May 13, 2025 • 29 mins
History's most celebrated playwright isn't who you think he is.
Forget the stuffy portrait of Shakespeare you suffered through in high school - turns out the Bard was tracking audience reactions like a Netflix algorithm, surviving political dangers that got his colleagues executed, and running Renaissance London's most savvy multimedia enterprise. Welcome to "Shakespeare 360°" – where what you learned in English class was just 37° of the full picture (that's one degree for each of his plays).
In this academic deep dive (that's actually fun!), distinguished Shakespeare scholar Professor Gary Taylor takes us backstage to reveal:
- The most important day in Shakespeare’s career - one that changed it’s trajectory entirely
- Why Shakespeare meticulously tracked audience laughter like a proto-Silicon Valley product manager (and how it made him rich)
- The character name change that literally saved Shakespeare's head when his colleagues weren't so lucky
- How AI and algorithms are helping to study every word to make sense of them all
- The bizarre train scheduling conspiracy still trapping Shakespeare fans in Stratford-upon-Avon overnight (400 years later!)
Whether you're a literary buff, business strategist, or just someone who remembers dozing through Romeo and Juliet in 10th grade, this episode reveals why Shakespeare's works still captivate us centuries later. As Professor Taylor puts it, Shakespeare shows us that "the universe is bigger than we are... and so we'll never get bored with it."
This bonus episode features the full interview that was highlighted in the April 23rd DayStrider episode: A Midsummer Night Mistake, with additional insights and stories that didn't make the original cut. Perfect for sharing with students, colleagues, or anyone who appreciates a deeper look at creative genius.
Links:
- Professor Gary Taylor at Florida State University
- Various works written and/or edited by Gary Taylor
Text me your favorite time travel movie!!!
~~~ DayStrider Fun ~~~
Do you want to be mentioned here in the podcast? Or do you want me to do a shout-out for a loved one? All you need to do is send me an e-mail: daystriderstories@gmail.com
Better yet, you can record your own shout-out by leaving me a voice message using this SpeakPipe link
Do you have a story that you wish to share? Join me as a guest and let’s tell the world together! Once again, just send me an e-mail or find me here on Facebook: Truman Pastworthy
If you had as much fun listening as I did creating this episode, please click "follow" in your favorite podcast platform . . . oh . . . and even better - why not share it with a friend (or three)! I’m betting you know just the perfect person who would enjoy today’s stories!
If you feel adventurous, how 'bout writing a great review? :-)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Gary Taylor (00:00):
Shakespeare was interested in the money.
He was a very successfulcommercial writer.
Oh, there's no question that heand his team were all very
aware of the audience.
It's very dangerous inShakespeare's lifetime.
(00:23):
The theater is censored.
Books are censored.
Truman (00:30):
welcome to shakespeare 360 the complete genius behind
the bard i'm truman pastworthyfrom the day strider podcast and
today we're gonna bend yourmind to mirth and merriment
everyone knows shakespeare forhis poetic language and his
unforgettable characters butwhat you learned about him in
(00:52):
high school that was just 37degrees of the full picture And
it's missing everything thatmade him revolutionary.
For the next half hour, we'regoing to give you Shakespeare
360.
The savvy businessman whotracked audience reactions like
a modern data analyst.
The political survivor whododged beheading while his
(01:15):
colleagues weren't so lucky.
And the multimedia entrepreneurwho would have crushed it on
Netflix if he were born fourcenturies later.
Even AI algorithms are joiningthe hunt to crack his genius
code.
Are you ready to learn whyShakespeare's works stood the
test of time with one of theworld's foremost Shakespeare
(01:38):
experts?
Professor Gary Taylor, take itaway.
Gary Taylor (01:43):
That I teach at Florida State University in the
English department.
And I'm the Robert O.
Lawton Distinguished Professor,which is the only award in the
university that's given entirelyby faculty, not administrators.
I've published a lot of books.
Truman (02:00):
You have.
A lot of articles.
A lot of articles, a lot ofessays.
I've read a couple of theothers, yes.
Gary Taylor (02:05):
Yeah.
My most influential works havebeen the Oxford Shakespeare
Complete Works and the newOxford Shakespeare Complete
Works.
Truman (02:13):
Professor Taylor's work reveals a pivotal moment that
sparked Shakespeare'stransformation from struggling
artist to entertainment mogul.
Gary Taylor (02:24):
I know which day.
Go ahead.
And that's the day whenShakespeare...
became a member of theChamberlain's Men acting
companies in 1594.
The Chamberlain's Men was agroup of mostly actors, and
Shakespeare was an actor, whoformed their own company.
(02:46):
So what that means is that theywere shareholders, and every
one of their shareholders got apart of the profits from every
performance.
So this was the most importantmoment in Shakespeare's career
because it meant that he was notjust a freelance trying to sell
(03:08):
scripts to any company thatmight take them, or a jobbing
actor who just got whateverroles he could in whatever
theater company was looking forextra actors for a particular
show.
He was one of the core actorsof the company and also one of
the shareholders of the company.
(03:28):
And eventually, five yearslater, became one of the
shareholders of the GlobeTheatre itself.
Truman (03:36):
And each of his plays meant more money in his pocket
and greater creative freedom.
It's no wonder he became soprolific, turning out 37 plays
spanning every conceivablegenre.
