Tomorrow, and tomorrow -- Ian McKellen analyzes Macbeth speech (1979) 

Oh, what an amazing duo! So cool you saw them both together and at Stratford of all places.

Sobs in gen z.

​@@ItsukaShimotsukipeople are still putting on this show

@@mechanicalmonk2020 But it's just not the same. There's acting, and then there's acting.

Is that the scottish play?

+kingerz Can he be a conjurer of expensive tricks?

i hope he conjures some tricks this summer :) going to see him in july,

Here's some wonderful trivia for you. This was addressed to the Royal Shakespeare company. Which John hurt was a member of at the time of this filming! John hurt did The voice of the original Bilbo baggins in the original Hobbit cartoons!! also the bald man you see in the background of this video, is Patrick Stewart

@@resurectiondelpantion9268 No, I think that's David Suchet. Look at him closely around 8 minutes in when he turns sideways. Both were in the production, as well as the later series that was done in 1982. There's a segment in that one where the two debate their different takes on playing Shylock with Suchet being far more sympathetic to the character. It's a fascinating show.

@@damarh I saw him as Lear a couple of years ago. He had me bursting into tears before the end (and we're not talking a single dignified manly tear running down the cheek, either).

I used to think the same as you, until I studied literature at college. The people who write these works, sometimes also write compendium pieces, which elucidate the audience as to their thought processes. If you think this is ''over-analysed'' - try Joyce! Whilst this is a subjective interpretation- Shakespeare did indeed mean most of the elements McKellan is picking up on! The imagery and use of literary devices alone, make it clear what Shakespeare is alluding to thematically. Using form and meter to convey meaning, is another one of Shakespeare's tricks - just check out his other works/sonnets. It (making tenuous connections) can't be a coincidence when it's seen hundreds of times in a writer's oeuvre. Reading too much into one piece would be indeed be crazy; yet he (Shakespeare) consistently wrote work which was a dense as this. Bill Shakespeare be the man yo!

Brian Sweeney, Oh don’t get me wrong, I believe Mckellen’s analysis is completely valid. But thank you for the insight

@@briansweeney5024 you bore me, i think the OP knows this really and was simply being a one with his joke.

@@ots1634 Oh no! I've bored you. That's the one thing I wasn't supposed to do. Life isn't worth living now. Goodbye cruel world!

@@briansweeney5024 lol x

I couldn't articulate it quite as eloquently as you did but this is exactly the feeling I had while watching this. I can't imagine having the ability to present and communicate so confidently and clearly on any topic.

That dialogue was swimming in arrogance

@@nathanbellamy3308 yeah, I'm still in awe by his craft and composure as a theatre lover. He is an amazing actor and he knows his Shakespeare; but as any actor, he needs to be a bit arrogant, egocentric and full of himself to be able to perform.

@@ManuelCocco actually years ago, as an amateur I found that acting well means you become that person. Therefore lose your ego. I was a very shy teen at the time and was told I was very good. I have read many good actors say they are shy as themselves. Whenever I have had to speak publicly, giving presentations as a student, friends comment on how confident I appear. Yet I even find going shopoing stressful and wearying. I was once persuaded to stand for the local.council. Now that is a job that needs ego. I couldn't even push my leaflets through letter boxes.

@@helenamcginty4920 yes, most of the best actors I know are also very shy (and they transform when the set on stage). And you are right that to become somebody else you need to get rid of your ego first. But in their daily life, especially when they are successful, they still tend to be mostly full of themselves and quite egocentric (i.e. mainly interested about their profession, their colleagues, and especially themselves). True actors forget all of that on stage but in their daily life many are quite insecure and full of mannerisms.

+Nicole Wu Haha. Came here from the Graham Norton show

Which one?

+Maximilian Tay check out the one with michael fassbender, james mccavoy and hugh jackman

Sir

Also Sean Astin's daughter (see Empire Online interview)

Why can't all English classes be filled with attentive and appreciative students like these? :)

McKellen has intimately studied Shakespeare for most of his life. It takes decades of study to have this thorough an understanding of Shakespeare . McKellen is also brilliant... far more than almost all English teachers many of whom are very intelligent.

