- 14 hours ago
First broadcast 27th April 2012.
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Bill Bailey
David Mitchell
Sue Perkins
Stephen Fry
Alan Davies
Bill Bailey
David Mitchell
Sue Perkins
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening.
00:05Good evening and welcome to a special Shakespearean edition of QI dedicated to and entitled The Immortal Bard.
00:14Strutting and fretting there are upon the stage tonight are the two gentlemen of Verona, David Mitchell, Bill Bailey.
00:27The Miriam wife of Windsor, Sue Perkins.
00:36And much ado about nothing, Alan Davis.
00:45So, let the trumpet sound, David Goes.
00:53Nice. Sue Goes.
00:58Bill Goes.
01:04And Alan Goes.
01:11Of course he does.
01:13So, let's take to the stage, good gentles all.
01:15When David Tennant played Hamlet at the RSC, what did Tchaikovsky play?
01:22What? Tchaikovsky.
01:26Tchaikovsky being the composer Tchaikovsky.
01:29Was he in the cast, Tchaikovsky?
01:30He was.
01:31Peter Ilyich?
01:32Not Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer, another musician called Tchaikovsky.
01:39Ah.
01:39He was also a pianist, a rather startling, an amazing pianist actually, most eccentric pianist.
01:44Richard Stilgaard.
01:46No, I've only told you his name, it was Tchaikovsky.
01:49Tchaikovsky.
01:50Are you saying that he played Richard Stilgaard?
01:53Yes.
01:54He blew into Richard Stilgaard and a noise came out the other end.
01:58You're putting him in the past tense, so I'm assuming he may have shuffled off his mortal coil.
02:02To quote Hamlet in the war in India.
02:05And that will be the only quote, that's it now, I've blown all my quotes.
02:08But you've done damn well, it's a good start.
02:09Yes.
02:10So if he's dead.
02:11He was dead.
02:12So he's not alive.
02:13So he's a skull.
02:14Yes, he played the skull.
02:17We don't have a real skull there.
02:19That's what a skull looks like.
02:23He was a very passionate Shakespearean, that is the real thing there, with Tchaikovsky and he bequeathed it to the
02:29Royal Shakespeare Company,
02:30asking that it be used in productions of Hamlet for the part of, do you remember the character?
02:35Your skull it is, that Hamlet...
02:37Is it Yorick?
02:38Yorick.
02:38Yorick, yes.
02:39Alas, poor Yorick.
02:40I knew him, Horatio.
02:42Fellow of Infinite.
02:43Yes, well they went, alas, poor, wait a minute, this is Tchaikovsky.
02:47He can play a tune on his teeth.
02:51He, yeah, there was quite a bit of a trouble.
02:53There were health and safety issues.
02:55There had to be a human tissue licence had to be ordered in order for it to appear on stage.
02:59Did they cut his head off?
03:01I mean, presumably, so he's gone, when I die, I'd like my skulls to be used by the RSC.
03:04But someone's got to saw it off and then rot it down a bit.
03:07Yes, and...
03:07The funeral directors were rather loath to do this, they thought it might be illegal, but they had to get
03:11clearance.
03:12And, er, David Tennant every day held it in his hand.
03:14Tchaikovsky would have been very pleased, that's what he wanted, after all.
03:17Yeah.
03:18So he was looking at it.
03:18Look at that.
03:19Yeah.
03:19A tramp, yesterday.
03:22You sort of, you hope they've had to dirty it up again.
03:25Oh, they, very much, yes.
03:26So that's not just a bit of the guy that's still clean.
03:30There's a little face still on there, he's got to wash off.
03:33It's a long time since I've seen Hamlet, but, because he's such a well-known bit, you don't really question
03:39what happens in it.
03:41And it's, it's an odd, it's an odd thing to do, to pick up a bloke's skull from a graveyard.
03:45But somebody knew, it seems...
03:46And then to sort of go, alas, you know, I knew him well.
03:48You, rather than going, I feel a bit weird having picked up his skull.
03:52Because I knew him.
03:52That's sort of what he's saying, he's saying, you know, it's ridiculous, I knew this man.
03:56I would sit on his lap when I was a boy, and he's just, we're willing to set the table
03:59on a roar.
04:00And he looks at him and says, so where are your jokes now?
04:02Yeah.
04:03Not so funny now.
04:04It is one of the great, one of the great contemplations of death and mortality.
04:08And it must be even weirder when you're doing it to a real person like that.
04:12David Tennant presumably knew the story that he was doing it to this chap who wanted it to be a
04:16symbol of death.
04:17It's going to be like a, I'm a celebrity, isn't it?
04:19Agents are going to get, put their acts down to have their skulls put used in that.
04:24Yeah, oh yeah, no, I'll get you your skull. You'll be, you'll be in Shakespeare one day.
04:28It'd be awful, wouldn't it, though, if for your whole life you'd sort of, you'd wanted to be an actor
04:32and you hadn't really worked out
04:34and so you'd bequeathed your skull and it was used in a major production of Hamlet
04:38and then all the reviewers said, I don't know, Yorick felt a bit stilted.
04:43It's going to ruin that scene.
04:46Now, name the Scottish play that Shakespeare wrote.
04:50Ah, Taggart.
04:52Taggart!
04:54It's not, yeah, you see, you're trying to trick us, aren't you?
04:58Trixie little QI, two gentlemen of Kilmarnock or something.
05:04The Teeman of Strathclyde, old Gowen Macbeth.
05:08Yes.
05:09Is it?
05:09Yes.
05:10Is it?
05:14No, we thought that as actors, you might say, never, never, I'll never say,
05:20anybody's got the forfeit.
05:22Ah, I have to do the forfeit.
05:24Because, of course, as you know, there is a tradition, is there not,
05:27the very saying of the name Macbeth in a theatre is bad luck.
05:31You have to sleep with all your co-stars immediately.
05:34Is that what you were told?
05:36Yes.
05:36Why?
05:37Interesting.
05:37What?
05:40Do you know how this came about, this reputation of Macbeth for being an unlucky play?
