Imaginary interview with William Shakespeare
by Charactorium · William Shakespeare (1564 — 1616) · Literature · 5 min read
It is in a panelled room of Whitehall Palace, on a cold winter evening in 1606, that King James I summons William Shakespeare after a performance of Macbeth before the court. The candles still smoke, the air smells of warm wax and damp wool from the cloaks. Since the sovereign took the playwright's company under his protection, now called the King's Men, the two men know each other beyond the stage. The king, fond of poetry and uneasy about witches, comes tonight to question the author about his art, his boards, and his ghosts.
—Master Shakespeare, my court still trembles from your Macbeth played tonight. Where do you get this gift of plumbing the dark soul of a man?
Sire, I plumb nothing that you do not carry yourself, and every man with you. When I write a general devoured by ambition, or that Danish prince who questions nothingness — to be, or not to be — I do not invent a distant monster: I hold up a mirror. You who govern know better than anyone how power awakens fear, guilt, those stains that no water can wash away. Lady Macbeth rubs her hand endlessly, and the audience recognizes itself in her torment. My only secret, Majesty, is to believe that a murderer bleeds within as we do, and that a king dreams as badly as a beggar.
I plumb nothing that you do not carry yourself: I hold up a mirror.
—You began under my cousin Elizabeth, after the Armada was defeated. Since my accession in 1603, do you feel that times have changed for your pen?
Deeply, Sire. Under the great queen, England thought itself invincible, the air was full of glory and triumphant fleets. Since Your Majesty wears the crown, I write in a darker, graver light. The plot uncovered against your Parliament, those powders hidden under the vaults, reminded everyone that kings walk on a thin crust of earth. My Scottish tragedies, as you have seen, speak of shaken thrones and prophecies. My goose quill does not write outside the world: it dips in the ink of the time. To protect you is also to allow me to say, under the mask of fable, what none would dare say in naked voice.
My goose quill does not write outside the world: it dips in the ink of the time.
—I am told you are not only the author but also master of that round theatre, the Globe. Tell me of that place, my friend.
It is my kingdom, Sire, a ring of wood open to the London sky. Three thousand souls fit there, the noble in the galleries and the poor standing in the pit, all huddled under the same rain when fate so wills. I am shareholder as much as author: each sold seat feeds my pen and my hearth. When I step onto those boards, I feel the breath of the crowd like a single animal holding its breath. There, no courtiers to flatter: you must hold the porter as well as the gentleman, or you get hissed. Believe me, Majesty, a London pit is a more fearsome judge than many a council of court.
A ring of wood open to the sky: the noble in the galleries, the poor in the pit.
—In your Hamlet, that prince holds a skull and meditates on death. Why return again and again to what we most fear?
Because death, Sire, is the only certainty that makes life legible. My prince lifts the skull of a fool he loved as a child, and suddenly all the pomp of the world shrinks to that grinning bone. I write death not to frighten, but to awaken: he who knows he must die chooses better how to live. You govern men who think themselves eternal because they wear the sword or the crown; my theatre reminds them that they will all lodge in the same handful of earth. Revenge, madness, Hamlet's hesitation — all spring from that question that no scepter resolves. The skull, Majesty, is my greatest teacher of wisdom.
He who knows he must die chooses better how to live.
—I have learned a sad news for later, they say: your theatre threatened by fire. Does danger truly lurk for those wooden boards?
Sire, a theatre of wood and thatch always lives under the threat of flame. We fire the stage cannon to announce a king's entrance, we light torches and candles when day wanes, and a single wad poorly extinguished can set it all ablaze. Three thousand people in a ring of dry planks: I think of it each time the powder roars. If misfortune comes, I pray Heaven that no life is lost and only the walls burn, for walls are rebuilt in a season. A play, an actor, a company — that is what is not so easily rebuilt. Wood shelters us, Majesty, but it also holds us at its mercy.
Wood shelters us, but it also holds us at its mercy.
—Before glory, you were a young man from Stratford. There is talk of a hasty marriage at eighteen — what of it, William?
You touch there, Sire, on the man and not the poet. At eighteen, I married Anne Hathaway, eight years my elder, and we needed a special license to hasten the banns — for the child was already coming. Nothing of a glorious destiny: a glover's son settling down, founding a household, soon seeing twins born. I was then neither playwright nor a king's favorite, only a town boy learning life at his own expense. I say this without shame, Majesty, for that ordinary man still lives in me. When I write of clumsy love, of hasty and imprudent youth, I remember that boy from Stratford. Genius, if genius there be, always grows from a very common root.
Genius, if genius there be, always grows from a very common root.
—You write laughter as well as tears — A Midsummer Night's Dream enchants, King Lear tears apart. How do you move from one to the other?
Because life itself, Sire, does not separate laughter and tears so neatly. In one evening, a father loses his daughter and a servant stumbles in farce; my duty is to hold both in my hand. In my enchanted forest, lovers lose their way and magic confuses hearts — the course of true love, I often say, never did run smooth. And in my old king betrayed by his daughters, I show filial love scorned unto madness. Comedy and tragedy are two doors of the same house: one lets you in laughing, the other weeping, but it is the human soul you visit on both sides. To make laugh is as serious as to make weep, believe me in my craft.
Comedy and tragedy are two doors of the same house.
—You speak of prophecies and witches in Macbeth — I who have written so much on demons, tell me: do you believe in these dark powers?
Sire, I know the learned interest you take in these matters, and I dare not decide before you. My three weird sisters on the Scottish heath, I made them ambiguous on purpose: do they tell the future, or do they only whisper in man's ear what he already desires? My general hears a prophecy of a crown, and it is his own ambition that turns it into a dagger. The supernatural, on my boards, is less a demon than a mirror held to the heart. I leave it to the spectator to believe or doubt — for theatre is not a pulpit. But I grant you, Majesty: nothing moves a crowd like a voice from the darkness.
The supernatural, on my boards, is less a demon than a mirror held to the heart.
—Strange thing, William: they say there is no faithful portrait of your face. Does that not trouble you, so present on our stages?
Not at all, Sire — in fact it suits me. What matters the line of my face, when my characters will live, I hope, longer than my bones? I wrote for the stage, not for a gallery wall; an actor is but a breath, present tonight, forgotten tomorrow. My true portrait is my plays: Hamlet resembles me more than any canvas, and Lear, and that Scottish king who damns himself. If they wish to know me in a hundred years, let them not seek my eyes or my beard, let them read my verse. Let princes have themselves painted in golden armor; I entrust myself to ink and paper. That, Majesty, is the only face I consent to leave.
My true portrait is my plays.
—Your texts circulate from hand to hand, copied, sometimes badly printed. Do you not fear that this life's work will be lost after you?
I think of it, Sire, I admit. A play lives first in the actors' mouths, and our manuscripts wear out, are lent, are lost; some bookseller sells a faulty version I do not recognize. Nearly forty plays and a hundred and fifty sonnets: that is many sheets to entrust to chance. But I have faith in my fellow players, those who have spoken my lines so many nights; if one day there are faithful hands to gather all in a single volume, then my work will survive fire as well as oblivion. A sonnet, I have written, can defy time better than marble. I ask nothing, Majesty, but a little lasting ink and a few honest friends.
A little lasting ink and a few honest friends: I ask nothing more of posterity.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in William Shakespeare's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.