Comedies for the commoners wholoved a bawdy joke, histories
for the political-minded, andtragedies for those who created
(04:01):
Carthus's.
Shakespeare crafted somethingfor every possible customer in
his theatrical marketplace.
Some are born great, someachieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon them.
(04:22):
Those famous words from theTwelfth Night are the perfect
segue to talk aboutShakespeare's greatest hits.
What comes to your mind as hisgreatest work?
Are you drawn to the comediesthat sparkle with wit, or the
tragedies that probe the darkestcorners of the human heart?
(04:43):
Well, Professor Taylor had nohesitation as to which plays top
his list.
Gary Taylor (04:51):
One would be Midsummer Night's Dream,
certainly.
It's a unique play.
There's nothing like it byanybody else.
And it's magical and funny andromantic, all of those things.
And like Romeo and Juliet, it'salso about sex.
That's a...
That's an easy one for me.
(05:12):
King Lear is another easy onefor me because I think it's
just, it's the most powerful ofhis tragedies.
And I thought that it's notjust because I'm an old man
myself at this point, but Ithought that very, very early on
in my career as a Shakespearescholar.
(05:35):
And for my third choice, Itdepends on what you will allow
me to do, because my thirdchoice would be the Henriad.
The Henriad.
And, you know, you could say,oh, that's more than one play.
(05:55):
But Richard II, Henry IV PartI, Henry IV Part II, and Henry V
are all linked together.
They tell one story, and theywere clearly written in that
order.
and Shakespeare meant them tobe understood as a sequence.
And so even if you put all fourof those plays together, it
(06:19):
would still be shorter than alot of masterpieces of world
literature.
But if that's cheating and Ihave to choose just one play
that everybody recognizes as aone-off, then I would say The
Winter's Tale.
which is a political play, butalso magical.
And what Midsummer Night'sDream and King Lear and The
(06:44):
Wonder's Tale have in common,part of what distinguishes
Shakespeare, is that it's partlyabout the human relationship to
the natural world.
In Midsummer Night's Dream,they go off into the woods where
the magic happens, In KingLear, he goes out into the
(07:05):
storm, and in The Winter's Tale,after the tragedy that takes
place, it's very much a domestictragedy in which a man, jealous
man, falsely accuses his wifeof adultery, the play and the
audience go out into the naturalworld to celebrate a harvest
(07:27):
festival.
Shakespeare's very unusualstory among playwrights, but
also I think among writers ofall kinds, in his ability to
tell stories in which not onlydo human beings interact with
other human beings, but alsohuman beings interact with the
(07:50):
non-human natural world.
I think that's become even moreimportant as we've become aware
of the fragility of the climatebut also of the fragility of
human civilization inrelationship to the power of the
natural world
Truman (08:10):
all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely
players now for shakespeare theworld was a stage And that
stage was also a laboratory, aplace to test what worked and
(08:33):
what didn't, with payingcustomers who voted with their
attention and applause.
Shakespeare didn't magicallyjust know what would resonate
with those audiences.
He was much more practical,more empirical, and he developed
a legendary understanding ofwhat makes people laugh and cry
(08:53):
and gasp in the darkness.
Gary Taylor (08:57):
Oh, there's no question that he and his team,
the team of actors, the sharersin the company, they were all,
as all professional actors arein the theater, very aware of
the audience and from second tosecond are aware of whether or
(09:19):
not the audience is engaged orbored.
or irritated.
So they're very sensitive tothat.
And they all, in theirdifferent ways, respond to it.
So Shakespeare had a verysensitive testing machine, not
(09:42):
just in terms of himself presenton the stage and noticing the
way that audiences reacted, butalso the people that he worked
with, the team.
The acting company.
And that's the basis of caseswhere Shakespeare seems to have
added material to an originalversion of Apply.
(10:06):
Wow, okay.
And there is material that isnot present in a later version.
Sometimes that looks like itmight be due to censorship.
But in other cases, it might bedue to just deciding that we
need to speed up this scene.
And, you know, Shakespeare asan artist may have insisted,
(10:29):
well, we have to keep tryingwith this scene.
We can do it a different way.
We can try this, we can trythat.
He may have been very reluctantif he felt strongly that a
certain scene or moment wasimportant to the story that he
wanted to tell.
But certainly we would expectthere to have been adjustments
Truman (10:53):
While other playwrights of his era sometimes blamed
audiences for not appreciatingtheir genius, Shakespeare took a
different approach, one thathelped him evolve as an artist.
Gary Taylor (11:06):
In addition to the sort of big changes that maybe
they decided to add a scene hereor there, or they decided to
trim something because it justwasn't working.
You know, if it doesn't workonce and the rest of the play
does, That's okay.
But if it doesn't work over andover again, then the actor is
(11:29):
going to come to him and say,look, there's nothing I can do
to get the audience to likethis.
Can we just cut it?
Can we trim it?
Part of the reason that we cansee that Shakespeare's works
become more ambitious and morecomplicated over the course of
his career, that's because hekeeps learning.
(11:50):
He learned from audiences.
Truman (11:54):
Whether you see him as a playwright or a data analyst
with a quill, one thing's forsure, Shakespeare knew how to
turn applause into profit.
Gary Taylor (12:04):
Shakespeare was interested in the money.
He was a very successfulcommercial writer.
