At the Austin Comic Con in October 2012, the man of the hour was Sir Patrick Stewart, who took time from his overflowing signing and photos schedule to speak to a packed room. After thirty minutes passed quickly by as he answered questions about Star Trek, Sir Patrick stated that he would take only one more question if it was interesting. "No pressure!" he teased the young woman at the microphone.
When the fan, Ashley Highsmith, mentioned she had a Shakespeare question, Sir Patrick's face lit up. As a member of a Shakespeare group herself, Ashley wondered if actors should buck longstanding conventions when playing a character or scene. She asked, "Do you feel like there are certain aspects of Shakespeare that have to be as they have been passed down, or can you turn them on their head and play them unconventionally?"
"Any approach that you take, particularly an approach that is apparently contradictory or counter to what is obvious, is always valuable because one of the aspects of the great genius that was William Shakespeare was his characters are complex, rich, full, at times ambiguous, never always completely clear cut," Sir Patrick Stewart answered.
He continued, "As I [get] better at my job, which I'm still working at, then I find that the characters in Shakespeare's plays reveal themselves to me as even richer human beings, even more complex, even more ambiguous. So yes, to take a completely contrary approach to a character, scene, or speech can be really rewarding."
When Sir Patrick revealed that one of his friends, Sir Ian McKellan, was an inspiration for his portrayal of Macbeth, the room buzzed with excitement. "I'll give you one small instance, and this wasn't my idea – it was Sir Ian McKellan's idea," he said. "When I was preparing to rehearse Macbeth four years ago, I ran into Sir Ian on the street. He's been a friend for many years, and soon after that we were to go into production together, and he said to me, 'Can I just mention one thing to you? ...You know the speech 'tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow'? The important word in that speech is 'and.'
"A light when off in my head and I caught it instantly. I said, 'Yeah, yeah! Don't say any more.'
"What he was saying was, it is not that tomorrow seems to be so painful, it is the fact that there will be so many of them that will be difficult. And I loved that insight."
Even if most of the Austin Comic Con attendees wouldn't classify themselves as Shakespeare aficionados, Sir Patrick spoke with such passion and clarity that I started to feel like a Shakespeare scholar myself. Sir Patrick even had advice for actors and readers of the Bard who might be struggling to understand the text.
"Look, you can't harm Shakespeare," he assured the audience. "Do whatever you like with it. And one of the great things to do with Shakespeare, a great exercise, is to put it in your own words. Have the speech in your head and then rewrite it... and articulate it. It is one of the very best exercises for learning Shakespeare is not verbose, and overcomplicated – he's actually incredibly precise and exact."