We just use it right in this Secound for our online English lesson Lul

This is a pretty standard acting class

@A guy with a pony picture so he'll get called a fag And sometimes a 12 minute clip people specifically chose to watch on their own whim gets compared to sitting at school for hours per week, being forced to learn whether one feels like it or not.

truely - understanding the texts meaning (or your interpretation of them) unlocks it all

10000% agree!

i think he can understand and express it so well as he is learning it from an actors perspective, and Shakespeare too was an actor

Yeah, I wonder if teachers just read Wikipedia. Except for a select few, they probably have no idea what they're talking about.

Macbeth would be a one year course at this pace.

+oldfrend Thanks for that info.

thank you so much

Thanks for the tip! When I get the time I plan to watch the whole series. It looks very promising.

I watched this when it was first broadcast. It introduced me to amazing actors: Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Judith Dench, David Suette and Ben Kingsley.

@@barbarascutt792 When it was first broadcast. Don't need the -ed in the composed past.

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that's not a compliment at all

I like to call it an abstract, _conceptual_ sense.

When are you going to oil me up?

@@TransoceanicOutreach and strip you down? This isn't a revue skit.

From the buttocks

I think he got a bit lost in the middle.

What I really like about Shakespeare is that you can take just one single speech buried somewhere in a play and it is an amazing piece of writing, but there is a whole play of this, and then there are many, many works all of that quality. Definitely best writer of all time.

@@holliswilliams8426 I have loved Shakespeare’s work my whole life, and stand in awe of it even more so now than when I was a boy just beginning to read him. And I suspect the case for him as greatest writer of all time is a very strong one. So I don’t mean to throw shade on what you’ve said, with the gentle reminder that “all time” is a very long time, and “greatest“ is an awfully high title. How many of us award it to Shakespeare without having read even obvious contenders/rivals like Dante, Cervantes, Molière, Milton, Tolstoy, Lope de Vega, Camōes etc., etc. (most of them writing in other languages, to boot) and therefore not really being qualified to make the judgment. It takes nothing away from Shakespeare’s greatness, to realize that the Shakespeare Adulation Machine is an extremely powerful one.

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Glad to hear some guy says Shakespeare holds up That carries a lot of weight with me. You know

Did you watch the video or-- ?

What's the connection between this and Fassbender?

Stewie Griffin You don't get it....

MattzProductionz Obviously. Well?

Stewie Griffin Fassbender is going to star in an upcoming Macbeth adaptation! (a film) Should be pretty cool.

Stewie Griffin my guess is because they both play magneto

I am a piano player and I once said to a colleague that Sometimes I don't know whether I am playing the piano or it is playing me, he thought I was an idiot !

He s doing both simultaneously you take the idea out of you mind and take the sound out of the piano the result is music

@Drinker_Of_ Milk your loss...

Michelangelo?? I was not carving... I was setting free 'The David' from that lump... Of marble...

He played the piano, stop giving credit to inanimate objects

Great thought, Mr John. Thank you for sharing it.

n'ver do I tire, of him who inspired, of him, of him....of him. *loud applause *

Shakespeare is simply the GOAT. Cervantes was also a genius, and so was Poe.

@@carl_anderson9315 So was Nabokov. English was his third language.

John, turn off Newsmax. 🙏🏻

Yes ¡¡¡ both Shakespeare and Ian are geniouses

He still has :)

I wonder if Shakespeare wrote a single play! Clearly a lot of top rank Shakespearean actors such as Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi have serious doubts. It's a really fascinating mystery.

Hes still alive as of Jan 2023

18th earl of oxford*

He does: Dante Alighieri, but you need to learn the Italian to understand how. That said, though I don't think it matters, I can't tell you who is better author.

no equal maybe, but many betters.

