But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.

It's nice being offered a lot of interesting films and being asked to take part in things that are quite curious. If you hunt and keep looking, there are some wonderful things that come out.

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.

And people do enjoy the plays at completely different levels. And, likewise, they enjoy the authorship question... at completely different levels.

It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.

Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.