the wings and watched him every night. And I watched him haranguing Gertrude in her chamber. And this woman just helplessly squirming under this barrage of, you know, insults and hatred, and her never having the lines to explain herself or come back at him. And it just felt very male-centered. It felt like a sort of adolescent boy just shouting at his mother,

saying you can't have any other loves than my daddy and also you're far too old to have a sexual life and all these things I said answer him back answer him back you know so I was quite young and I remember thinking that and in your book you state something that you know everybody is aware of but maybe we sometimes forget that in Shakespeare's time when he was writing his female characters were played by men and it does seem sort of

sort of easy to deduce that that's probably why some of them were under explored. It's a double-edged sword because I think that some of the reason, the reason why what he does write for women is beautifully wrought and wonderfully expressed is because these were trainee apprentice actors with a sort of trajectory to one day they were going to play Hamlet perhaps. So they were taken seriously as apprentices in a trade, which perhaps if he'd written for women, he might not have given them such sort of muscular, fiery stuff to say.

And, you know, he was a man of his time, and he was a showman, and he knew what the audience liked, and there was a sort of template of stories in how you told them, and it was a patriarchy, and the main character, the drive of the play, was usually a man. And therefore, you know, he wasn't, it's not all his fault. His fault is for being so great that we keep following that template. But actually, there's nothing wrong with what he did in a funny way.

So it's a double-aged sword because they are wonderful what they do say, but they're always in relation to a man. I mean, the woman is only in the play if they're a daughter, wife, mother. And for anyone who hasn't read the book yet, this isn't a book of sort of critique of Shakespeare. It's a celebration. It's loving the plays and the stories and then going, and imagine if, tongue in cheek, Gertrude had got to respond,

or, you know, we heard more from the nurse, from Romeo and Juliet. Absolutely. It comes from total love, this book. And the fact that when you've, it's funny because, you know, I've been playing him for four decades of my life, very on and off, but you swim around in his head, you know, and his words come popping up through your mind. and, you know, you've inhabited his world and his imagery for four decades. And you just, you think, I know you, I know you, hey, Will, how do I play this part?

You know, you feel you know him. And yet he's this complete stranger that we know very little about. We don't know the sound of his voice. We don't know how tall he was. We don't know what food he liked. We don't know anything about him, really. It must be extraordinary feeling to know that he never saw a woman in that role. And then you're the woman playing that role, obviously hundreds of years later.

Like that, it must be an unusual tension. I watched a documentary where Gwynif Paltrow snuck in, and she bandaged her boobs. Right. I think I remember that. And then Queen Elizabeth I was the first comes to the display. Shakespeare didn't notice. That is so, wow.

We know he was fit. That's what we know. When you started writing this, Harriet, what was your, like, was there a character you approached first of all? there was there one that you were like, I know exactly, like you said, with Gertrude. I've been waiting. Well, it's funny because Gertrude was the first one. But I hadn't instigated this.

It was a sort of competition that had gone out in this group called the Shakespeare School Foundation, which I was a patron of. And they said, we're trying to kickstart this. We want the kids to write their own speech for a character or change the gender of a character or, you know, modernize a character, or do whatever they like. and the brief was quite broad, and I immediately wrote Gertrude.

And I had such fun, because all these other lines from his plays kept swimming up into my mind, and I realized they're all there. They're sort of swimming about. The third line was, you know, he was a viper when he went to school, and I thought, where is that? Oh, I know, it's Miss Somerite's dream. She was a vixen when she went to school,

and, you know, things kept coming into my head, and I thought, I like that. is and I just went on and wrote two or three, four, five more, and then approached a publisher and they said, well, one, 30. So I got cracking. Will you read to us? Because we can't have you here and not get you to read your own lines. You curl up by the fire and I'll read you a story.

Yes, please. Shall we start with Lady Macbeth? Because when you think of Shakespeare's women, she does seem to be culturally the most formidable. She's in the top five, isn't she? It's in the top five, isn't she? It really is extraordinary. only her heft and her clout when she's actually a very small part.