05:45Well, is it because Macbeth was the sort of, the play in a company's repertoire
05:50that they'd bring out when something closed suddenly?
05:54Because it was sort of short and usually went down quite well.
05:58And so mention of Macbeth would imply that the current production was soon to close.
06:02It's certainly true.
06:03It's the shortest of the tragedies, isn't it?
06:05It's a banker.
06:06People always go and see Macbeth.
06:07It's a popular play.
06:09Now, there is actually a really specific reason.
06:11It was a hoax.
06:13A late 19th century wit who was writing a review of Macbeth just made up this story,
06:17that, ah, this play is cursed, you know.
06:19It was Max Beerbone who had made this story up entirely.
06:22Although then, not many years later, in the 1942 production of Dear Johnny Gale,
06:28I don't feel good.
06:28Dear, dear, Johnny.
06:29Yes.
06:30Four people died in that production.
06:33Yes.
06:33Is that the one where they used machine guns to bring Burnham Wood to Dunstan?
06:38Wow.
06:40They certainly used searing make-up, didn't they?
06:41Oh, that's fantastic.
06:43It's always good to go with an inflatable cram.
06:45Inflatable cram.
06:45Yeah.
06:47Yes, the two witches died.
06:49The Duncan died and the scene designer.
06:51The set was then redesigned for a comedy and the principal in that died.
06:54The radiant Diana Wynyard, 30s and 40s actress, you may remember, there she is.
06:59She played Lady Macbeth and thought it would be more convincing in the sleepwalking scene to have her eyes closed.
07:05And she walked off the stage into the orchestra pit.
07:07LAUGHTER
07:09Certainly.
07:10Well, I don't know whether that's Macbeth's curse or being a stupid actress.
07:15They were all...
07:16They're all watching her go and just let her go.
07:19LAUGHTER
07:20It's the only way she'll learn.
07:24Did she carry on going from the sort of bowels of the...
07:26She braved out damn sport!
07:29She climbed out again, apparently.
07:32All three rehearsals.
07:33I'm going to carry on.
07:35There's a few things that were actually not... that weren't, you know, hoaxes were real...
07:39They had some practical applications like whistling.
07:41That was always sort of imbued into me every time when I did a play.
07:44It was like, don't whistle.
07:45Yes, no.
07:46Backstage.
07:47You are a terrible whistler.
07:48I... what?
07:49Maybe it was that.
07:50Whistling
07:51Yeah.
07:52Because was it that that's how they used to cue the scenery coming down?
07:56That's right, they used whistles for cues.
07:58Whistling
07:58So you could have a nasty accent.
08:00You could, yeah, exactly.
08:01Isn't it ridiculous, though, that the way they got people to stop whistling
08:05is by saying, oh, it's a superstition, it's bad luck,
08:07and then people, all right, I won't then.
08:09People should adopt that with mobile phones.
08:11You tell people, oh, you're in the audience of a theatre,
08:14and maybe you want to turn your phone off so that, you know,
08:16if somebody rings you, it doesn't spoil it for everyone else.
08:18People sort of go, well, I hear that, but also I'm going to leave my phone on.
08:22If you tell them it's bad luck, they'll presumably all turn it off.
08:26Yeah.
08:26Like a curse.
08:27A curse.
08:29Tutankhamun said before he died, couldn't abide the sound of a Nokia ringtone.
08:34A curse, didn't you?
08:36I suppose you are.
08:39Yeah.
08:41I curse all of you.
08:44Or, if you put a, there was an article in, I don't know, say the Daily Mail,
08:48suggesting that other people's disapproval was carcinogenic.
08:52Well, yes.
08:55Brilliant.
08:57Brilliant.
08:59Brilliant.
09:01Or your house price might go down slightly.
09:05A tidal wave of immigrants would suddenly invade the country,
09:08says Melanie Phillips.
09:10Should you turn your mobile phone off?
09:11Turn your mobile phone off.
09:11Your cosset and squirrels will steal your thimbles.
09:14No, no.
09:17I was in a theatre not long ago when a phone went off and the actor just said,
09:21Oh, for fuck's sake!
09:24Turn to you in the audience.
09:25Not to me.
09:26Not to you.
09:28On this occasion, I was in a...
09:29There was a time when, um, sometimes doctors need it on stage.
09:33When Richardson, Ralph Richardson, suddenly went up and said,
09:37Excuse me, is there a doctor in the house?
09:39And the man put his hand up and said,
09:41I'm a doctor.
09:41He said, Oh, doctor, isn't this an awful place?
09:48The best one is the Piers Adora.
09:50That's my all-time greatest.
09:51Oh, the Piers Adora is the greatest.
09:52Do tell that.
09:52The Piers Adora, when there was a production of the Diary of Anne Frank,
09:57and Piers Adora was in it, she was so bad,
09:59that when the Nazis turned downstairs, somebody shouted out,
10:02She's in the attic!
10:07She's in the attic!
10:08Get it out of the way, isn't it?
10:11What about Richard Harris coming on drunk?
10:14And some of the audience said,
10:16Harris is drunk!
10:17And he stood up, because he'd fallen down.
10:19He stood up and said,
10:20If you think I'm drunk, where do you see O'Toole?
10:25Peter O'Toole was in the coaching horses in Soho one lunchtime having a drink,
10:29and he made best friends with the drinker he was standing next to,
10:32and they were getting absolutely pissed.
10:34And they said,
10:35And Peter O'Toole said,
10:36What shall we do?
10:37Let's go and catch a matinee of something.
10:39So they wandered down Shaftsbury Avenue,
10:41and they said,
10:41We'll go in this if it's any good.
10:43Sat down, both very drunk.
10:44And then about ten minutes in,
10:46Peter O'Toole announced his friends,
10:47Oh, you're like this?
10:49This is where I come on.
10:50Oh, fucking hell!
10:57I love that!
10:58I love that!
10:59He knew he had to be somewhere.
11:01Yeah.
11:02Subconscious took him there somehow.
