Just watch this.
There is nothing to add.
And I really do mean, please, just watch it.
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Buy me a coffee!
Fuck yeah!
Right up ’em!
Thanks for sharing.
Shakespeare and Ian McKellan. National treasures. ‘Brought tears to my eyes!
The way he strode toward the audience as if he was a teenager!! And I thought that Shylock’s soliloquy (‘Do I need bleed?’) hit home hard. Phew!
He is brilliant. Staggering ability.
I saw him with Helen Mirren in Strindberg’s The Dance of Death, on Broadway late 2001. Both astonishing performances, the thing I recall most strongly about McKellen was his huge and intense physical presence.
I loved him and Jacobi in Vicious as well. I’ll get my coat 🙂
Listened. As I heard, my heart hurt.
Indeed
Self reason, and self right!
Whether would you go?
Your mountainous inhumanity…
It’s so quotable, but really I’d see the likes of Farage and Badenoch forced to face this head on and in full.
Sometimes I wonder whether these rabble rousers have ever read a play or book with a moral message as anything other than an instruction manual.
Thank you – the link wouldn’t work for me, just in case, it’s here:
https://youtu.be/wXq58BbhCO4?si=aLbPWmFj8DiSvQbQ
Thganks
Wonderful. Can anyone tell me which play? Thanks
I should not be lazy. Now found this ‘On May 1, 1517 — now referred to as Evil May Day — riots broke out in London as a response to an influx of immigrant workers. Eighty years later, a play was written that includes some of these events. The play, called Sir Thomas More, wasn’t published or performed at the time, quite possibly because it was censored. This speech from the play is delivered to the rampaging crowd by Thomas More, who was sheriff of London at the time. Thomas More asks the rioters to imagine themselves in the shoes of the immigrants they’re attacking. The manuscript shown in the video is an original version of the speech and was very likely written by William Shakespeare.’
So may not be Shakespeare at all, but it will do.
Accepted.
I did some quick research and found the play, that I had never heard of.
Goosebumps.
How times don’t change, or would that be people, the good, the bad & the gullible?
I always loved my Shakespeare at school, particularly the Scottish play, so it is wonderful to see a master of his craft delivering such powerful and relevant prose today.
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you – I have watched it, and listened, and it is indeed ‘words for the modern day’. In 2019 Sir Ian McKellen, for his 80th birthday, toured 80 theatres where he had never played. He included Buxton Opera House in the tour. He had a huge stage presence and notably huge hands – he threw, from the stage, a handful of (wrapped!) sweets into the audience – one landed on me in the front row of the dress circle! In the 2nd part of the show he invited the audience to call out the names of Shakespeare plays and without hesitation quoted from each. Interesting that (@Sue H) he made his first professional appearance in 1961 at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, as Roper in A Man for All Seasons by Thomas More.
This has the background: https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/the-strangers-case/
It seems this speech has long been a favourite of Ian McKellen’s. Powerful stuff.
Thanks
So powerful, so relevant, and brought tears to my eyes. This in a usually boisterous TV studio, and yet there was complete silence as he spoke. Thank you for sharing.
Thank God for Shakespeare! Not sure if the comment box will preserve the formatting, but here’s my poem on the timelessness of Shakespeare and especially his inspired understanding of our humanity – which take my breath away over and over again. As Ben Johnson famously said: ‘Not for an age but for all time’.
And Ian McKellen is such a fitting interpreter. Such vital stuff. Thank you.
All Our Many Places
I sit at your feet, astounded again
at what you have seen, all that
you have shown us of ourselves.
400 years, and still you speak
to the matter at hand. You are not
given to partisan display, to the
cynicism of easily acclaimed profit.
You do not conceal bankrupt coffers
by devices that time withers;
you stream Humanity. Single.
And Seething. Transparent.
And seeing in this clean glass
the sun and the rain of all our
many places has brought me
to my knees again. Wherever you
take us we know it for what it is;
yours is the rounded pebble,
the ripples hit our shore
from wherever you’re standing
to just where we sit looking in,
shattering the boundaries,
singing through all times’ tides.
And watching the precision
even of your most casual throw,
I am in awe of your faultless
exposition. Your unfiltered sight
binds us to ourselves, draws us on
into the shock of recognition:
here is the common thread
we never really saw… and yet
profoundly know. It pulls us in.
We are Many. We are One.
Many thanks.
I enjoyed that.
My great grandfather walked to Glasgow from Limerick in Ireland( 1860)..escaping the famine. Kept his head down..worked as an itinerant tailor….lived down the Saltmarket beside the Clyde in central Glasgow in horrendous slums. Never filled in a Census…(a neighbour gave details.)The Irish took all the crappy jobs..bottle washing ..stay making…cleaning…On Friday nights the Glaswegians went out ‘tae bash a Paddy’……no doubt Theodus McNamara stayed hidden at home in his slum. His son fought for Britain in the Boer War and was at the Relief of Mafeking. In 1964 I was aware of dislike because of my Irish name. It’s a fine speech but doesn’t change people….narrow minded..selfish…want to be in the ‘gang’ so they can pick on the weak …I smile when I hear the audience clap…..hypocrites.We are ALL immigrants…out of Africa so I’m told.
I know some of what you seek.
It wasn’t always cool to be a Murphy.
Thank God for Shakespeare! Not sure if the comment box will preserve the formatting (it didn’t last time I tried, so just giving it one more shot), but here’s my poem on the timelessness of Shakespeare and especially his inspired understanding of our humanity – which take my breath away over and over again.
As Ben Johnson famously said: ‘Not for an age but for all time’. And Ian McKellen is such a fitting interpreter. Such vital stuff. Thank you.
All Our Many Places
I sit at your feet, astounded again
at what you have seen, all that
you have shown us of ourselves.
400 years, and still you speak
to the matter at hand. You are not
given to partisan display, to the
cynicism of easily acclaimed profit.
You do not conceal bankrupt coffers
by devices that time withers;
you stream Humanity. Single.
And Seething. Transparent.
And seeing in this clean glass
the sun and the rain of all our
many places has brought me
to my knees again. Wherever you
take us we know it for what it is;
yours is the rounded pebble,
the ripples hit our shore from
wherever you’re standing
to just where we sit looking in,
shattering the boundaries,
singing through all times’ tides.
And watching the precision
even of your most casual throw,
I am in awe of your faultless
exposition. Your unfiltered sight
binds us to ourselves, draws us on
into the shock of recognition:
here is the common thread
we never really saw… and yet
profoundly know. It pulls us in.
We are Many. We are One.