Yeah, in your book you talk about the amount of lines that the female characters have, and I think the woman who speaks the most is 15th. That's right. Rosalind is the longest female role, and she's number 15 in the whole role call of all the parts, versus, you know, it's Hamlet, Iago, Richard III, or whatever, and goes down to a servant called Herbert. I know that part, and there are only 15. women in the top 100 and

Lady Macbeth isn't in the top 100 Wow. So, you know, that puts a bit, you know, she does, size isn't everything as they say. Why do you think she's so impactful? She's terrifying. She is so frightening. But, yeah,

I don't, I mean there are, I think it's a combination of the fact that he is such an extraordinary character and, you know, he's not a million miles from any of us. This is about, this is about if somebody could lure us and sort of speak to our less good side, the opposite of our better angels, and tempt us and say it's all going to be okay. We all wonder what our moral boundaries would be.

And it's one of my favorite plays because it does explore something so completely frightening and human. The relationship between them is what I find fascinating because they really are symbiotic. and it's a foliadee they really are interdependent and yet they go their separate ways tragically in a way so basically this is I wrote it in two parts because she seems like almost two different people the sort of tempterous at the beginning and this woman who's really desolate at the end so I'll just read you the first bit but it's sort of just articulating my subplot when I was playing her. What I'd figured out was going on. It was all talk. Oh, why should I be stuck behind the throne? You Scottish Thanes can't make it on your own. My witchy sisters had to show the way.

You'd no idea. I told them what to say. I met them all upon the blasted heath, explained how you had lost your self-belief, that you were ripe for mischief, but too scared to see your hidden underbelly bared. With irony, they stirred the witch's brew, but words, not magic, did the work on you. Don't blame the eye of Newt for your ambition. It was your own hunger, set you on this mission. The very mention of the royal role

began the journey where you lost your soul. The seed was planted by the witch's toil, the ground prepared, so I could rake the soil. And oh, if you had planted seed in me. To there take root and breed a dynasty, but cruel nature ripped my babes away. Redundant dugs hang lower every day. I've known the milk of kindness, tasted love,

but it has curdled as some powers above, or hell-sent spirits, smote my mother's womb, and turned my fertile body to a tomb. So now I dare to bargain with those powers And save our marriage ere it stales and sours We're getting old, the tide is at the flood So what if we must spill a little blood?

My blood has poured and dried up now, for what? And you have shed the blood of many a Scot Why not a royal scott? He's old and past it. You'd make a better king, God damn and blast it. How we're asked. You've got no idea how highbrow you've made our podcast. I know, I was like, wow, it's so...

And it's, oh, yeah, I mean, I enjoyed reading it so much. It's such enjoyable book, and, you know, there's lovely short essays before each monologue to give you sort of context to why you wrote it or how you played it, and then to hear you read it. I mean, I had you in my head when I was reading it, but to hear you live now was extraordinary. Something you said in your intro to Lady Macbeth is about this question,

and I remember it from GCSE English. Like, is Lady Macbeth a mother? Oh, I know. Fertility or not is so disgust, and I wondered how important you thought it was. Because I think, and this is what I love about what you've written as well, two things can be true at the same time. She's a mother and she's not a mother. One of the things that you brought up earlier was about Shakespeare not imagining a real woman playing the part with a real woman's experience. And that tells me something about the style of acting that, you know, it's very modern to draw on your own experience.

and your own emotions and be connected in that sort of method way. And they would probably, it would have been sufficient for a boy player to just go, you know, to do something kind of very exterior and it would have transmitted to the audience who would be perfectly happy with that. And I just think that because we need to psychologically build a path through a character, that's just how we do it now, it was very important to figure out whether she'd had children or not.

I've given suck, you know, I know what it's like to have a boy. And that would have worked, you know. But we found a lot of rich undercurrents in thinking of this as a couple who were barren, but who'd had children who they'd lost. And it was supposed to be one. And I said, well, it could have been multiple children. Because in those days, you would, you know, you would lose lots of children. and a barren woman, you know,

or you might have one that lasted for three years and then died, you know, I mean, ghastly, we can't imagine it. She's this evil woman who would throw a baby onto the floor. But no, she's saying, I care so much about this, and I know what it's like to love a weak, dependent infant, and even so, if I'd promised you I would do this, I'd be willing to rip it from my nipples and throw it to the floor. She's saying, that's how much I care.