11:05We're in Edinburgh,
11:06we did this production of Twelve Angry Men,
11:08and one of the jurors fainted on stage,
11:11and his eyes rolled back,
11:12and his head went,
11:13and his head hit the table,
11:15bang, like that.
11:16So all of us picked him up bodily
11:18and carried him off the stage,
11:20and you see the audience going,
11:22I don't remember a bit where one of the jurors dies.
11:26It was terribly,
11:27it was very hot that year,
11:28and I remember somebody fainted in the audience as well,
11:31and she cartwheeled down through the stairs,
11:33like this,
11:35and she went,
11:37ragdolled all the way down to the front of the stage,
11:39and people were going,
11:40like that,
11:41and she knocked over someone in a wheelchair,
11:44right,
11:44and he fell out of his chair,
11:46like that.
11:47Then the boyfriend got up,
11:49came down,
11:49saw his girlfriend unconscious,
11:51and he fainted,
11:52right,
11:52so there was a pile of bodies at the front of the stage.
11:57It was a very odd thing to faint
12:00at the sight of unconsciousness.
12:03Not at the sight of blood.
12:05Yeah.
12:06I can't be a sleeping people.
12:08Yeah.
12:08I have to do something.
12:09Well,
12:10one would trigger another,
12:11and then another,
12:11and then another,
12:12and then the whole world would,
12:13if both people had it.
12:15Yeah.
12:15Be a very low-key version of a zombie movie.
12:19Well,
12:19yes,
12:20Max Beerbohm it was,
12:21who invented the curse of Macbeth in 1898.
12:25Leonard Bernstein wrote a musical based on Romeo and Juliet
12:29and set it in New York.
12:30What was it originally called?
12:33Music Queen...
12:36Was it West Side Story?
12:41It became West Side Story,
12:43but it was originally called...
12:45East Side Story.
12:46Yes!
12:48Oh!
12:49Oh!
12:54Originally,
12:55when they were working on it,
12:56in the late 40s,
12:57it was Gangs of Catholics
12:58versus Gangs of Jews
13:00down in the Lower East Side.
13:01And then,
13:02five years later,
13:03as they were working on it,
13:04they decided,
13:04they wanted Puerto Ricans against white gangs,
13:06and that was the...
13:07Catholics would be awful.
13:09I mean,
13:09they just have to tap someone,
13:10and they just go,
13:11I wish I hadn't done that.
13:11I feel awful now.
13:13And it's just ten years of terrible guilt.
13:15And Puerto Ricans a bit more feisty.
13:16I think they are.
13:17Yeah.
13:18They are.
13:18Let's certainly admit that it worked.
13:20Gay and feisty by the look of them.
13:21Well,
13:22the world of the musical isn't it?
13:24It is...
13:24Showgirls all...
13:26Um...
13:27All the...
13:27All the pipes have been airbrushed out of this photograph.
13:40Oh,
13:42heavens above.
13:44Now,
13:44of course,
13:45West Side Story may be the best,
13:46and certainly,
13:46probably the best-known musical
13:48based on a Shakespearean fable,
13:50but do you know of any others?
13:53Points going.
13:54Points.
13:54Oh,
13:55Kiss Me Kate.
13:56Kiss Me Kate,
13:56yes,
13:57by Cole Porter was based on...
13:59Um...
13:59The Taming of the Shrews.
14:00The Taming of the Shrews.
14:01Exactly.
14:02Is Cats based on Hamlet?
14:03No.
14:06But...
14:06But...
14:07But...
14:07Odd as that sounds,
14:08there is a stage musical
14:09playing in London at the moment
14:10that is based on Hamlet.
14:12Is it Hamlet exclamation mark?
14:15There is Hamlet musical,
14:17but this is a big West End musical
14:18based on a big movie
14:20that actually is the story of Hamlet.
14:23Oh, not Spamalot.
14:24Not Spamalot.
14:26He's a young prince.
14:27Oh.
14:28Born.
14:28Yes.
14:29And he's not a human.
14:30Oh.
14:30What? He's not a human?
14:31It's E.T.
14:32Thank you, audience.
14:33The Lion King is based on Hamlet.
14:36You do not know?
14:37At what point does Hamlet say Hakuna Matata?
14:39LAUGHTER
14:44What about The Tempest?
14:46What were they made of there?
14:47The Wicked.
14:48The Perfect Storm.
14:51LAUGHTER
14:53That is great to me.
14:55Schwester.
14:57Harold and Kumar get the munchies.
15:00LAUGHTER
15:00Well, no, there's Prosperous Books.
15:03Oh, yes.
15:03There's one,
15:04but there's another 50s,
15:05rather classic sci-fi movie.
15:08Oh, yes.
15:08Rip one out.
15:10Forbidden Man Atkins.
15:11Forbidden Man Atkins.
15:12Forbidden Man Atkins.
15:12Forbidden Man Atkins.
15:12Forbidden Man Atkins.
15:12Working title, Rip One Atkins.
15:15And there was one based on the Comedy of Errors.
15:17A musical.
15:18What happens in the Comedy of Errors?
15:20Lots of...
15:20There are two sets of identical twins.
15:22Oh, God.
15:23One of them's shipwrecked.
15:24Who's a girl?
15:25Who's a boy?
15:25I'm married!
15:26Everyone's dead.
15:29The Boys from Syracuse is the name of the musical.
15:32Oh, OK.
15:32Terminator.
15:33Two.
15:35Shylock is sent back from the future.
15:38Oh, I've got my chain stuck in my rough.
15:40Oh.
15:42Oh.
15:43That's such a wish.
15:47Whoa.
15:48That was embarrassing.
15:50Yeah.
15:52That sounded like that it should sound rude.
15:55Yeah.
15:56Think about it.
15:57No, not really.
16:00So, there we are.
16:01Now, what does Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, a loony from Newcastle, and the
16:07Holy Ghost have in common?
16:09So.
16:10Mark Twain, I know, had a link.
16:12I don't know about the others, who's sceptical about Shakespeare, because he thought that
16:16Toff wrote it.
16:17He didn't believe that a normal boy from Stratford could write.
16:20Yes, that's right.
16:21Could write properly.