Truman (12:13):
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
That's very true, but the samecan be said for playwrights who
dare to write about crowns andthe kings and queens who wore
them.
So far, our conversations havebeen about Shakespeare the
businessman and Shakespeare theartist, but what about
(12:35):
Shakespeare the survivor?
In an era where saying thewrong thing could literally cost
you your head, How did hemanage to write politically
charged material while keepinghis head safely attached to his
shoulders?
Gary Taylor (12:54):
But it's very dangerous in Shakespeare's
lifetime.
The theater is censored, booksare censored, and his most
important predecessor andcollaborator in the English
theater, Christopher Marlowe,was almost certainly politically
assassinated for his pushingthe boundaries.
(13:14):
And Thomas Middleton actuallywrote the most successful play
of the period.
People assume, I mean,Shakespeare, in terms of the
totality of his career, was moresuccessful in the theater.
But the single most popularplay was by Thomas Middleton
called A Game of Chess.
But it was shut down by thegovernment and Middleton was
(13:38):
thrown in jail and eventuallygot out of jail, but he never
wrote another play.
And so that's almost certainlywas the condition of his being
released from prison.
Of course.
So it's dangerous.
Truman (13:51):
Pushing boundaries meant death or jail or worse,
censorship.
Gary Taylor (13:56):
What I think most people don't realize is that the
texts of Henry IV and ofFalstaff that we read are
censored.
And the play, when it wasoriginally written, that
character was not calledFalstaff, which is a made-up
name in the period, but Sir JohnOldcastle.
(14:18):
And Sir John Oldcastle wassomebody who was considered a
Protestant martyr who wantedreform of the church, and the
church was very directlyconnected to the monarchy.
So an attack on the church wasconsidered an attack on the
(14:39):
monarchy.
When he rebelled against thechurch, he was publicly executed
for his religious beliefs.
And so to call that comiccharacter Sir John O'Castle was
considered an assault on on thethe protestant history of
(15:01):
england
Truman (15:01):
so unlike his rebellious contemporaries shakespeare
played the long game here's howprofessor taylor put it
Gary Taylor (15:09):
so that play was published soon after it was
performed unlike almost all ofshakespeare's other plays and
the reason it was published wasto publicize uh the name sir
john falstaff uh okay and to sayyou know so that it's not
Oldcastle has nothing to do withthe martyr Oldcastle.
(15:30):
It's Falstaff, and you canlaugh at him as much as you
want.
So one thing we learn from thisis he was not like Oldcastle.
He was not willing to stick tohis guns and say, I'm not going
to change the name and risk hislife or his career.
Truman (15:47):
He wanted to keep his head on his shoulders.
Gary Taylor (15:50):
Yeah, keep his head on his shoulders.
And it's good that he didbecause after that, he went on
writing many amazing plays.
That was only about halfwaythrough his career.
What's
Truman (16:04):
Past is Prologue.
That quote comes from TheTempest and the main character
in that play has magical powers.
So I asked Professor Taylor,what if we could use our magical
powers and time travelShakespeare from the past so
that he could write us a presentday prologue without risk of
(16:26):
jail time or beheading?
Gary Taylor (16:29):
I think the thing that would interest him most is
democracy.
Okay,
Truman (16:35):
so politics.
Gary Taylor (16:36):
Well, he was very interested in politics.
He was, yes.
Almost all of his plays havepolitical elements to them.
But there had been noexperience, really, of democracy
for more than 1500 years beforehis birth.
Noise (16:54):
Right.
Gary Taylor (16:55):
You know, so democracy was a political system
that belonged to the ancientpast rather than to his present
and he was interested in thepast but he had no experience of
a working democracy and givenhis interest in politics i think
(17:16):
that he would be veryinterested in that and also of
course the thing aboutshakespeare though is that he
never wrote contemporary storiesHis stories are all about the
past.
I mean, they connect withpresent tense audiences, but he
didn't write plays about whatwas going on right now.
(17:37):
And so if Netflix made him anoffer, one of the things he
could do would be to write ahistory play about Elizabeth I.
He couldn't do that at thetime, of course.
That would have been...
censored, but he knew a lotabout Elizabeth I.
He could do interesting thingswith that material.
(17:58):
But of course, What happenedafter the birth of Elizabeth I,
with the execution ofElizabeth's mother and Boleyn,
with Henry's succession ofwives, with all the people
around him who he wound upexecuting, that's great dramatic
material, but Shakespearecouldn't possibly write about it
(18:19):
in his time.
He never wrote about thepresent because that was way too
dangerous.
Writing about the past wassafer.
Music (18:28):
Bye.
Truman (18:36):
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than
are dreamt of in yourphilosophy.
Little did Hamlet know hiswords would perfectly describe
Shakespeare's scholarshipitself.
For the last 50 years or so,experts have been debating who
truly wrote the immortal wordsthat we attribute to William
(18:59):
Shakespeare.
And for most of that time, theydidn't have algorithms.
That's right.
And now we can bring AI in toimprove our literary sleuthing.
And Professor Taylor is at theforefront of this digital
revolution.
Gary Taylor (19:17):
Now I'm working with and collaborated with
people who are doing new workwith AI, including former
students of mine.
So it's very much going to becrucial to the future of
Shakespeare scholarship.