She's not saying, I'm going to do it, You know, as I called it, I called the piece, it's all talk. And in the book, I bring some characters together from different ways. Because the women are often isolated in their terrible situation. But they've got so much in common. I wanted them to meet up and say, isn't it a pain that we never have a mother? Or isn't it? Because there are so few characters, female characters in Shakespeare who have mother figures.

They're just not there. And I actually remember Gertrude, the woman playing Gertrude, Jill Bennett, if anyone, remembers her. She was a wonderful actress, and she was playing Gertrude in the production I did. And she has lines where she's reaching out, this is a tentative reach out to Ophelia, but she's sort of in her own prison and can't do anything about it. But there is a sense in which, you know, Shakespeare picks up on the fact that two women are sort of trying to reach out. So he's not devoid of that kind of sensitivity, but it's just the plot drives on. Yeah.

That's mainly the reason the women are neglected because the plot's got to go where it's got to go and it's following the guy. Speaking of powerful women, the next character we move on to is Cleopatra. I did see you in this production that you're talking about and Patrick Stewart was Anthony. It was an amazing production.

However, Harriet, he did have a very small curly grey wig on. I know. It was like a tiny little dog sat there and Harriet was amazing. but that wig was a real That was an acting challenge for me because I was like honestly it was a very, it didn't look fake

So what stage in rehearsals do they bring in the wig? Because it was like So it was very curly grey And obviously he's famous for being bald It's Patrick Stewart, you know, Patrick Stewart And it was just so... And then one of the things about it was that I had a Cleopatra wig

Which was ironic But what was strange about my Cleopatra wig Was that it was totally ironic because she did use to wear wigs. And in the scene when he's left and he's in Rome and she doesn't care what she looks like, she takes it off. Yes.

So of course, you're thinking, oh gosh, maybe he's got that funny grey curly wig and he's going to take it off at some way. So when you were performing Cleopatra, you're working out things of the character that they're not saying explicitly to the audience, but you want to know those things.

Did you sort of feel about her that there was a lot more to say? Well, the thing about her was, I mean, it was a wonderful revelation that Greg Doran, who's the director, and he'd also done Macbeth, he's very good at finding psychological parallels and sort of going into things that way, which, as I say, they probably wouldn't have done in Shakespeare's Day. And he had a pet psychiatrist or psychologist who used to sort of, he'd refer to him. So the Macbeths were this sort of codependent kind of couple and not psychopaths. He was very earnest in saying that because they had nightmares and, you know, sleepwalked and things like that, which a psychopath wouldn't have.

And when it came to Cleopatra, first of all, they dealt more with Anthony, typically, and sort of, and they realized, and they said he's absolute pattern alcoholic, absolutely, you know, blah. And then as a PS, I said, well, what about Cleopatra, you know, and I sort of said a bit about her. And he said, oh, she's a classic narcissist. And then when you read it, it absolutely works. She cannot exist without an audience. Everything is done for reassurance and confirmation from an audience. And she really doesn't think the rest of the world has any autonomy. It's fascinating.

It fits. It's so interesting to me, having read this book, imagining you in a play as someone restricted by the script when there are other things to say. Imagine if in a scene, rather than doing what you're talking, told, you go, actually, this is the one where I'm not going to hold out an arm, I'm going to say something. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be tempting from now on if I'm in another Shakespeare play. But no, Cleopatra has masses to say, and it's wonderful stuff. But what is left out in her case

is what a serious politician she was. And there's this annoying bit where she lures Anthony to retreat from the Battle of Action. And he says, how could you do? You knew that I'd follow you. And she's, what, you didn't have to follow me, you know. And it's all sort of cat and mouse and sexy games. And we're talking about world politics. And in fact, she had retreated because she could see she'd be cut off. That was her entire fleet.

She was making a strategic getaway. And, you know, that's not said by Shakespeare. He just wants to use it as yet another sort of husband-wifely kind of tip. Yeah. Where she's made him a weak figure because she's so marvellous. He had to explain why such a wonderful character as Anthony, who'd been so important in Roman history, could have deserted his post and sort of gone native in Egypt.