16:21He was what you might call exactly a Shakespearean sceptic, as were the others.
16:26That's to say, Sigmund Freud also believed that, and Henry James, and the Professor Looney,
16:32that was unfortunately his name, though I believe it was pronounced loony, from Newcastle,
16:35who wrote a book in 1920 called Shakespeare Identified.
16:38There was this whole movement, started in the 19th century, really, with the idea that
16:41it might have been Francis Bacon who wrote the works of Shakespeare.
16:44Oh.
16:45There was particularly a woman called Delia Bacon, who was an American and was completely
16:48insane, really.
16:49She came over to England and wrote a 625-page book.
16:53God.
16:54In which she didn't even mention the name Bacon.
16:56And then when she died, she claimed she was the Holy Spirit.
16:59She claimed she was the Holy Spirit?
17:01So the Holy Spirit, if she was right, also doesn't believe Shakespeare or wrote Shakespeare.
17:05So, if Bacon was one candidate, there were two other main candidates.
17:09Oh, hang on.
17:12What was it?
17:16Marlowe.
17:17Christopher Marlowe.
17:18Christopher Marlowe is one candidate.
17:19Oh, um.
17:20But the most popular one.
17:22Earl of Oxford?
17:22The Earl of Oxford is, yes, indeed, Edward de Vere.
17:25Is that Edward de Vere?
17:26That's Edward de Vere.
17:27Wow.
17:28There's a lot going on there, isn't there?
17:29There is, isn't there?
17:31How does he keep that hat on?
17:34It's sort of Cate Blanchett with a moustache.
17:37It's intense.
17:39But, no, there are serious people.
17:41I mean, Freud liked the fact that he lost his father early on, like Hamlet,
17:46because, of course, he had an Oedipus complex theory about Hamlet, Freud,
17:50so he liked that idea.
17:51Who else?
17:52Looney invented a rather fanciful scenario,
17:54because the Earl of Oxford died in 1604,
17:58and Shakespeare carried on writing plays many years after that, so...
18:02That might almost be the point at which to abandon the theory.
18:05Yeah, you'd think.
18:06Instead of which, he claimed that, before dying, he'd left a whole sheaf of plays,
18:11and that his servant, Shakespeare, then just produced them one after the other.
18:15But isn't The Tempest written, sort of, four or five years after he died?
18:19Six years, maybe, even after he died?
18:21Referencing, sort of, stuff of the time.
18:23So, after De Vere's dead?
18:25Yes, quite.
18:26He probably just left, insert topical gag here.
18:28Yeah, that's right.
18:29Yeah, that's right.
18:30But there are...
18:31Mark Rylance and Derek Jacoby, both supreme actors,
18:35and they both believe that it was the Earl of Oxford.
18:38There isn't a shred of evidence, as far as I can see.
18:40It sort of doesn't matter, on a basis that what Shakespeare means to people
18:43is the guy that wrote those plays,
18:45and so if the guy that wrote those plays is a different guy that wrote those plays,
18:49that's still, what a great guy.
18:51Yes.
18:52It's not an earth-shattering conspiracy, really, is it?
18:57No.
18:57That, in fact, it isn't him?
18:59Over 5,000 books on the subject, incredibly.
19:02Yeah, I know, it's extraordinary.
19:04Yeah, no scrap of evidence.
19:05Not real evidence, to be honest.
19:06No, it's just speculation.
19:07And the odd thing is, they often say,
19:09well, we know so little about Shakespeare.
19:10There are very, very few people of the Elizabethan era about whom we know more.
19:15I mean, Ben Johnson, for example, who was a very famous playwright,
19:17we don't even know where Ben Johnson was born,
19:19or how many children he had.
19:21If other people were writing the plays,
19:24why didn't they say so at the time?
19:26I mean, that's the...
19:27I don't understand.
19:28It always seems like he didn't write all that,
19:30but wouldn't it have come out if other people had...
19:32Yeah, but if it was Ben Johnson or any of those others,
19:36jolly good luck to them, I say.
19:37Was it just because he wasn't posh?
19:39Does it come down to basic classes?
19:41That's kind of snobbery.
19:41They think, well, he was just this kid from Warwickshire,
19:43and he was a woodlander, and, you know,
19:45but, in fact, his father was a glover,
19:47which was a perfectly decent trade, as you see,
19:48and he went to the grammar school there, certainly,
19:50and...
19:50He's sort of, you'd think,
19:52exactly as far up the society
19:55as you'd expect a major writer to be.
19:58Not, you know, it's not like now
19:59the best novels are written by the Duke of Westminster.
20:02No, quite.
20:03Very good point.
20:04Those people, anyway,
20:06claimed that he didn't write his plays,
20:08all those ones we saw,
20:09but how many words did Shakespeare write?
20:12Oh, that'd be quite enough.
20:14How many different words?
20:16Ah, yes.
20:17Yes, well, there's a number of things here.
20:19One is simply,
20:20how many pieces of his handwriting do we have?
20:24We've got his signature.
20:26There is his signature a few times, isn't there?
20:28Has he never spelt his name the same at once?
20:30No, and it's pretty wonky writing, it's got to be said.
20:33Shakespeare.
20:35He's probably more used to, you know, typing.
20:37That one says...
20:39He was on, he was on the source on the top.
20:41He was on something.
20:42That one looks as if he says, Gallypot.
20:47William.
20:47The William's quite good on one of them.
20:49Anyway, this reinforces some people's arguments.
20:51You say, you've got a clerk even to write his name.
20:53He couldn't even write his own name, they say.
20:55Could he have theoretically dictated these plays,
20:58then, to someone else?
20:59Oh, I suppose it's possible.
21:01Barbara Cutherland used to lie on a sofa and dictate her marvellous novels.
21:05I think A. A. Gill, the journalist, dictates, doesn't he?
21:08Because he has very severe dyslexia, so I think he does.
21:10So there are people who do.
21:12So he's got bad handwriting, and that means he didn't write any plays?
21:16No, he doesn't necessarily mean that.
21:17But it is surprising that we don't have many examples of his handwriting,
21:20because the plays were presumably written out by other people.
