To be or not to be ....Stephen Fry on Hamlet's most famous speech and Shakespeare's genius

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00][music] >> Now there's another of my favorite writers [music] who in his day was as popular as King, is as brilliant with words as Joyce, and like Tolkien and Homer created fantastical imaginary worlds. Well, who could that be?

[00:00:21]You know, if I could time travel, this is where I would come to, 410 years ago, and I would pop into one of the taverns that line in the Thames here, and I would listen to the language of the street, and I would uh see if I could bump into Shakespeare, Marlowe, Kyd, Middleton, Webster, Johnson.

[00:00:40]This period, the 1590s to 1600, saw the greatest flowering of theater that the world has ever seen. Poets and playwrights seemed to bubble from this town.

[00:00:50]Shakespeare alone had a vocabulary more than six times the average of 10,000 that you and I might have. He introduced 3,000 words into the English language.

[00:01:03]What distinguishes Shakespeare from all his colleagues, aside from his prodigious output, was his concentration on character, [clears throat] often at the expense of plot, which he was content to lift from others. Hamlet, a case in point, which was a reworking of the Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd.

[00:01:21]It was a radical uh exploration of a single human soul Yeah. in a way that hadn't been done before.

[00:01:30]There hadn't been that type of navel-gazing, soul-searching type of hero. It was much more um objective, as you called it, whereas Hamlet suddenly does something which nobody ever seen before, I don't think, in quite this quite such an extent.

[00:01:43]>> Growing up as a when you started acting, did you always think that's one day? I suppose, but only only in that sense that it's it's seen as one of those kind of uh Olympic events for an actor.

[00:01:55]>> Yeah. I was about to say opening the batting for England, but that's rather inappropriate in your case. Well, quite.

[00:01:59]Keeping goal for Scotland. Keeping goal for Scotland. Yes, it's one of those it's one of the sort of marker points, isn't it, I guess.

[00:02:05]Dorothy Parker said I go and see Hamlet every 10 years, and I find Shakespeare's rewritten it in my absence. Well, I think that's absolutely it. Yeah. And every time you see it, and every actor who does it, and I think the thing about Hamlet, whenever you come to it, and whoever comes to it, it doesn't resist because there's so much in it, and because there's so much scope in it.

[00:02:24]So, that everyone can throw something at it, and reveal something new, I think.

[00:02:27]>> You know, when you first sat in the rehearsal room for a read-through, or whatever, and had to say, "To be or not to be." That is the cliché. Yeah, quite.

[00:02:36]Did you Did you rush through it, and go, or Uh well, we didn't I I mean, I think our director was savvy enough that we didn't sit down and do a read-through straight away, so we sort of circled round it, and take the curse off it. But yeah, I mean, there was so many lines are are so well-worn.

[00:02:52]>> Cruel to be kind, method in his madness, all that stuff.

[00:02:56]To the manner born. They just keep coming.

[00:02:58]And you think, "How do I How do I begin?" And of course, you you you just begin by by not worrying about it is all you can, which sounds terribly simple, and isn't, but there's there's sort of no way around it other than just going, "Well, this this character happens to say these lines here, and they're the first time they've ever been said, and Yes, that's right. I was in front of university students the other day. Wonderful.

[00:03:18]Lovely. Yeah. And I said, "Let's take what is known as but you'll be bored, as I say, 'To be or not to be.'" Oh, yes.

[00:03:25]>> You'll be bored bored You're bored shitless now, as I say. Right?

[00:03:29]And I took out a magnum gun.

[00:03:33]And I fired it at the ceiling, and half the bloody ceiling fell down.

[00:03:37]And I went click click click to blow my head off. "To be or not to be?"

[00:03:46]They thought, "Good hell.

[00:03:48]Ah.

[00:03:49]Oh, this is what it's about."

[00:03:51]And I put this magnum Of course, I put the plaster up there, and it was a blank.

[00:03:55]>> [laughter] >> But my god, you got their attention.

[00:03:57]>> Got their attention.

[00:03:58]>> what And you did the speech "To be or not to be", that is, as you say, so so worn down and eroded by familiarity. But in fact, it is about exactly that. It is "Do I do this?"

[00:04:07]>> Yes. "Do I pull the trigger?" That's right. What is it about it? Is it simply because it is it is the question that a lot of human beings face, whether whether to end life? It's such a simple question. So, I was sitting there thinking, "Well, what's all the fuss about?" I mean, Yeah. I mean, do I kill myself or not?

[00:04:26]And it didn't sort of hit home until well through the run, when I suddenly thought the the the calmness of that soliloquy, the the self-control of that soliloquy, which is unlike the other ones, is part of its part of that concentration of energy. And if you get it right, you can feel it feel the energy of the theater concentrating to a point.