@@acchaladka Add Cervantes, Lope, Calderon - and this list excludes all the classics and Russian and whole of supreme eastern literature.

@@ahmadhasan8355 Like?

@@Argonaut121 I've listed a few western writers who one may contend are better, or non-bardolators will accede them to be his equal. Here's just a few names from Eastern Literature who are definitively better (of course you do have to know the lang. and lit.) 2 names from Persian - Ferdousi and Rumi 2 names from Sanskrit - Valmiki and Vyasa there are a few more from each of these langs. and numerous others in other langs. but due to their relative lack of fame would be debatable. Shakespeare is just an English Dramatist, he can't be that great, it's a given.

I saw his show as well last Saturday and oh my god it was beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. Very lucky to have seen him live.

He already got a few: a CBE and a CH.

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@@hakonsoreide A gong or two.

He WAS knighted

And that guy is Trevor Nunn, who directed Mckellen in that production of Macbeth himself!

That's Sir Trevor Nunn.

🤦

Chazbot Yes!!

True. It's chilling.

It reminds me of Beckett’s Not I. Like staring into hell and having this disembodied face gaze back while it struggles to understand how it got where it is.

I was there. January 1978. Just turned ten years old. Also in the corner, hanging over the stage (unseen in the video), was a rusty metal sheet held by two ropes. You would see it swing and vibrate when there was thunder: a little “Brechtian” moment.

@@jonathanmelia It is interesting the images actors come up with. Ian sees a guy plodding along and a literal candle being snuffed. Others see the dusty death as the body resolving himself. It's a testament to Shakespeare or to our own creativity that equally valid images are drawn from Macbeth's speech.

Shakespeare can be so enjoyable when people cut to the heart of what's meant. I wonder if it so rarely sounds natural because so few actors really understand what he's trying to say

Surely the trick is to have both. Otherwise it's a shrink's couch.

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whenever I remember this guy I think the same thing and actually I just thought the idead of being an actor after my 35. And I'm thinking about it very seriously just because of this guy has achieved after his 70 years old.

@@DayVid2.0 half in total. Because he's 82 now. He's not gonna live to 150.

Great comment!

@@fatihkan2601 Not half in total, because he could live another year, in which case, it's now more than half

@@Stettafire he could live to his 100. British people can live longer mostly. It's not the case. First commenter suggests like he's in his forties.

I also saw this show. I actually got to be one of the Henry V dead bodies on stage with him. So I can say I acted on the stage with Ian McKellen.

@@linengray do you still perform or was it a one off?

@@heshamhany8470 It was a one off. He selected people from the audience to join him on stage. He then did a scene with all of us playing dead. He even gave us a short lesson on how to die well.

@@linengray that was awesome! But how do you die well? 😂

I saw him doing this at the nac in Ottawa so long ago. His romeo and Juliet balcony scene was also memorable. Truly comic.

This aspect, for me, is as fascinating as the quality of writing itself. The degree to which Shakespeare understood people, understood the human condition and its many nuanced facets. Particularly his understanding of depression, nihilism and existentialism but also love, loyalty, justice, morals. Long before psychology was codified it seems that Shakespeare had already peered deep into the human mind and peeled back so very many layers.

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Wonderfully said.

Beautiful, you sound like a playwright yourself haha

Chazbot That's not achieved just "by doing" - he has seriously studied it. The fact that serious study is more important to some actors than to some professors is SO no indication, let alone proof, that wisdom comes just from experience alone... I know, you didn't go that far, but I keep hearing that and am quite allergic by now to that line of argument. I have, by the way, been blessed with some truly great professors, so they are, or were there.

And yet studying IS "learning by doing". I'm sorry that such a statement gives you allergies, but what the heck do you think studying is? Don't put tone or meaning into someone's words online, you'll give yourself an apolexy ;)

*apoplexy

this dude is boring asfu are u high

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True. Shakespeare was more than a restrained virtuoso, a formidable stylist. The substantive worth of his writings is quite as important to appreciate alongside a formalist approach to his writings.

