SoS #50 | Darren Freebury-Jones: Robert Greene and Thomas Kyd

This is a talk with Darren Freebury-Jones, Lecturer in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, about his two recent books: ‘Reading Robert Greene’ and ’Shakespeare’s Tutor: The Influence of Thomas Kyd'. Along with providing a fresh view of two playwrights that deserve much more of our attention, both books explore new ways to understand creative collaboration among young, aspiring playwrights, particularly during Shakespeare's early years as a dramatist in London.

00:00:00 - Intro
00:02:10 - ‘Reading Robert Greene’
00:07:27 - Thomas Kyd, ’Shakespeare’s Tutor’
00:14:20 - Authorial attribution—digital vs critical
00:22:50 - Collaboration—Shakespeare, Kyd, and others
00:28:40 - The art of adapting known narratives
00:31:48 - Thomas Kyd, and the Ur Hamlet
00:36:32 - Influences on Shakespeare—Kyd, Greene, others
00:43:00 - Elizabethan playwrights and educational backgrounds
00:49:30 - Darren’s as creative writer and actor
00:56:10 - The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, and Darren's role
01:07:15 - Next--Shakespearean influences and the other dramatists
01:16:00 - Closing remarks, Wales and rugby

Transcript

This is Speaking of Shakespeare conversations about things Shakespearean I'm Thomas Dabbs broadcasting from Aoyama Gakuin University in central Tokyo if you are joining us on YouTube you should know that this program is also available on your favorite podcast platform this talk is with Darren Freeberry-Jones lecturer and Shakespeare's studies at the Shakespeare birthplace trust in Stratford upon Avon we will take a look at two of Darren's very recent books on Shakespearean contemporaries the first is Reading Robert Greene: Recovering Shakespeare's Rival the second is Shakespeare's Tutor: the Influence of Thomas Kyd we will also talk about Darren's role at the Shakespeare birthplace trust and his work as an actor and creative writer this series is funded with support from the Aoyama Gakuin University Institute of the Humanities and also with a generous grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science uh Darren Welcome to our little program here thank you so much for coming on thank you so much for having me Thomas it's an absolute pleasure and privilege it's a pleasure and privilege for me too however I have just gotten through two books that you have written damn you we have they are Exquisite books but they both came out uh very recently in 2022 Publications and one is on Robert Greene one is on Thomas Kidd both are on pre pre-shakespearean or how we think of pre-shakespearean uh playwrights or playwrights who were very active at the time that Shakespeare was working in London we know that but probably but predated him in terms of their playwriting and and particularly in the case of Thomas Kyd may have had a a huge influence on Shakespeare I mean they're all living in this let's face it a fairly small area but I wanted to talk first is reading Robert Greene uh recovering Shakespeare's rival and and Shakespeare's Tutor the influence of Thomas Kyd both fascinating uh topics let's let's begin with Robert Greene and then and kind of try to segue into uh Thomas Kyd as we could yeah fantastic yeah so it's funny with uh monographs you spend a long time waiting for the green lights and uh you've got two acceptances in the space of a week I had waited quite a long time for for the green light with the Thomas Kyd book um so I was working on proofs and indexing and whatnot concurrently with those two books but I think my interest in Robert Greene probably began around 2016 where I was taking part in a reading session and we were reading out Francis king of Aragon uh greens probably first uh dramatic effort and I I turned to everyone in the room and I said you know is there is there a collected or complete works edition of green and uh I discovered that there hadn't been one for over a century and I thought you know there's a significant Gap in the market but also in our knowledge when it comes to Robert Greene because his his uh sort of critical background I think has been very negative because of that diatribe aimed at Shakespeare in in the pamphlets uh Green's gropes worth of wits so his influence on Shakespeare has often Being Framed in in malignant terms but I think green is absolutely crucial for our understanding of the evolution of commercial drama because he's often seen as something of a slavish imitator but for me he always had a finger on the popular pulse of the time and his dramas are actually quite tremendous you know they're highly entertaining thinking about Francis king of Aragon you've got a wooing scene in a battlefield you've got a play bristling with Intrigue disguise deception and his dramas are also visually stunning you think of Venus ascending and descending in that play on a Brazen Head belching Force flames of fire so I I think green is a is a really tremendous dramatist and while I was waiting for the the Thomas Kid book to to get accepted I thought you know what rather than tweeting my thumbs I I work on another book and for me it was a real learning experience that's the joy of research and writing me is that you're learning and of course you're hoping that your readers will learn