Actor Ben Carlson, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Ontario, Canada- Shakespeare’s Relevance & Importance

Ben Carlson: Shakespeare is a bit like Bach. You know, if there hadn’t been any more literature after Shakespeare it would probably have been okay. We would all be all right, you know, because he kind of encapsulated everything. You know, he managed to talk about everything you can imagine being talked about.

You know, people think of Samuel Beckett as the incredible, you know, theater-destroying playwright; that he absolutely rewrites the laws for theater. But I can find it in Shakespeare. I can find that kind of nihilism or that kind of, you know, existential search. It exists in Shakespeare; it’s absolutely there. That’s where he got his stuff from. That’s where Freud got his stuff from. You know? Everybody gets their stuff from Shakespeare.