And one of the ways he had to describe that was to make Cleopatra unbelievably alluring so that any man would have done the same. And he also had to make Octavia, who I give a nice speech to, because she did, you know, to sort of make, to realize that she was a formidable character. In the play, she's just this pathetic little weedy person who has two scenes where she says, oh, I don't know what to do. And that really, I feel almost more strongly about Octavia, but, so with Cleopatra, although I say that in the essay, that's not what I explored in the verse.

I explored that more in Octavia's verse about what she really did in Rome. For Cleopatra, I wanted to explore the idea of a narcissist when they go to heaven, and there's nobody to impress, and there's nothing to do, and every day is the same. Can we hear the Cleopatra? So Anthony and Cleopatra are reunited? Yeah, and it's called Another Drury Day in Heaven. How tedious this eternity can be in close proximity with Anthony, who once crossed mighty oceans in his stride,

curls up safe and cozy by my side. In life I longed for him, but now. Oh, hum, as Cressid rightly said, things won are done. What's love bereft of parting's sweetest sorrow without the fear of losing him tomorrow? My asp-bite and his wounds are long since healed, and all our fruits and grapes come ready peeled? Without command and sway and sexual sizzle. It's all one dreary democratic drizzle. This endless flowing cloudscape is so bland. My monument has crumbled into sand. Death killed my rule, but not my self-regard. Without an audience, I find life hard. I miss the thrill of being center stage, where slaves and emperors cowered at my rage, where nature's peaks and troughs, its fires and floods, reflected all the grandeur of my moods. Now, from my cloudy cushion,

I survey Earth's pygmy players acting out of play, in which I am portrayed as sly and willful, not as I was politically skillful. As I predicted, squeaking Cleopatra's parade my shame with shambling hammy partners pretending to be Anthony and fail to match our mythic stature. and our scale. My pride and reputation are at stake. It took some guts to suckle that damn snake. I cannot bear to watch as wanton boys belittle my brave death with bendy toys.

This Mr. William Shakespeare, who is he that he will dare to make a fool of me? We started this conversation with its amazing work, the plays are amazing, like the parts are amazing, but you are looking as a woman at these incredible parts and you can't help but look over here at the top 15 and go, but they've got more, not even more lines, more understanding. The thing about Shakespeare is that you love certain arias within the play. You might not love the whole play, but you love these beautiful speeches that say everything about being a human being

in a way that nobody else has. And yet the story is basically a story of people. patriarchy. I mean, that is his model. He doesn't argue with it. He doesn't really question it. And, you know, there's the king at the top and, you know, and it's a pyramid, it's a medieval pyramid, really, and he's not questioning that hierarchy. And so if that hierarchy exists, then the men really own the story, they own the women. And that's just a sort of fact you have to work with. But at least he gives you the most glorious things to say and to play. And also you have your subplot. It's great to be straining at the leash inside you and yearning to

say something else. It gives you that tension is very good to play. But yeah, it just, objectively, when I've stopped acting, and I go, what? Why did I let that happen? Can I ask about how you write? Do you find a way to write while you're on set or rehearsing? Do you use your time that way, doing sort of two things at the same time? I can't really do two things at the same time. In sort of longer books like other people's shoes, I literally, in my diary, I wrote, write, write, right, right, right, whenever I had a free week or 10 days. And for this, because they're just bits, I could go away, do another job and come back. But obviously, when you got in the flow of it, it's very frustrating to put it down and go and do a job. I got used to that, but it's not ideal.

suspect that if I did lock myself away in a room and stare at a piece of paper, I'd stare at a piece of paper. So I quite like having the pressure and saying, I've got to write Desdemona by Tuesday. It's quite good. Well, that's probably what Shakespeare was doing as well. Also, I'm interested, because obviously when you've got someone like William Shakespeare is the playwright, of course, everyone respects them. But what about if you're working on something and you don't think the writing is good? Oh, now you're talking.

Yeah, yeah. Especially you come from Shakespeare. And you know for good writing. Yeah. It's happened actually funny enough on TV more than plays because on the whole, if you're going to commit yourself to a long run in a play, you've got to love the writing pretty much. But on TV you might have other reasons for doing it, like it pays the bills. There's sandwiches at lunchtime.