But what we do know that isrelated to that is for at least
(19:37):
20 years, Shakespeare scholarshave been using large databases
and search engines to discoverthings about Shakespeare's
language and to evaluate thatkind of data with very
sophisticated statisticalprotocols.
(20:00):
One of the things that thelarge databases and the digital
searches and statisticalchecking have showed us is
things that we almost never payany attention to when we're
reading a poet, especially apoet who's left behind as much
work as Shakespeare.
And that is the little wordslike A and D, in, of, with, by,
(20:26):
from, far, etc.
And it turns out that humanbeings and the way they speak
and the way they write are canbe distinguished by which of
those words they use mostfrequently or least frequently.
Truman (20:42):
So let's pause right here a moment and appreciate an
old dog learning new tricks.
Like me, Professor Taylor hasbeen around the block a few
times, and yet he's right athome in the digital classrooms
where algorithms don't justwrite, they reveal.
And as for those conspiracytheorists, well...
Professor Taylor says the datashuts that down cold.
Gary Taylor (21:07):
It wouldn't make any difference to me if the
person that we think isShakespeare turns out to be the
person that we know as the Earlof Oxford or whoever else.
Having said that, I've neverseen any plausible evidence at
all that they were written byanybody else.
The argument that Shakespeare,because he was from a small town
(21:29):
in the English Midlands and hedidn't go to a university, is
exactly the same kind ofprejudice.
Truman (21:38):
To thine own self be true.
Now that's some great advice.
And what's interesting is thateach generation finds its own
truth.
So the Shakespeare stories thatmy parents connected with isn't
quite the same Shakespeare thatI discovered.
(21:59):
And it definitely isn't thesame Shakespeare my younger
children are experiencing today.
Teaching mostly the samecontent over several decades has
given Professor Taylor a uniqueperspective on how each
generation discovers the Bard
Gary Taylor (22:16):
anew.
I learn a lot from my students.
One of the things about theateris it's a present tense medium.
And their present is differentfrom mine.
they don't come to this momentwith the experiences that have
(22:42):
contributed to my sense of thismoment.
Generational change issomething that you actually
witness if you teach fordecades, in particular if you
teach the same material fordecades, and you see the
difference in how studentsrespond to the same material or
(23:06):
do not respond.
Truman (23:08):
That's fascinating.
Gary Taylor (23:10):
That's a thing that I have consistently learned
from my students, that thethings about Shakespeare that
interest my students in thespring of 2025 are very
different from the things thatinterested my students in 1975.
(23:32):
Or 1985.
And those differences arepartly about time, but they're
also partly about place.
Truman (23:41):
And when Professor Taylor says place, he means both
where you are in life and whereyou are when the magic of
Shakespeare hits you.
In fact, his own personalexperience with Shakespeare
changed radically when hediscovered that the plays were
meant to be seen and not justread.
Gary Taylor (24:01):
And so from that point on, I realized that
Shakespeare was much morepowerful if you didn't just read
him.
I mean, I still read him.
I still believe in reading him.
But that it was much morepowerful if you understood that
(24:22):
what Shakespeare was doing waswriting poetry.
a multimedia art form.
Truman (24:28):
It was intended to be performed.
Gary Taylor (24:31):
It was intended to be performed.
And Shakespeare went into thisbusiness at the very beginning
of the first multimediaentertainment industry in the
Western world because it was acommercial business.
It wasn't just an occasionalevent for special holidays or
(24:53):
religious events.
It was there to make money.
And the way of making money wasto attract as many customers as
possible to these purpose-builttheaters.
Truman (25:08):
And the good professor suggests there's no better
purpose-built theater to catch aShakespeare performance than in
the very town where our herowas born and is buried,
Stratford-upon-Avon.
Gary Taylor (25:20):
I've had the opportunity to see lots of
different Shakespeareperformances and And to see them
live.
And when I started doing this,of course, then going and
getting good seats in a theaterin the West End in London, or,
you know, going toStratford-upon-Avon and Having
(25:41):
to get there on the train andhaving to stay overnight because
they arraign the trainschedules so you can't leave
after the evening performances.
You know, so because they haveto make a living, too.
Truman (25:53):
They have to make a living.
That's funny.
And four centuries later,they're still selling out the
Bard one overnight stay at atime.
So you definitely want to addthis to your theatrical bucket
list.
complete with the obligatoryovernight stay engineered by
savvy train schedulers who wouldhave fit right in with the
(26:15):
original Chamberlain's men.
We are such stuff as dreams aremade on, and our little life is
rounded with a sleep.
That quote acknowledges life'sbrevity.
Yet Shakespeare's works havetranscended that limitation,
(26:38):
living on for centuries.
And though the man himself wastransient as a dream, his
creations have achieved a kindof immortality that defies the
sleep that rounds our littlelives.
I asked Professor Taylor tohelp me understand what it is
about these works that continuesto captivate us.
(26:59):
Why do we still gather intheaters and classrooms and
podcast studios to discuss wordswritten four centuries ago?
He doesn't hesitate to whip outa Shakespeare quote that
describes a moment oftranscendent beauty that speaks
directly to our humanexperience.
Gary Taylor (27:21):
Age cannot wither her, nor customs stale her
infinite variety.
That's from Antony andCleopatra, and it's a
description of Cleopatra.