21:23Now, his vocabulary.
21:25How many words do you think he used?
21:27I'm not counting repeats.
21:28The, he used a lot, obviously.
21:31Dagger, murder, wife.
21:33This could take us all time, yes.
21:35Well, we've got to start something.
21:36We've got to start something.
21:37We've got to start something.
21:385,000, yeah.
21:39That's 20,000 words.
21:4120,000.
21:4120,000.
21:4120,000 words.
21:42And how does that compare to the average vocabulary of a Briton will be, say, roughly?
21:47Four times as much.
21:48No, half as much.
21:49Half as much.
21:50Half as much.
21:50Less.
21:51I mean, we're not saying that Shakespeare used every word he knew in his books.
21:54I'm sure he left lots out.
21:56I don't remember the word.
21:57He didn't use hard drive.
21:59I think it's in a second folio.
22:01It might be, you know.
22:02So, it's about half that of the average modern English person's vocabulary, because obviously,
22:06he didn't have certain words to call on, like, you know, texting or vajazzle or whatever.
22:11But, on the other hand, he did have, you know, Gurdon and Bodkin and Fardal, which we don't use so
22:18much.
22:18Yoghurt, yeah.
22:19Yoghurt.
22:19I don't suppose Shakespeare knew what yoghurt was.
22:22Broadband.
22:22Broadband.
22:23That's it.
22:24Activia pouring yoghurt was a phrase you never heard him say.
22:28I can't get my head.
22:30He literally used that if it had existed.
22:32Never had it.
22:32If I were to say I couldn't get my head round Activia pouring yoghurt, it would sound peculiar,
22:36but why would we want to pour a yoghurt?
22:38What you want is pouring furniture.
22:41Ah.
22:42Because it's quite difficult getting furniture.
22:44If you could pour the furniture where you wanted it to the extent you wanted it.
22:48And it sets.
22:49Exactly.
22:49It could be made out of that thing like Terminator 2 is made out of.
22:52Yeah.
22:53No, they've got that already.
22:54They've got concrete.
22:56Oh, yeah.
22:58You try and make a piano out of concrete.
23:01I will.
23:02I'll do that.
23:03Essentially, you want spray on wood, don't you?
23:05I'm not talking about Viagra.
23:07Yeah.
23:07Hey.
23:09I think, you know, where you could sort of go, you could go.
23:12Well, I think the future is 3D printing, is it not?
23:15Have you not seen some examples of that?
23:16Oh, that's amazing.
23:17It is extraordinary, isn't it?
23:18I've seen that.
23:19Is that some kind of voodoo there?
23:20It really is phenomenal.
23:22Phenomenal.
23:23So it can create a 3D object?
23:24Yes.
23:25You put up an object into a case like that.
23:28Like a vole.
23:29So I've got a vole.
23:29Say a vole.
23:30Well, maybe not a...
23:31Yeah, a vole, yeah.
23:33But you'd have to have it sedated in some way.
23:36You wouldn't want it moving around.
23:37It's been very humanely treated.
23:39It's sleeping.
23:39It's sleeping and probably laminated.
23:42And then you press a button and then you leave it for a few hours and you come back and
23:46there's another vole.
23:47That's cloning.
23:48How come that's not...
23:49Lasers make it calibrations of exact every single detail of it.
23:53I mean, really, really complex things.
23:55What's it made of?
23:56Well, it can be a lot of different things.
23:58Different...
23:58Plastics.
23:59Plastics.
23:59Plastics and so on.
24:01But, yeah, I've seen some really complex things.
24:05You can make a marzipan vole.
24:06Yes.
24:07The wonders of technology.
24:09Oh, thank God.
24:10That is me.
24:11All those years of postgraduate research.
24:14And we have a marzipan.
24:15Yeah.
24:15Wheel, steam engine, microchip, marzipan vole.
24:20It's the decline of humans.
24:22That's right.
24:23That's what we knew.
24:24It would have all gone wrong with the Battenberg rodent.
24:27Oh, well.
24:28Still, there are a lot of words.
24:30In The Sun, David Crystal, who's a well-known linguistic fellow,
24:33and he estimates that there would be about 6,000 words in any complete issue of The Sun,
24:38whereas the King James Bible has just 8,000.
24:41So this idea that we're all dumbed down to a lower vocabulary is not necessarily true.
24:46Anyway, moving on.
24:47Shakespeare coined over 1,000 new words, but not all of them caught on.
24:51Here are some of the ones that didn't.
24:53See if you can put them into a sentence for me.
24:56Swaltery.
24:57Quotch.
24:57Quotch.
24:58I've got a swaltery quotch at the moment.
25:09What happened when I put my kiki wikis on it?
25:13Cockled me fox shit.
25:14I've always been ear-legged.
25:16You're a boggler in those two books.
25:17I'll boggle me car lot.
25:18You're fox shit.
25:20What happened to a cockled boggler?
25:22A car lot?
25:23That's a thing.
25:24That's where people sell second-hand cars.
25:25That's a sexy car.
25:26Well, that's true, actually.
25:28That's just way ahead of its time.
25:28Way ahead of its time.
25:30A boggler is a very clumsy burglar.
25:36A burglar that can't believe the stuff he's getting his hands on.
25:40Look at this DVD player.
25:41Well, he used it to mean a hesitator.
25:44The one who boggles.
25:45I don't think that was anything boggling the mind.
25:48What is a kiki wiki?
25:49Is that like a Russell Brand's version of a football or something?
25:53It's an affectionate term for a wife.
25:56Oh, my dear kiki wiki.
25:57A kiki wiki is not an affectionate term for a wife.
26:01Domestic violence is a lot more acceptable.
26:04Oh, the old smashy-washy.
26:06The old battery-wattery.
26:09Punchy-wancy.
26:11And a quatch.
26:12What is it a quatch?
26:13It's such an adjective.
26:14A fatch.
26:15Quatch.
26:15Quatch means a bit podgy, a bit quatch.
26:18Oh, you're a bit quatchy.