Yeah, theater doesn't pay the bills. And also, you know, the dialogue is often much more free and easy and naturalistic and nobody's coming up saying, you come in and have a cup of tea. You've been saying, do come in and have a cup of tea. There's nobody going to do that. So you do, I have to say, when you get more confident, when the writers get more confident in you, you can say, I think, perhaps if I said,

you know, have a sandwich, or they'll say that's all right, they're not too precious about it. But I have had to swallow now that I think I know more, you know, I do think, I think that would be funnier if she said that. But, you know, there are a lot of writers who, you know, understandably don't want anyone to do it.

So, you know, you keep that quiet. That's when you say, sorry, I'm Dame Harriet Walter. And I'm telling you this line needs work. Yeah, whatever. Congratulations on the commission. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Harry, it's got some notes. We'll start on page one.

Yeah. And then word gets around that I'm terrible and I don't get a job. So I have to be nice to everybody. Yes, it's a tight rope, I guess. Actually, I wondered if you'd be interested in this because back when Carriette was coming to see you and Anthony and Cleopatra, we were going to the Edinburgh Festival, the Fringe Festival for the first time.

And we were, we've talked about it on our podcast before, but we were in a project called Shakespeare for breakfast. And this... I'm sure you've all heard of it. It's got free coffee and croissant. That's why they came. Included in the ticket, I'd say, rather than free. But that was a big selling point.

Yes. The poster was, the main thing on the post was a giant star saying free coffee and crossons. And so, and so what happened was, I won't say out of work actors because technically we were working on this. 150 pounds for the month. People who were previously temping decided Shakespeare, sure, he wrote some stories. What about have we mashed them all together and put in some cultural references, Jeremy Paxman, Love Island, things like that. I would like to say that was in that show was myself, Sarah and Gemma Wheeler. The script I've got is myself as Hamlet.

spoofing loss. Which I'd never seen. It doesn't make any sense. So it all starts off with all the characters are waking up. It's King Lear, Cleopatra, Hamlet, Puck, the Nurse. Jess Posterkekekeke was playing.

Puck from InSammany. I love this. Okay, so I just wondered if you wanted to see us perform a scene. I'd love to, I'd love to. Because, you know, how have you been sharing your performing? Because there might be other parts coming up in place. Absolutely.

Just to keep us in mind. So, we could be sisters or, you know, So this is a scene where Hamlet and Cleopatra find each other in the woods. And I think Puck was flying the plane. Yeah, he was the pilot, yeah. Midway through the following speech, Cleopatra, enters behind Hamlet and is struck by his words.

Would you like me to... He moves close to the speech. He struck. Be struck. Okay, yeah. You demonstrate how a woman can act without talking. Yeah, Harriet, just take a look. Have a look. I'll do.

Hamlet's writing his memoirs. memoirs. I don't know how I'll get out of this blessed woods, mummy. I just can't decide what to do. What will get me through is thinking of you, mummy, you powerful queen, majestic lady, ruler of my heart and governor over all men. I'm unworthy even to think of your glossy hair, black as the night, and your flashing eyes of passion. Oh, such lovely eyes. Cleopatra coming at you. It was 2000 a night. Oh, cripes. You didn't hear that question. Oh, young Hamlet, such a beautiful poem. I did not know you felt this way about me.

Nor did I. I have stolen your heart. Have you? Question. You are a brave soldier fighting for my love. I'm scared. Scared of how far you've fallen? It was just a trip. A trip to the heavens, the stars in my eyes.

Stars in your eyes with Matthew Kelly. Has thou the pretty worm of Nylis there? Who told you about my worm? Question. This is the very ecstasy of love. Oh, that this two, two solid flesh would melt. It's got an erection. Oh yeah, you used to act that better. Woo me with words.

Seduce me, young scribe. Sorry? Read me my poem. Okay. Should I, um, dearest, most beautiful, exquisite, lovely and nice, delectable and sexy mummy? I'm not ready to be embalmed yet. What did I do? Got it.

Certainly not me. Can I try again? If you want to make yourself useful, I have been separated from my things by this inconvenient playing crash. I shall surely wish to bathe and have not a drop of milk. Have you seen my ass? I felt it. Then where is she? Just behind you.

