Helen Mirren: ‘I used to think Shakespeare should be banned’

Watch Helen Mirren: ‘I used to think Shakespeare should be banned’ - The Independent on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Helen Mirren!

00:04When I was 13, Lady Chatham's Lover was banned.

00:10I mean, literally banned.

00:12You were not allowed to read it.

00:14So, yes, 14-year-old, all we wanted to read was Lady Chatham's Lover.

00:20So I eventually got a copy of it, and it was incredibly well-worn.

00:25Pages were torn, and those pages were especially torn.

00:29And it was just so creepy with hands flinging my hands.

00:34Shakespeare couldn't care anything about at all because I was allowed to read Shakespeare, you know.

00:39But from that point on, I kind of always thought it would be brilliant to ban Shakespeare.

00:46For anyone below the age of 20.

00:49You know, no, no, no, no, you can't do that.

00:52You can't do that.

00:53Oh, no, it's not for the young people.

00:55And for them to have the very first experience of Shakespeare, being in a theatre.

01:00And then when you see it in a theatre, it's in one event, it's costume, and it's funny, and it's active, and it's sexy, and all the rest of it.

01:08They've been falling on with Shakespeare.