And I think anybody who hasbeen in love with the same
person for a long time feelsthat way about them, that I
don't get tired of this person.
(27:42):
But Shakespeare is anextraordinary observer of things
around him, people around him,but also of the world around
him.
And he expresses that inmoments like this when he gives
us a sense of scale.
And it's a scale that is somuch larger than we are.
(28:04):
And that is, to me, and I thinkthis is always true of
Shakespeare's evocations of thatkind of scale, it's not
depressing that we're so smallby comparison to that.
It is instead exhilarating Theuniverse is bigger than we are,
(28:27):
and so we'll never get boredwith it.
Truman (28:35):
Shakespeare gave us Hamlet's hesitation, Juliet's
devotion, and Prospero'sforgiveness.
His quill captured the essenceof love and betrayal and
ambition and redemptioncenturies before modern
entertainment has tried to dothe same.
Maybe that's the real timetrap, the way his words still
(28:57):
move us 400 years on.
I'm Truman Pastworthy, and Ihope you've enjoyed Professor
Gary Taylor's insights about theoriginal entertainment mogul,
William Shakespeare.
The next time you find yourselfbinging another season or
streaming your favorite content,remember...
It all started with a Gloverson from a small town who
(29:20):
changed entertainment forever.
Shakespeare was interested in the money.
He was a very successfulcommercial writer.
Oh, there's no question that heand his team were all very
aware of the audience.
It's very dangerous inShakespeare's lifetime.
(00:23):
The theater is censored.
Books are censored.
Truman (00:30):
welcome to shakespeare 360 the complete genius behind
the bard i'm truman pastworthyfrom the day strider podcast and
today we're gonna bend yourmind to mirth and merriment
everyone knows shakespeare forhis poetic language and his
unforgettable characters butwhat you learned about him in
(00:52):
high school that was just 37degrees of the full picture And
it's missing everything thatmade him revolutionary.
For the next half hour, we'regoing to give you Shakespeare
360.
The savvy businessman whotracked audience reactions like
a modern data analyst.
The political survivor whododged beheading while his
(01:15):
colleagues weren't so lucky.
And the multimedia entrepreneurwho would have crushed it on
Netflix if he were born fourcenturies later.
Even AI algorithms are joiningthe hunt to crack his genius
code.
Are you ready to learn whyShakespeare's works stood the
test of time with one of theworld's foremost Shakespeare
(01:38):
experts?
Professor Gary Taylor, take itaway.
Gary Taylor (01:43):
That I teach at Florida State University in the
English department.
And I'm the Robert O.
Lawton Distinguished Professor,which is the only award in the
university that's given entirelyby faculty, not administrators.
I've published a lot of books.
Truman (02:00):
You have.
A lot of articles.
A lot of articles, a lot ofessays.
I've read a couple of theothers, yes.
Gary Taylor (02:05):
Yeah.
My most influential works havebeen the Oxford Shakespeare
Complete Works and the newOxford Shakespeare Complete
Works.
Truman (02:13):
Professor Taylor's work reveals a pivotal moment that
sparked Shakespeare'stransformation from struggling
artist to entertainment mogul.
Gary Taylor (02:24):
I know which day.
Go ahead.
And that's the day whenShakespeare...
became a member of theChamberlain's Men acting
companies in 1594.
The Chamberlain's Men was agroup of mostly actors, and
Shakespeare was an actor, whoformed their own company.
(02:46):
So what that means is that theywere shareholders, and every
one of their shareholders got apart of the profits from every
performance.
So this was the most importantmoment in Shakespeare's career
because it meant that he was notjust a freelance trying to sell
(03:08):
scripts to any company thatmight take them, or a jobbing
actor who just got whateverroles he could in whatever
theater company was looking forextra actors for a particular
show.
He was one of the core actorsof the company and also one of
the shareholders of the company.
(03:28):
And eventually, five yearslater, became one of the
shareholders of the GlobeTheatre itself.
Truman (03:36):
And each of his plays meant more money in his pocket
and greater creative freedom.
It's no wonder he became soprolific, turning out 37 plays
spanning every conceivablegenre.
Comedies for the commoners wholoved a bawdy joke, histories
for the political-minded, andtragedies for those who created
(04:01):
Carthus's.
Shakespeare crafted somethingfor every possible customer in
his theatrical marketplace.
Some are born great, someachieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon them.
(04:22):
Those famous words from theTwelfth Night are the perfect
segue to talk aboutShakespeare's greatest hits.
What comes to your mind as hisgreatest work?
Are you drawn to the comediesthat sparkle with wit, or the
tragedies that probe the darkestcorners of the human heart?
(04:43):
Well, Professor Taylor had nohesitation as to which plays top
his list.
Gary Taylor (04:51):
One would be Midsummer Night's Dream,
certainly.
It's a unique play.
There's nothing like it byanybody else.
And it's magical and funny andromantic, all of those things.
And like Romeo and Juliet, it'salso about sex.
That's a...
That's an easy one for me.
(05:12):
King Lear is another easy onefor me because I think it's
just, it's the most powerful ofhis tragedies.
And I thought that it's notjust because I'm an old man
myself at this point, but Ithought that very, very early on
in my career as a Shakespearescholar.
(05:35):
And for my third choice, Itdepends on what you will allow
me to do, because my thirdchoice would be the Henriad.