[00:04:48]>> And you can feel that they're hearing it for the first time. It would be the It's a real achievement, wouldn't it? He doesn't know what to say. He To be or not to be. He's He has to find it right at that moment.

[00:05:01]That might be all he'd say. Yes.

[00:05:03]>> That's the question. Now, if you pause too long there, as I did once in Pittsburgh, um and there was a person sitting a little old lady and her father her husband sitting there. Yeah, no, I came out right next to him in my pajamas, all like tearful and crying. I said, "To be or not to be?"

[00:05:18]And then I thought for a moment, you know, what does that mean? And she she turned to her husband and said, "That is the question."

[00:05:24]>> [laughter] >> And That's very touching.

[00:05:26]>> And and and he woke up, I think.

[00:05:33]is the question." Oh, right. You hit the You You sort of joined in her thing. Yeah. I You You affirmed That is the question.

[00:05:40]You're right. It was a wonderful moment, eventually, actually. That is the question.

[00:05:45]What is your feeling about Shakespeare and language? Have Have you always found it a simple and straightforward matter to engage with the the verse? Cuz sometimes it's [clears throat] difficult. It does take a bit of unpicking in terms of just meaning, sometimes. Well, I get sometimes very upset the way he's camed.

[00:05:59]And then people say, "Where is language?

[00:06:01]It's a language."

[00:06:02]He has invented our language. He's He's so ultra-modern. He's so accessible.

[00:06:09]There is a power in the verse. You know, um uh "O for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the sweet hazard bounce and a power." And so, Shakespeare has a reality. For God's sake.

[00:06:28]Here's a line from Shakespeare.

[00:06:30]"Light thickens."

[00:06:34]"Light thickens."

[00:06:37]Where did that come from?

[00:06:39]This is why I will defend Shakespeare.

[00:06:42]This is why they need to look at it, and bring it in. We We were very lucky, cuz presumably we had teachers at school who managed to Well, I did. Managed to inspire me uh passionately inspire me about Shakespeare. And then it becomes completely compulsory. Yeah. I'm afraid I I am a little fearful that our education system makes it very frightening and off-putting to people who, like me, who couldn't speak till I was 7 years old. You You know, couldn't be understood by anyone. I spoke so fast. I speak fast still now, and maybe I could still can't be understood. But >> I had to have elocution lessons to slow me down. Yeah, me too. I had the same thing. Sent to rooms with two-way mirrors, and made to speak with other kids who couldn't speak. And learning this stuff by heart, and speaking it, was the first time that I was able to express all kinds of things in front of people that that I couldn't I My mind just got went too fast.

[00:07:36]I think in the final analysis, he is We've got our author. Our blue planet has its author. Yes. And it is Shakespeare, William Shakespeare.

[00:07:49]I count myself exceedingly lucky to have been given English as my mother tongue.

[00:07:54]There's no doubt that Flaubert, Tolstoy, Goethe, and any number of other writers are immense talents.

[00:08:00]>> [music] >> But yes, Shakespeare is our planet's author. And I'm not talking jingoism here. He just [music] covers all the bases.

[00:08:09]Over at the Comédie-Française in Paris, they, of course, revere their literary giants: Racine, Molière, Corneille, Marivaux. But do they also recognize Shakespeare as the master?

[00:08:24]Guillaume Gallienne is France's foremost classical actor, and has played Shakespeare along with Molière [music] and the rest. What does he make of Hamlet's most famous soliloquy?

[00:08:34]>> question is, "To be or not to be." How does that sound in French? How does that go? Être ou ne pas être, là est la question.

[00:08:41]Um but there's different theories. Um actually, Daniel Mesguich believes that it's not "To be or not to be, that is the question" for him. He He believes it's "To be or not to be, that is the question." Whoa.

[00:08:56]There you go. This is an example of what you're saying about the reinterpretation that French allows. Well, it still involves what what's suggested in the first version, but it brings it somewhere else, also. Do Do you think there's a freedom that you can have if you if if it's in another language? You can You can translate it, and it may not have the richness of the original English, but that you can just, you know, let go of of of having to pronounce every syllable, and and give it a I'm not so sure. I still prefer Shakespeare in English.

[00:09:25]>> You do. Yeah. Uh I learn a lot from how when you know how to act Shakespeare, I think you can act anything. If I were to put to you a an absurd question, that if if if either Molière or Shakespeare had to be expunged from the cultural pantheon, who would they No longer existed. I would choose I I would keep Shakespeare, by far. Oh, really? Yeah.

[00:09:45]Yeah. Yeah. It's richer for me.

[00:09:47]Shakespeare, you can reckon yourself in something human, in in quality or defect, or but it's very it's higher. It goes higher. It goes far far away for me.

[00:10:01]Makes me travel.

[00:10:03]Right. Uh much more.

[00:10:04]Yeah. Yeah.