as well so I wrote it in in around six months largely in the evenings it was extracurricular work outside of my job uh and you know with a partner and and children so very much did this research by candlelights and it was just fabulous really engaging with not only Green's dramatic Cannon and and testing the the limitations of that but also discovering the impact that he had on other playing repertoires and another dramatists of the period so we often think of green as something of a hack writer you know trying to keep the the wolf away from the door when in reality he was one of the leading dramatists if not the leading dramatist for the queen's men you know the dominant acting company of the 1580s and what I discovered during the course of writing this book was that he exerted a a huge influence on other plays of the period particularly the company Lord strangers men who often sought to duplicate aspects of his plague thinking about drama as this commercial operation and intensely competitive but also very collaborative period I think so yeah I hope to some extent I've resurrected the ghost of Robert Greene and offered some New Perspectives on him and I'm General editor for the collected works or Collective plays I should say of Robert Greene would I want to place emphasis on green as a dramatist I think there's been a lot of attention paid to him as a prolific pamphleteer so that's forthcoming with Edinburgh University press hopefully around 2028 so I I guess that feels like the sort of culmination of the story beginning with that session reading Alfonso's king of Aragon in stratford-upon-avon and and hopefully bringing Green's plays to a broader constituency yeah it really is just uh it's just time for it I mean it's just been too long and I've had the same you know we we this happens with other playwrights too where you can't find a good addition or at least a more recent edition of their Works uh what I would like to do is sort of go quickly in the kid and we can go back and forth too because these things uh do uh combine with each other in some way and I promised you we wanted to talk a little bit too about the birthplace trust the Shakespeare birthplace trust but let's put that back a little bit and let's go into kid and kids relationship with this whole uh era I'm thinking mid to late 80s maybe early 90s in there uh when Shakespeare and we we date Shakespeare to eight to uh 15 91 maybe but it's kind of vague exactly when he started but it's pretty clear that these two very prominent play rights and they did other things thanks too but very prominent playwrights were working ahead of Shakespeare is is that pretty much correct and kid with the Spanish tragedy of course uh just a uh just a Monumental play that Rivals just anything of the entire Shakespeare Marlow anything that was produced in that era um kid the um and you know tragic early you know untimely death just like Marlo and green also but let's go into kid a little bit and The Shakespearean elements of kid yeah so my relationship with Thomas kid is has been going on for many years because my 2016 uh doctoral thesis at Cardiff University I was seeking to have a look at the ways in which Shakespeare was influenced by and collaborated with what we often term pre-shakespearean dramatists but dramatists who had Crossover with Shakespeare and I was reading as as widely and attentively as possible it's an approach that you know some some scholars in authorship studies might consider quite Victorian but I think it's absolutely crucial and it was wonderful hearing Thomas Kidd's voice for the first time in capturing a play such as the Spanish tragedy but also I I feel hearing his voice in other plays uh often Anonymous plays or or collaborative plays and then having a look at the sort of academic record and discovering that there had been Arguments for a much more extensive Thomas kid Cannon going back you know to the late 19th century really so Thomas Kidd is often seen as a tragic writer you know you mentioned the Spanish tragedy that's very much his his Blockbuster and as I agree it's it's a Monumental play you've also got Solomon and persada which is a full-length treatment of the play within a play at the conclusion of the Spanish tragedy Solomon persader I feel is a play that really deserves a lot more critical attention than it's received so far and also would make for great drama on the stage I feel it deserves to be performed so just just to give some examples of kids Innovation you know that that's that's a tragedy of love I believe it's the first tragedy of Love on the commercial stage so very much anticipating the likes of Romeo and Juliet and Othello and you've got the lovers pesada and harassed us and then you've got the Turkish Emperor Solomon Who falls in love with pesada so he orders erastus's execution essentially in order to to get him out of the way because he loves persada and persada seeks revenge now this is very daring by a kid I think it's something we also see in the character of bell Imperium the Spanish tragedy these vengeful female characters and I think kid really halved out a lot more space for female characters and tragic narratives and procedure exacts her Revenge by dressing herself in a man's apparel and engaging in combat