In some ways it's aged very well. You know, you really need to know stars in their eyes. But apart from that, apart from that, it's absolutely fine. 25-year-olds who stank of alcohol. One girl was so drunk during the play, she had to run off to be sick in a fire bucket full of sand and then come back on and be snogged for some. She was, yeah.

It was very bad. You've probably got similar stories from the RSC. Certainly. You can relate, you can relate, yeah. Oh, why should be? The literature that we're here to discuss to Gertrude now. Oh yeah, Gertrude, yeah. We've mentioned her a few times already, and I loved so much the way that you write about her,

and you've interpreted her twice. It's called what Gertrude wanted to say. Oh, Hamlet, have you only understood your damn their dad. dad was anything but good. He was a viper when he went to school. At home he rampaged like a shackled bull, spoiling for wars that meddled with his mind and made him more despotic and unkind. He took his violent rages out on me, who sheltered you from all this agony. So you grew up believing him a saint, and I could never say a saint he ain't. Admit, you rarely saw him. After all, He oft was busy with some foreign brawl.

Your uncle was my only comforting. We'd been in love from childhood, but the king, the old king, your old granddad, and his mayor, insisted that I wed their precious air, a marriage of convenience, you see, but deeply inconvenient for me. Much more than that, it broke your uncle's heart that we were forced to live our lives apart. now you tell me of this fratricide. He told me natural causes, but he lied. I see now our unseemly bed was cursed. I understand you now, so do your worst. Yet, though I know that what he did was wrong, perhaps he hoped the poison was so strong it painlessly would send the king

to sleep, leaving no time for counting woolly sheep, but straighten it up the ravelled sleeve of care. Then we'd be free to wander everywhere, overtly loving, spend whole days in bed, surfeiting those appetites so long unfed. You're wrong to think that sex begins to pour. The blood at our age has not cooled at all. Your father's ghost torments us even now. My love for Claude has withered on the bow. You've hurt Ophelia's feelings, and you've changed.

I don't believe you really are, just playing for time till everything's aligned, but knowing you, you won't make up your mind, until the court is poisoned, everyone, including you, my fallen sparrow son. But break my heart, for will has held my tongue. That last line I found so affecting, and you really build, Gertrude is real,

I'm listening to her and her experience, experience and her view on, you know, we all know what happens in Hamlet very, very familiarly. And then to be reminded, I wasn't allowed to express myself. You weren't allowed to hear from me. Yeah, it does. It breaks your heart. And it's very hard to watch that play without thinking about her in that way. But what can you do? It's written. It's Holy Bible. We play around a lot with him after all, you know, but that play is sort of of perfect in lots of ways. I have seen it played that way that Claudius is the good guy and the ghost was pretty nasty. And, you know, it's only Hamlet who thinks he's wonderful because little boys think their father's wonderful. But it, and it worked for me that

interpretation. And then, of course, like them at best, they do one thing wrong and then they have to sort of justify it and cover their tracks and they get deeper and deeper into the shit. Is how many a part you would have liked to a play? I think so because he does, you know, he gets a lot of stage time. And how does it feel, I can't imagine what it must feel like to watch a play that you've been in and to know it so well and then to watch a new interpretation of it? I'm not very good. I'm very, I mean, it's got to be really well done and somebody's got to take a strong line on something and I'll go, God, yes, that's a good way of doing it. But when you think, you know, when a part or a play is really quite hard to piece together

and you finally think you've cracked something, it's tempting to say, no, no, no. But of course, it's nothing, you just stay away from it. You don't watch it, you know, and you hope that other... Okay, but you've got a really good friend who's in it and they're like, you know, you can have free tickets. Yeah. There's a glass of wine afterwards. I'm sorry, I'm in New York that week.

No, I don't. No, I go and see, I try and be open-minded, but there is that thing. It's infuriating if you go and see something where you don't think they've thought it through. But any other interpretation, that's the whole point of Shakespeare. You can stretch him in all sorts of directions,

but you've got to kind of be truth to the heart of it, really. What's your favourite Shakespeare production? You've seen that you weren't in, but that deeply you thought, wow, they've absolutely got that right. Well, very recently I saw the over 60s as you like it, and I loved that because it had a very good motivation. It was these old actors, because that's another area of protest. You know, where are the old people?