26:19Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:20Luckily, I'm wearing a surgical truss.
26:22Clump, shouldn't it?
26:24Whoopened, or weaponed, is corrupt.
26:28That's never really caught on, has it?
26:29But look at the ones that did catch on.
26:31Here's just a small example of words that are first used in Shakespeare.
26:35Accessible, acutely assembled, barefaced, beguiling critic, even-handed.
26:38Eyeball, Frenchwoman, hunchbacked, neglected, overpower, promising, radiance-revealing, rose-cheeked, school-day synonymous, three-legged.
26:47Frenchwoman is a bit of a stretch.
26:49Frenchwoman invented it.
26:54He invented taking the space out.
26:57Yes, you've never done.
26:59He even has a bewitchered symbol.
27:00This is my wife.
27:01She is a loser.
27:04A thing of a jeep.
27:05I don't know.
27:06What can I call her?
27:07Oh, Frenchwoman.
27:08I think you'll call her.
27:09She's a Frenchwoman.
27:11Frenchwoman?
27:11Frenchwoman?
27:12Of course, you can't be absolutely certainly invented all these because there may have been in use before, but he
27:18is often the first printed source we have for them.
27:20He presumably had to have a pretty good idea that people would understand what he was going on about.
27:25Yes, exactly.
27:27Also, there are phrases you came up with, of course, and those probably now have come into the realm of
27:31cliché, so much so that we can't even imagine that they didn't exist in English language.
27:35There are very many.
27:36We've got a list here.
27:37Neither a boy.
27:37The all and end all.
27:39Laid on with a trowel.
27:40Laughing stock.
27:41More in sorrow than in anger.
27:43Once more into the bridge.
27:44One fell swoop.
27:46Play fast and loose.
27:48There's the rub.
27:48Thereby hangs a tail.
27:49How do you say what the Dickens?
27:50Dickens didn't come along for another person.
27:54Exactly.
27:55A wild goose chase.
27:56That's one of his.
27:56A heart of gold.
27:57High time.
27:58The devil is due.
27:59The game's up.
28:00Forever in the day.
28:00Dead as a doornail.
28:02That's one of his.
28:03Foregone conclusion.
28:04And of course many more that aren't there.
28:05To the manor born.
28:06It is cruel to be kind.
28:08Basically the title of every programme will ever be.
28:12Yes.
28:12You did give a lot of titles.
28:14Yeah.
28:14If you're having trouble making up a programme title.
28:17Open your Shakespeare.
28:19Yes.
28:19Go to the Shakespeare randomiser.
28:21That's what they didn't do.
28:21Oh I've done it again.
28:22Oh no.
28:24You know.
28:28This bit of rough is not behaving.
28:30I've said that before.
28:33Oh dear.
28:34Oh dear.
28:35I had to.
28:35Just to.
28:36So there we are.
28:37Call me our sweltering boggler if you like.
28:39But um.
28:40Answer me this.
28:41How did dangerous Dan Tucker clean up Shakespeare?
28:45Oh.
28:45I sense I've fallen to a pit but I shall do it anyway.
28:49Don't know why I'm speaking like that.
28:50That's the hat.
28:51Did he do an abridged version.
28:53Take out the mucky bits like the boggling in the.
28:54Oh no he didn't I'm afraid.
28:59People did as we know.
29:01But just to think of his name Dangerous Dan.
29:03What does that make you think of?
29:04It makes me think of the wild west.
29:05Yes.
29:06Stay in the wild west then.
29:07And what did people like names like.
29:10Dangerous Dan when they cleaned something up.
29:12It was unlikely to be a broom cupboard or a spare bedroom.
29:14It would be a whole.
29:15Outlaws.
29:16It would be a town.
29:17A town.
29:17Yeah.
29:18And cleaned up the town of Shakespeare.
29:20There was a town called Shakespeare.
29:22There it is.
29:22It's now a ghost town.
29:23Wow.
29:24That looks like a fun way to spend a weekend.
29:27And it's in New Mexico.
29:28And it was lawless back in the day.
29:31So they sent for Dangerous Dan.
29:33Who was a pretty violent sheriff.
29:36Hence a dangerous man.
29:37Yeah well quite.
29:38He really was dangerous too.
29:39He'd already been a city marshal in Silver City.
29:41Where there was a deputy sheriff.
29:42He killed a drunken man who was standing on the street throwing rocks at people.
29:46Just went up and shot him.
29:48So he didn't put up with bad behavior.
29:50He was a zero tolerance sheriff.
29:52Yeah.
29:52So within the space of a few months in Shakespeare he shot dead a cattle rustler.
29:56He killed a man who rode into a hotel riding a horse.
30:00Oh come on.
30:01Arrested and hanged the outlaw Russian Bill Tatenbaum for stealing a horse.
30:06And hanged Sandy King for being a damned nuisance.
30:11Thank God they can't do that anymore.
30:13Well really.
30:14Right.
30:14He'd been a damned nuisance.
30:16For about 17 people who live in those houses.
30:19Yeah.
30:19He'd like to have the entire population.
30:21Just.
30:22No more trouble here.
30:23Yeah.
30:26Of course the little trap you fell into the rewriting of Shakespeare was primarily the work of a famous couple.
30:31Whose name was.
30:32Richard and Judy.
30:35Oh.
30:36Bowdler.
30:37The Bowdlers indeed absolutely the Bowdlers.
30:39Thomas Bowdler.
30:40Thomas and Harriet.
30:41Bowdler.
30:41Let's not forget Harriet.
30:43He was particularly strong with her blue pencil.
30:45She saw a word like swoggle or something.
30:48So they brought out children's editions of Shakespeare which were all the bloody nasty bits were cut out.
30:53They gave the tragedies happy ending.
30:55Name Tate certainly wrote a version of King Lear with a happy ending.
30:59And that was very popular for over a hundred years.
31:02People like happy endings.
31:03They do don't they?
31:05They do.
31:05I'd say give them what they want.
31:06Big song at the end.
31:07Well actually funnily enough you know they did give them what they want.
31:10A big song at the end.