The Henriad.
And, you know, you could say,oh, that's more than one play.
(05:55):
But Richard II, Henry IV PartI, Henry IV Part II, and Henry V
are all linked together.
They tell one story, and theywere clearly written in that
order.
and Shakespeare meant them tobe understood as a sequence.
And so even if you put all fourof those plays together, it
(06:19):
would still be shorter than alot of masterpieces of world
literature.
But if that's cheating and Ihave to choose just one play
that everybody recognizes as aone-off, then I would say The
Winter's Tale.
which is a political play, butalso magical.
And what Midsummer Night'sDream and King Lear and The
(06:44):
Wonder's Tale have in common,part of what distinguishes
Shakespeare, is that it's partlyabout the human relationship to
the natural world.
In Midsummer Night's Dream,they go off into the woods where
the magic happens, In KingLear, he goes out into the
(07:05):
storm, and in The Winter's Tale,after the tragedy that takes
place, it's very much a domestictragedy in which a man, jealous
man, falsely accuses his wifeof adultery, the play and the
audience go out into the naturalworld to celebrate a harvest
(07:27):
festival.
Shakespeare's very unusualstory among playwrights, but
also I think among writers ofall kinds, in his ability to
tell stories in which not onlydo human beings interact with
other human beings, but alsohuman beings interact with the
(07:50):
non-human natural world.
I think that's become even moreimportant as we've become aware
of the fragility of the climatebut also of the fragility of
human civilization inrelationship to the power of the
natural world
Truman (08:10):
all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely
players now for shakespeare theworld was a stage And that
stage was also a laboratory, aplace to test what worked and
(08:33):
what didn't, with payingcustomers who voted with their
attention and applause.
Shakespeare didn't magicallyjust know what would resonate
with those audiences.
He was much more practical,more empirical, and he developed
a legendary understanding ofwhat makes people laugh and cry
(08:53):
and gasp in the darkness.
Gary Taylor (08:57):
Oh, there's no question that he and his team,
the team of actors, the sharersin the company, they were all,
as all professional actors arein the theater, very aware of
the audience and from second tosecond are aware of whether or
(09:19):
not the audience is engaged orbored.
or irritated.
So they're very sensitive tothat.
And they all, in theirdifferent ways, respond to it.
So Shakespeare had a verysensitive testing machine, not
(09:42):
just in terms of himself presenton the stage and noticing the
way that audiences reacted, butalso the people that he worked
with, the team.
The acting company.
And that's the basis of caseswhere Shakespeare seems to have
added material to an originalversion of Apply.
(10:06):
Wow, okay.
And there is material that isnot present in a later version.
Sometimes that looks like itmight be due to censorship.
But in other cases, it might bedue to just deciding that we
need to speed up this scene.
And, you know, Shakespeare asan artist may have insisted,
(10:29):
well, we have to keep tryingwith this scene.
We can do it a different way.
We can try this, we can trythat.
He may have been very reluctantif he felt strongly that a
certain scene or moment wasimportant to the story that he
wanted to tell.
But certainly we would expectthere to have been adjustments
Truman (10:53):
While other playwrights of his era sometimes blamed
audiences for not appreciatingtheir genius, Shakespeare took a
different approach, one thathelped him evolve as an artist.
Gary Taylor (11:06):
In addition to the sort of big changes that maybe
they decided to add a scene hereor there, or they decided to
trim something because it justwasn't working.
You know, if it doesn't workonce and the rest of the play
does, That's okay.
But if it doesn't work over andover again, then the actor is
(11:29):
going to come to him and say,look, there's nothing I can do
to get the audience to likethis.
Can we just cut it?
Can we trim it?
Part of the reason that we cansee that Shakespeare's works
become more ambitious and morecomplicated over the course of
his career, that's because hekeeps learning.
(11:50):
He learned from audiences.
Truman (11:54):
Whether you see him as a playwright or a data analyst
with a quill, one thing's forsure, Shakespeare knew how to
turn applause into profit.
Gary Taylor (12:04):
Shakespeare was interested in the money.
He was a very successfulcommercial writer.
Truman (12:13):
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
That's very true, but the samecan be said for playwrights who
dare to write about crowns andthe kings and queens who wore
them.
So far, our conversations havebeen about Shakespeare the
businessman and Shakespeare theartist, but what about
(12:35):
Shakespeare the survivor?
In an era where saying thewrong thing could literally cost
you your head, How did hemanage to write politically
charged material while keepinghis head safely attached to his
shoulders?
Gary Taylor (12:54):
But it's very dangerous in Shakespeare's
lifetime.
The theater is censored, booksare censored, and his most
important predecessor andcollaborator in the English
theater, Christopher Marlowe,was almost certainly politically
assassinated for his pushingthe boundaries.
(13:14):
And Thomas Middleton actuallywrote the most successful play
of the period.
People assume, I mean,Shakespeare, in terms of the
totality of his career, was moresuccessful in the theater.
But the single most popularplay was by Thomas Middleton
called A Game of Chess.
But it was shut down by thegovernment and Middleton was
(13:38):
thrown in jail and eventuallygot out of jail, but he never
wrote another play.
And so that's almost certainlywas the condition of his being
released from prison.
Of course.
So it's dangerous.
Truman (13:51):
Pushing boundaries meant death or jail or worse,
censorship.