And they were veterans of Shakespeare. They knew how to say the lines, but they were totally convincingly young and in love, because you've got to draw on your memory of when you were young and in love. So old people can always remember the stages of their life where young people haven't been there yet, so they can't act out the other way. So there were these elderly actors who knew their stuff, who completely convinced me they were young and in love

without being embarrassing because the context was, the premise was that these were old actors who'd got together because they'd been in a production together and, you know, they wanted to revive the old play and it had a rather fun premise which took the embarrassment out of it really. So I loved that. But I've seen a lot of good shows.

That's just the one that came to mind when you asked me. That thing about the representation of age and aging brings us quite neatly onto your witches from Macbeth. It does, very neatly. So there was a really beautiful thing that you wrote in your essay before the witches, which is about how as an actor, as one ages, you have all of your previous incarnations inside you. I mean, they all still sort of exist, and you have them to call upon.

So it isn't a state of, and this isn't your word, but it isn't something sort of degrading. It's something being enriched, someone being enriched all the time by everything that they've experienced. Questions from the audience? I wanted to ask about Shakespearean's women's death, because a lot of them end up committing suicide, like Lady Macbeth Ophelia. I think they mostly die off stage.

Their deaths aren't as important as the male characters, who are often die quite dramatically in battles. No, that's a really good point. For instance, Portia in Julius Caesar, Brutus's wife, she kills herself in reported speech. And, a failure in a very famous speech by Gertrude is described as having killed herself. And it's almost, I mean, I don't think there's any big reason

why he thought their deaths were less important. But I think it is part and parcel of the fact that the main protagonist is on stage and, as you say, often in a battle. But it is also goes with not being able to speak, doesn't it? you know, characters who can't express things are often implode and and their depression takes them inside and down, which is, I mean, again, he observed it, he knew it happened, but yeah, his plots don't

follow that side through. It is a sort of sad truth that people who give... I actually rescue Ophelia, I've decided she doesn't die, So I've written her one way she pretends she's died and escapes. Now next question we've got the microphone, Medina. I just want to ask about modern day interpretation of Shakespeare's women. Do you think it's changed? So Lady Macbeth being more sympathetic, the issues with Taming of DeSoo? I think we're certainly more aware, aren't we?

We sort of examine these characters now where before they were just, I think people took them for granted. people's we do them so often and people see them so often in a lifetime that you've kind of got you've got to sort of keep up you've got to keep up with your audience you've got to sort of give them something that they want to see and speaks to them Kate and Tamien de Shrew is problematic I don't think many people long to see that play and if you change it too much you're not really doing Shakespeare you might as well write another play I don't know, it's very, but I think it's changed rapidly because we've changed rapidly. And our awareness has really jumped ahead. A question for Harriet we had already sent into us. Along with

probably a few people in the room, this is from Alex, I was enthralled by your performance in succession. Yes. That show feels super Shakespearean. I wonder if you had any characters in mind when preparing to play Lady Caroline. It is super Shakespearean, but I didn't have anybody Shakespearean in mind to play Caroline. partly because I suppose I thought of Mrs. Lear or Queen Lear who she might be

if she's sort of because they've been getting on without her so well or not well but you know they haven't appeared to need her and she's been kind of locked out of the family and I wondered

I did wonder whether there was a Queen Lear somewhere who disgraced herself but I find it Shakespearean in the fact that it takes a group of people who seem to be miles away from us and elevated in a world we'll never get to, but they're humanized and they have very, very relatable anxieties and needs for love and, you know, need, you know, basically they all want their father's love, don't they? And that's the same as King Lear. So I find that that ability to do something

on a very broad canvas and a very removed canvas, but make it human. We're saying before we came out that somebody had asked you the other day about which Shakespeare characters, the family from Succession, would play. The children. That's a good question.

I said that Kendall could play Iago, and Shiv could play, well, she could play a lot of things, but I thought she could play Beatrice, and she could also play Cordelia. And then I thought that Roman could play Hamlet because he's a bit jockey, but he's got a lot of depth inside him. And obviously, Logan is King Lear, really.