31:11Even after a tragedy on would come a comic and do a jig and make a lot of jokes about
31:16the tragedy.
31:17That's the way.
31:17So there's a blue wind cracker cheeks.
31:19My mother-in-law's.
31:21Exactly.
31:22Don't worry it was all pretend.
31:27Now how did Shakespeare's bottom get to Norwich?
31:32Will?
31:33Are there relics?
31:34Bits of him?
31:35Well he had a famous comedian who played bottom and Falstaff.
31:39Who did?
31:40Shakespeare.
31:40And he created them for him.
31:42He was well known.
31:43He was considered the funnest man in England.
31:45And his name is sometimes put.
31:47But it says Kemp instead of bottom on this original play script.
31:51Because it was so obviously Kemp who was going to play him.
31:53Will Kemp his name was.
31:54But he had a dreadful falling out with Shakespeare or with whoever was running the company.
31:58Well with Burbage or somebody.
32:00And he went off in the right half.
32:02But he decided as a publicity stunt.
32:04He would Morris dance all the way to Norwich from London.
32:08Oh.
32:08That's unnecessary.
32:10He did it.
32:11It took him about three weeks.
32:12But he did it over the course of nine days.
32:13And there's a famous phrase that comes from this thing that he did.
32:18Cocking about?
32:19No.
32:21Making a bright tit of yourself?
32:23He wrote a book.
32:23Kemp's nine days wonder.
32:25It was a nine days wonder.
32:27That's where the phrase a nine days wonder comes from.
32:28And he just did it to draw up publicity to himself.
32:31To say I may have left Shakespeare companies.
32:32But I'm still.
32:33I'm the man.
32:34And they're going to go down now.
32:35And unfortunately quite the reverse happened.
32:38He went off to Italy and died in penury.
32:39His gravestone just says Kemp.
32:41A man.
32:44And after he left.
32:45And the first play Shakespeare wrote with Henry V.
32:47In which Falstaff dies off stage.
32:49So Kemp was kind of got rid of that way.
32:52And a new man called Armin came in and played the comedians.
32:56But while we're on the subject of Will Kemp there.
32:58And it's Morris dancing.
32:59Let me ask this.
33:00What do you call a group of Morris dancers?
33:02An arse.
33:05A swarm.
33:07An embarrassment.
33:09A plague.
33:12A bellend.
33:14A bellend.
33:17Honestly.
33:18Poor old Britain.
33:19We've got one folk tradition in England.
33:21And all we do is laugh at it.
33:23But it's absolutely true.
33:24People it really generates hostility.
33:27People are dancing.
33:28People are so mean about it.
33:30I think we think they're up to something.
33:32I don't think it's charming.
33:33Yeah.
33:34A perv.
33:34A perv of my knowledge.
33:37I think it's very valuable that we can, you know,
33:39we can point to that and say,
33:41see, it's a free country.
33:45We're not doing that in Afghanistan.
33:47Yeah, really.
33:47If we were going to ban anything.
33:49It would be.
33:50We'd ban that.
33:51You know what's going to happen?
33:52You see, if this scene now of all of us dressed like this,
33:56and this photograph here behind us like that,
33:59we're going to end up as like an and finally section
34:01on foreign news program.
34:05Finalement, les Anglais.
34:07Ha ha!
34:10It's known as a side, anyway.
34:12A side.
34:12A side.
34:13A group of Moritz men.
34:14I mean, no one quite knows where Moritz dancing comes from.
34:16We think it's from Morisco, as in Moorish,
34:18maybe where to celebrate the expulsion of the Moors from Spain,
34:21various dances, and it's spread into England that way.
34:24But certainly not pagan and mystical and anything like that.
34:28It's pretty recent.
34:2814th century is the earliest you can go back to it.
34:31There are 150 sides now registered in the USA.
34:36So American Moritz dancing is taking off in a big way.
34:39That's three per state on average.
34:41I've dined a bear land.
34:45This is what they do in old England.
34:48Merry England.
34:49There's an Arctic Moritz group based in Helsinki.
34:53But now, time to visit that undiscovered country
34:56from whose born no idiot returns
34:58as we ring down the curtain on general ignorance.
35:01Sound drums and trumpets, farewell, sour annoy,
35:04for here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.
35:06Fingers on buzzers, in other words.
35:08What best describes, in one word, Richard III's appearance?
35:15Hunchback!
35:20There's no evidence at all that Richard III had a hunchback.
35:23Just the black propaganda of the Tudors who succeeded him.
35:27The character in the play does.
35:29The character in the play does, certainly.
35:30And a blimp, a sort of arm, twisted arm, isn't he?
35:33A bottled spider.
35:34One of the things he's called.
35:36A hideous name, isn't he?
35:37But no, it seems he was a rather decent fellow,
35:39in many respects.
35:41Intelligent, kind.
35:42There was a man called Polydor Virgil,
35:44who was a historian who was determined
35:46to paint Richard III as black as possible
35:48and so described him as ugly
35:50because in those days they associated ugliness
35:52and so on with much as we do today, with wickedness.
35:55So, while on that sort of thing,
35:57how beautiful was Cleopatra?
35:59She was minging.
36:01I think it was sort of a bit weird-looking,
36:04but sort of striking.
36:05She had a sort of a bit of a weird nose.
36:07Long nose, a long pointy nose.
36:09It seemed possibly she had a long pointy nose.
36:11There's certainly no contemporary suggestion
36:13that she was particularly beautiful.
36:14They do say she had a very beautiful voice
36:17and that she was very charismatic.
36:18She seemed sexy.
36:19She seemed sexy.
36:21Which I find is half the battle.
36:24Her mouth is very small
36:25in that it only extends as far as the flare of her nostril.
36:27Yeah, that isn't necessarily Cleopatra.
36:31No.
36:32That's the artist's impression.
36:35That's the woman who got mad with some napkins.
36:37Yeah.
36:39She's gone serviette crazy.
36:41Age cannot wither her,
36:43nor custom stale her infinite variety,
36:46as Eno Barber said about her, I think.
36:47Now, how did Christopher Marlowe die?