Gary Taylor (13:56):
What I think most people don't realize is that the
texts of Henry IV and ofFalstaff that we read are
censored.
And the play, when it wasoriginally written, that
character was not calledFalstaff, which is a made-up
name in the period, but Sir JohnOldcastle.
(14:18):
And Sir John Oldcastle wassomebody who was considered a
Protestant martyr who wantedreform of the church, and the
church was very directlyconnected to the monarchy.
So an attack on the church wasconsidered an attack on the
(14:39):
monarchy.
When he rebelled against thechurch, he was publicly executed
for his religious beliefs.
And so to call that comiccharacter Sir John O'Castle was
considered an assault on on thethe protestant history of
(15:01):
england
Truman (15:01):
so unlike his rebellious contemporaries shakespeare
played the long game here's howprofessor taylor put it
Gary Taylor (15:09):
so that play was published soon after it was
performed unlike almost all ofshakespeare's other plays and
the reason it was published wasto publicize uh the name sir
john falstaff uh okay and to sayyou know so that it's not
Oldcastle has nothing to do withthe martyr Oldcastle.
(15:30):
It's Falstaff, and you canlaugh at him as much as you
want.
So one thing we learn from thisis he was not like Oldcastle.
He was not willing to stick tohis guns and say, I'm not going
to change the name and risk hislife or his career.
Truman (15:47):
He wanted to keep his head on his shoulders.
Gary Taylor (15:50):
Yeah, keep his head on his shoulders.
And it's good that he didbecause after that, he went on
writing many amazing plays.
That was only about halfwaythrough his career.
What's
Truman (16:04):
Past is Prologue.
That quote comes from TheTempest and the main character
in that play has magical powers.
So I asked Professor Taylor,what if we could use our magical
powers and time travelShakespeare from the past so
that he could write us a presentday prologue without risk of
(16:26):
jail time or beheading?
Gary Taylor (16:29):
I think the thing that would interest him most is
democracy.
Okay,
Truman (16:35):
so politics.
Gary Taylor (16:36):
Well, he was very interested in politics.
He was, yes.
Almost all of his plays havepolitical elements to them.
But there had been noexperience, really, of democracy
for more than 1500 years beforehis birth.
Noise (16:54):
Right.
Gary Taylor (16:55):
You know, so democracy was a political system
that belonged to the ancientpast rather than to his present
and he was interested in thepast but he had no experience of
a working democracy and givenhis interest in politics i think
(17:16):
that he would be veryinterested in that and also of
course the thing aboutshakespeare though is that he
never wrote contemporary storiesHis stories are all about the
past.
I mean, they connect withpresent tense audiences, but he
didn't write plays about whatwas going on right now.
(17:37):
And so if Netflix made him anoffer, one of the things he
could do would be to write ahistory play about Elizabeth I.
He couldn't do that at thetime, of course.
That would have been...
censored, but he knew a lotabout Elizabeth I.
He could do interesting thingswith that material.
(17:58):
But of course, What happenedafter the birth of Elizabeth I,
with the execution ofElizabeth's mother and Boleyn,
with Henry's succession ofwives, with all the people
around him who he wound upexecuting, that's great dramatic
material, but Shakespearecouldn't possibly write about it
(18:19):
in his time.
He never wrote about thepresent because that was way too
dangerous.
Writing about the past wassafer.
Music (18:28):
Bye.
Truman (18:36):
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than
are dreamt of in yourphilosophy.
Little did Hamlet know hiswords would perfectly describe
Shakespeare's scholarshipitself.
For the last 50 years or so,experts have been debating who
truly wrote the immortal wordsthat we attribute to William
(18:59):
Shakespeare.
And for most of that time, theydidn't have algorithms.
That's right.
And now we can bring AI in toimprove our literary sleuthing.
And Professor Taylor is at theforefront of this digital
revolution.
Gary Taylor (19:17):
Now I'm working with and collaborated with
people who are doing new workwith AI, including former
students of mine.
So it's very much going to becrucial to the future of
Shakespeare scholarship.
But what we do know that isrelated to that is for at least
(19:37):
20 years, Shakespeare scholarshave been using large databases
and search engines to discoverthings about Shakespeare's
language and to evaluate thatkind of data with very
sophisticated statisticalprotocols.
(20:00):
One of the things that thelarge databases and the digital
searches and statisticalchecking have showed us is
things that we almost never payany attention to when we're
reading a poet, especially apoet who's left behind as much
work as Shakespeare.
And that is the little wordslike A and D, in, of, with, by,
(20:26):
from, far, etc.
And it turns out that humanbeings and the way they speak
and the way they write are canbe distinguished by which of
those words they use mostfrequently or least frequently.
Truman (20:42):
So let's pause right here a moment and appreciate an
old dog learning new tricks.
Like me, Professor Taylor hasbeen around the block a few
times, and yet he's right athome in the digital classrooms
where algorithms don't justwrite, they reveal.
And as for those conspiracytheorists, well...
Professor Taylor says the datashuts that down cold.
Gary Taylor (21:07):
It wouldn't make any difference to me if the
person that we think isShakespeare turns out to be the
person that we know as the Earlof Oxford or whoever else.
Having said that, I've neverseen any plausible evidence at
all that they were written byanybody else.