Do you have a favourite genre to act in, or do you find that acting in different genres allows you to bring different things to the characters? The latter, I love variety. I love going from one to the other. That's the challenge. but I love what I call language plays I love having to get behind the way someone expresses themselves

which is not the way I express myself and I love doing comedy actually I've done more than people think maybe they were so rubbish they didn't come to the fore but I do like being funny I love the sound of tinkling laughter were there any that you wanted to write that you sort of really struggled to go onto the page

then were there any characters that also almost jumped out of you straight onto the page? Yeah, that's a good question. The one that I found hardest was Cressida in Troilus and Cresceda. And I could have just said I haven't written about them all, but I just was determined to try and wrangle with her because she is such an intelligent, bright, interesting woman that he writes in the first half of the play. And then in the second half of the play,

He turns her into this ghastly sort of person that everybody distrusts and, you know, he doesn't give her her explanation of why she's behaved the way she has, which I can see why she behaved the way she has. And I was trying very hard to get that onto the page. And I found it really hard. So I ended up just making her somebody who commented on various, she's more like a philosopher who has a blog or something. and so that was quite hard to carve that out over days

and the one that came rather easily by which was weird was Lady Capulet because as I said earlier I brought all these girls together who hadn't got mothers and they were complaining about not having mothers and then I thought actually if we if we believe what Lady Capulet says she was married at 13 and that might be why she's not a very

good mother and she doesn't know much about mothering and so that came out very quickly and I'd never thought about Lady Capulet before I thought she'd you know the husband rants and raves and says my daughter they're very possessive fathers because again it's to do with possessing people isn't it and their daughters are their possession until they hand over to their husband and they become their possession but so I just felt here's this very young bride with a daughter who's, you know, she must be only 26 of her daughter's 13 and she was 30 when she got married, you know, and I just suddenly saw things from her point of view and that came flowing out very quickly. Thank you. Lovely. I mean, our last question from

Leelian Redhill. Perhaps Shakespeare didn't take women as seriously and in some ways he didn't allow women to be very humorous either. I don't think there's so many humorous roles. And is it true also that it's quite new the tradition of women being comics. I mean, you know, because we haven't been taken seriously and we don't speak in these great classic roles as much as men. First of all, I think the boys did get quite a few jokes and they were jokes that we might not get now.

And they were sort of quite full of sexual innuendo that if there'd been women playing them, Shakespeare, might not have written such naughty roles, you know. And I think he might, I would argue that there are, only because in proportion there aren't that many female roles, but I think they are, you know, when they're supposed to be funny, they are as funny as, you know, they have wit, put it that way,

they're not sort of knockabout. But I think we have the fact that they were played by boys to thank for that. I think that he might have written more decorous, subdued women if they'd been played by women, if you suit, I mean. And then you go into the Restoration Comedies, which is sort of funny, very funny.

But I agree with you that, you know, I think we probably went backwards in the 20th century and then came forward. I think it sort of goes like that. But now, I think some of our funniest people are sitting next to me. You know, no, of course, there's an absolute respect for,

for women, but you've probably got a different story, but I think there is a thing when I walk into a room to do a comedy thing where they go, oh, she's not going to be funny because she does Shakespeare, you know. And you want to go actually give me a go. We have prejudices about comedy and tragedy, and really, if you're hooked up, you can do both. But yeah, thank God there's more women being funny

about the things they find funny rather than trying to... I mean, I've played Beatrice, and you go, for heaven's sakes, nobody understands my jokes. Because they're so obscure, whereas the guys sort of do lots of nudge-nudge, you know, stuff that's much easier. Thank you so much.

It is such a brilliant book. It's wonderful essays beforehand, wonderful musings from you, from such an incredible career and such an incredible actress. So please give a huge one of applause to the incredible... Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club.

Harriet's book, She Speaks, is available now. And I, Sarah Pasco, I'm going on tour next year. Please come and see me. My new show is called I Am a Strange Gloop, and it's on sale now. You can get tickets from the link in the show notes or from sarahpasco.com. You can find out all about the upcoming books we're going to be discussing on our Instagram at Sarah and Carriad's Weirdo's Book Club. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.