Such a great comment. I learned something. Thank you.

Piletta, what a marvelous name you have. I thought I had a good name! 🤭

I think it's simply because Shakespeare wrote poetry, and the plays are in verse, so people just see it as performance poetry, if that makes sense.

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Underrated

He had hair?

@@sesfilmsllc If you call that hair. He has just about the same amount as he did 10 years later when he played Cpt. Picard. The difference here is that he has just grown out what little he has.

Along with David Suchet. Such talent

@@McKamikazeHighlander Both actually discussed the role of Shylock in Merchant of Venice. And the setting of that video was somewhat similar to this one.

Stefan Sharak Have you not seen dune?

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“From the buttocks.” “TIME!!!” 😂😂😂 So funny!

I was just scrolling through the comments hoping someone else said this: I love Mr. McKellen here but yes that's the first thing I thought of.

Magneto and Professor X in their youth.

You should read Sir Patrick Stewart’s new book, he talks about this speech and about their friendship. They weren’t close until much later. Very absorbing!

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Absolutely

He would be great at that too

If you know where to look, hip hop is a great addition to the canon of the english language culturally speaking, and a worthy extension of how we think of poetry today with the original performative aspect a prerequisite. Not all hip hop is created equal of course and some indeed is just for radio play which is in itself no evil, but there are a great deal of extremely talented wordsmiths that have put out very interesting bodies of work with their own distinct styles and even personal lexicons. For instance if you read the lyrics to Black Star’s Thieves In The Night (or better yet listen to it of course) they stand up in their own right. As far as music goes no current form comes close to hip hop’s complexity you’d probably have to go back to librettists for that.

Good point.

You have a point! Thank you for making me think about the meaning of using syllable. Do you mind giving me your thoughts? I have my own idea but would love your perspective.

@@BbGun-lw5vi It's intriguing, this thing about language ... "In the beginning there was the Word etc." Words are, in a sense, a proxy for 'reality'. But can words (i.e. syllables) be a proxy for Time itself? It's an interesting idea that this passage draws me back to! If so it is at the very least prescient of Shakespeare to bring it up ... especially when seen through the modern lens of 'Space-Time' On the other hand there is the notion of language as 'material' - the 'plasticene' out of which we construct reality. That is what I meant by "almost postmodern" On that level the "last syllable" quote is a lovely piece of material in itself, best enunciated with the full measure of scorn it deserves.

@@eamonnmorris5331 Thank you for sharing. You gave me a lot to think about. I hadn’t thought about “in the beginning there was the Word.” When I read your first comment I kept thinking of a few things. Like you, I thought about how we construct our reality through language. And how a novel is a bunch of chapters, made up of paragraphs, full of words that are made up of syllables. Since he says “recorded” time then it’s a history volume that is immensely huge with countless syllables and that last syllable is the last one spoken before the volume is closed. I love that the previous line before “syllable” is made up of only one syllable words except for petty. ‘Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

1. Patrick Stewart!? Where? On the right. Hmm, it's so blurry, I can barely-- Holy crap, you're right! 2. Which makes this even more interesting: no mention of the tip that, in the story Stewart tells, McKellen gave him three decades later, when he was working on the 2010 film version: "The important word is *'AND'.* 🤯" (The emoji _is_ part of how he tells the story.) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6_mA4ud9CxM.html This implies that it's an insight McKellen had somewhere in the intervening time, despite his analysis here seeming so complete. I wonder what he would have to say about it.

If he wasn’t a flawed character we wouldn’t think the play was any good. If you want happy ever after it’s fairytales you are after.

@@rolandtomassi3486 No need to be condensing

@@rolandtomassi3486 I think you missed the spirit within which the comment was made

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Shakespeare's work is chock full of references to the classics of western civilization.

@@brendanburgess2071 You could say he's a proto-modernist?

Sir Ian Sir Ian Sir Ian.

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And when that moment comes, ambition ceases.