The argument that Shakespeare,because he was from a small town
(21:29):
in the English Midlands and hedidn't go to a university, is
exactly the same kind ofprejudice.
Truman (21:38):
To thine own self be true.
Now that's some great advice.
And what's interesting is thateach generation finds its own
truth.
So the Shakespeare stories thatmy parents connected with isn't
quite the same Shakespeare thatI discovered.
(21:59):
And it definitely isn't thesame Shakespeare my younger
children are experiencing today.
Teaching mostly the samecontent over several decades has
given Professor Taylor a uniqueperspective on how each
generation discovers the Bard
Gary Taylor (22:16):
anew.
I learn a lot from my students.
One of the things about theateris it's a present tense medium.
And their present is differentfrom mine.
they don't come to this momentwith the experiences that have
(22:42):
contributed to my sense of thismoment.
Generational change issomething that you actually
witness if you teach fordecades, in particular if you
teach the same material fordecades, and you see the
difference in how studentsrespond to the same material or
(23:06):
do not respond.
Truman (23:08):
That's fascinating.
Gary Taylor (23:10):
That's a thing that I have consistently learned
from my students, that thethings about Shakespeare that
interest my students in thespring of 2025 are very
different from the things thatinterested my students in 1975.
(23:32):
Or 1985.
And those differences arepartly about time, but they're
also partly about place.
Truman (23:41):
And when Professor Taylor says place, he means both
where you are in life and whereyou are when the magic of
Shakespeare hits you.
In fact, his own personalexperience with Shakespeare
changed radically when hediscovered that the plays were
meant to be seen and not justread.
Gary Taylor (24:01):
And so from that point on, I realized that
Shakespeare was much morepowerful if you didn't just read
him.
I mean, I still read him.
I still believe in reading him.
But that it was much morepowerful if you understood that
(24:22):
what Shakespeare was doing waswriting poetry.
a multimedia art form.
Truman (24:28):
It was intended to be performed.
Gary Taylor (24:31):
It was intended to be performed.
And Shakespeare went into thisbusiness at the very beginning
of the first multimediaentertainment industry in the
Western world because it was acommercial business.
It wasn't just an occasionalevent for special holidays or
(24:53):
religious events.
It was there to make money.
And the way of making money wasto attract as many customers as
possible to these purpose-builttheaters.
Truman (25:08):
And the good professor suggests there's no better
purpose-built theater to catch aShakespeare performance than in
the very town where our herowas born and is buried,
Stratford-upon-Avon.
Gary Taylor (25:20):
I've had the opportunity to see lots of
different Shakespeareperformances and And to see them
live.
And when I started doing this,of course, then going and
getting good seats in a theaterin the West End in London, or,
you know, going toStratford-upon-Avon and Having
(25:41):
to get there on the train andhaving to stay overnight because
they arraign the trainschedules so you can't leave
after the evening performances.
You know, so because they haveto make a living, too.
Truman (25:53):
They have to make a living.
That's funny.
And four centuries later,they're still selling out the
Bard one overnight stay at atime.
So you definitely want to addthis to your theatrical bucket
list.
complete with the obligatoryovernight stay engineered by
savvy train schedulers who wouldhave fit right in with the
(26:15):
original Chamberlain's men.
We are such stuff as dreams aremade on, and our little life is
rounded with a sleep.
That quote acknowledges life'sbrevity.
Yet Shakespeare's works havetranscended that limitation,
(26:38):
living on for centuries.
And though the man himself wastransient as a dream, his
creations have achieved a kindof immortality that defies the
sleep that rounds our littlelives.
I asked Professor Taylor tohelp me understand what it is
about these works that continuesto captivate us.
(26:59):
Why do we still gather intheaters and classrooms and
podcast studios to discuss wordswritten four centuries ago?
He doesn't hesitate to whip outa Shakespeare quote that
describes a moment oftranscendent beauty that speaks
directly to our humanexperience.
Gary Taylor (27:21):
Age cannot wither her, nor customs stale her
infinite variety.
That's from Antony andCleopatra, and it's a
description of Cleopatra.
And I think anybody who hasbeen in love with the same
person for a long time feelsthat way about them, that I
don't get tired of this person.
(27:42):
But Shakespeare is anextraordinary observer of things
around him, people around him,but also of the world around
him.
And he expresses that inmoments like this when he gives
us a sense of scale.
And it's a scale that is somuch larger than we are.
(28:04):
And that is, to me, and I thinkthis is always true of
Shakespeare's evocations of thatkind of scale, it's not
depressing that we're so smallby comparison to that.
It is instead exhilarating Theuniverse is bigger than we are,
(28:27):
and so we'll never get boredwith it.
Truman (28:35):
Shakespeare gave us Hamlet's hesitation, Juliet's
devotion, and Prospero'sforgiveness.
His quill captured the essenceof love and betrayal and
ambition and redemptioncenturies before modern
entertainment has tried to dothe same.
Maybe that's the real timetrap, the way his words still
(28:57):
move us 400 years on.
I'm Truman Pastworthy, and Ihope you've enjoyed Professor
Gary Taylor's insights about theoriginal entertainment mogul,
William Shakespeare.
The next time you find yourselfbinging another season or
streaming your favorite content,remember...
It all started with a Gloverson from a small town who
(29:20):
changed entertainment forever.
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