36:53Well...
36:53Now...
36:54Ta-Dum!
36:56Yes?
36:56Let me say it so you can mock me.
36:59He died in a bar brawl by being stabbed.
37:04Dear me.
37:06No.
37:06Well, he was stabbed, I'll give you that.
37:08But not in a tavern brawl.
37:09It was thought for many years it was a tavern brawl,
37:11but it wasn't until 1925
37:13that the documents came to light
37:14in the public record office
37:16that showed he was, in fact,
37:18killed at the house of a Mrs. Eleanor Bull
37:20by a man called Ingram Fraser,
37:23with whom he'd spent the whole day,
37:24and they had an argument over the bill.
37:26An argument over a bill?
37:27He stabbed him.
37:29That's a bit harsh.
37:30So I didn't have...
37:31I didn't have...
37:31I need a mineral water.
37:32Yes, exactly.
37:34It wasn't a tavern.
37:35No.
37:35What was it the bill for, then?
37:38Was it a restaurant?
37:39Don't put it...
37:39It was a pop-up restaurant.
37:41If you call it a tavern,
37:42it was actually rather a smart restaurant,
37:43but it went downhill after that.
37:45It might have been a prostitute.
37:48Right.
37:48Might have been a brothel.
37:49Oh, so it could have been a brothel...
37:50A brothel bill?
37:51I didn't have that.
37:55To be honest,
37:56the service charge in this case is redundant.
38:00I had one of them, two of them.
38:03I asked for that, but it never happened.
38:06I always...
38:07It was ost.
38:09If we all chip in,
38:10we can afford that.
38:13Why don't you just give one big one,
38:15and all have a bit?
38:18Oh, I don't know.
38:19Oh, no, dear me.
38:21Anyway.
38:22It's unlikely to have been a brothel,
38:23because he did say that he didn't trust anyone
38:25who didn't love tobacco or boys.
38:27Oh, well.
38:28Anyway, what made Lord Byron limp?
38:32Now, that's a follow-up question.
38:35Item four on the brothel bill.
38:39Eight hours of Morris Tanton.
38:43He had, from birth, a pronounced limp.
38:45L-I-M-P, pronounced limp.
38:48So did he have a...
38:49They're not quite sure whether or not he had a club foot.
38:52We know that, in fact, he didn't have a club foot.
38:55It's often said that he did,
38:57because that's the sort of one that people have heard of.
38:59He had a sort of withered leg,
39:01and you can tell from his boots.
39:02He was very athletic, and he was very...
39:13And he liked to spend money, did old Byron.
39:17He ordered batches of two dozen a time of white linen trousers,
39:20which he only wore once.
39:21He also ordered silk handkerchiefs in batches of a hundred.
39:25Each one was nine guineas,
39:26which was an average man's pay for the year.
39:29So what was he...
39:31Coining it in with the writing?
39:34Well, A, he inherited at an early age the title,
39:36and Newstead Abbey,
39:37which he spent very, very fast.
39:39But he was, in fact, incredibly highly paid, yes.
39:42For every canto of Don Juan, his last great masterpiece, I think.
39:47Thousands he got for each canto.
39:48So he would write a canto.
39:49He was hugely, yes.
39:50He was hugely successful, yes.
39:50Or write another canto.
39:51He was hugely, yes.
39:52He was hugely successful, yeah.
39:53And, er...
39:54White linen trousers?
39:55Yes.
39:56It sounds like something out of Miami Vice.
39:58Doesn't it, doesn't it?
39:59He had to leave England,
40:00because there was a scandal about him possibly having had sex with...
40:05A young...
40:06Goat.
40:08Well, not a farmhouse story at Cambridge.
40:10It wasn't...
40:11He kept a bear at Cambridge in his rooms.
40:13A bear.
40:14Yes.
40:15And the Master of Trinity said,
40:16he said,
40:16the rules are absolutely clear, Lord Byron.
40:19There's no domestic animals.
40:21He said,
40:21I assure you, Master, he's not domestic.
40:23He's entirely wild.
40:25So he was allowed to keep the bear.
40:27But, er...
40:28No, he...
40:29There was a rumour that he'd shagged his sister.
40:31And so that's what forced him to leave.
40:32So you didn't say the bear?
40:33No.
40:34No, the bear...
40:34As far as I know, the bear...
40:37Is that more horrific than shagging his sister?
40:39It's just different, really.
40:41It is.
40:41It is different.
40:42Probably braver.
40:45Anyway, you're Byron limped because of an abnormality in one leg,
40:48but it wasn't a club foot, in fact.
40:50Now, what can the Queen do that an idiot can't?
40:58By the looks of it, kill people with their own eyes.
41:03Isn't that in the best mood, though? I agree.
41:05One is one tires with Morris dancing.
41:08This is something she's allowed to do, but doesn't.
41:11But an idiot is not allowed to do.
41:13Drive, vote.
41:14Vote is the right to vote.
41:16Most people think the Queen can't vote.
41:17She's every right to vote is any citizen.
41:19She's never exercised that, as far as we know.
41:22But idiots are not allowed to vote.
41:24And lunatics may only vote during their lucid periods.
41:29So test them on the way into the food.
41:32So it's a surprise, though.
41:33Most people think the Royal can't vote.
41:35They can, they just choose not to.
41:37But alas, alack, and well away, our revels now are ended.
41:39These are actors, as I foretold you.
41:42We're all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.
41:46And we must consult the scores.
41:47Well, my gracious heavens.
41:49I'm afraid rather down the bottom of the list with minus 14.
41:56Bill Bailey.
42:02And four to the better with minus 10.
42:06Sue Perkins.
42:13Second which, with a very creditable plus three, Alan Davis.
42:19There you go.
42:22But tonight's Prince of Denmark with six points is David Mitchell.
42:35Well, it only remains for me to thank our dramatist person.
42:38I, Sue, David, Bill and Alan.
42:40And to leave you with this perceptive thought from Robert Wilensky.
42:44We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare.
42:49But now, thanks to the internet, we know that this is not true.
42:53Good night.
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