"What you can scientifically look at is the world in which he [Shakespeare] wrote these plays, and the fact that he was an actor in a company that was basically going broke. So he had to pack the house, a sort of 3,000-foot theater, with everybody from the street sweeper to the Queen of England, in the middle of the day, every day. You know, he just stole stories lock, stock, and barrel. Whatever was popular. He stole Romeo and Juliet—it was the popular Italian novella at the time. He just stole it—adapted it virtually in a few days. And the thing about it is, even then people were writing about how bad this nobody poet ripped off these great works of art and put them in his trashy theater. The undeniable fact about Shakespeare was that he wrote non-stop, and he was a hardcore entertainer through his stories. Nonetheless, one of his greatest assets was an incredibly resonant, clever use of language, but it was just an asset to him. His writing also had incredible spectacle, sword fighting, energy, comedy, and bawdy scenes. So these were the colors in his palette that he used to attack, to absolutely embrace and engage his audience, remembering that they’re all selling pigs and goats and ninety percent of them are completely drunk. I mean, the savagery of his storytelling and the absolute intensity of his devices are something that is scientifically existent in the text. What kinds of films would he make? We can’t be too accurate, but he would absolutely be over the moon, beating Sylvester Stallone at the box office opening weekend. Because packing the house was the primary and foremost concern for him."