with Solomon and Solomon slays her and then realizes he's just murdered the woman he loves so he cradles her in his arms and persetra asks him to kiss her and Solomon willingly obliges and he then discovers that Crusader has poisoned her lips and it's a fatal kiss and it's a brilliant place and you know that that for me is is Thomas Kidd in a nutshell a really Innovative dramatist whose dramas tend to revolve around Intrigue and I think Shakespeare deeply influenced by the Spanish tragedy perhaps even more influenced by Solomon and persada I think Solomon Crusader really key to to understanding the development of Shakespeare's dramaturgy and then you've also got Thomas kids Cornelia his last play which is a translation of a French drama uh by by Robert Garnier and that's a drama that takes place around the same time as Shakespeare's Julius sees and it's a play that Shakespeare might have gone back to when composing Julius Caesar particularly in terms of characterization for for roles such as Brutus and Cassius for instance so that's just the the traditionally accepted Thomas kid Cannon of just three uh dramatic efforts and you know that that exerted a a huge influence on Shakespeare as well as other dramatists I discovered that although Robert Greene had something about hostile relationship uh with Thomas Kidd evidence suggests he was also deeply influenced by him frequently riffing off some of the innovations that kid presented to the stage and for me it's really important to broaden our knowledge of Thomas kids because I think Shakespeare had a career-long engagement with kid and as I argue in my book I think there's some evidence that Shakespeare likely acted in Thomas kids plays and was able to utilize his owl understanding in order to draw from kids dramas particularly at the level of of language Shakespeare something of a magpie and some of his earliest efforts in particular often read like patchworks of the the dramatic language of the likes of kids uh Marlow George peel for instance so I feel like Shakespeare was was haunted by kids throughout his career and as his career progressed I get the sense that Shakespeare often looks wistfully to the Past for inspiration and he often goes back to kids and it's it's interesting now that all authorship attribution Scholars agree that Shakespeare contributed to the additions to the Spanish tragedy of 1602 which is wonderful because as you know Tom authorship attribution Scholars seldom agree on anything so well I wanted to to maybe let's interject this now because there's the stylometric the digital methodologies that are coming out uh I'm I do digital Humanities like you do but I am not um I am not up to speed on this on the software how good it is how reliable it is I know that um uh what to quote the Bible that attribution studies can be a deep ditch you know you might you know you might find yourself falling off the side uh and I've gotten emails where some people are making some claims and claiming that I had made some claims about Marlo I have never uh questioned Marlo's authorship but the um but the the thing is we are getting to the point and I want to hear you're you're there kind of on the front and I want to hear what types of things you think you're able to do in terms not so much of full authorship but collaboration well also full authorship or almost full authorship you know I don't know these are collaborative Enterprises anyway you know with actors and so forth but you know with this very dominant author to collaboration to what do you see uh uh a certain level of trust developing in these uh digital methods of attribution interesting question is there a certain level of trust in digital methods um yes and no really uh for me a lot of my authorship work is based on those fundamental principles of authorial dramatic style so so looking at Birth habits looking at uh vocabulary looking at the ways in which authors combine words and really delving into parallelism of thought as well as parallelism of language so trying to get insights into an author's thought process um uh and at the moment it's it's a pretty hot topic that that makes its way into the popular press yeah when it comes to these these digital methods and I think they sound very impressive digital scholarship I also think they have the potential to alienate uh a lot of readers and and Scholars including scholars in the humanities and that's the big talking point at the moment is is what methods are reliable and the the discourse is Shifting towards science and and Hauling certain methodology scientific and and banding words around like objective and then you get critiques of those methodologies and uh oftentimes I think it's revealed that there's a great deal of subjectivity that goes into one constructing the tests but the two also interpreting the data so for me when it comes to digital scholarship I think it's really important so I think there are marvelous advances but I also really try to Anchor my attribution work in sensitive readings of the plays and and also anchoring these texts in their original theatrical and historical context for me it's it's still fundamental to to read these plays closely and I would very much question Scholars who dismiss more traditional literary critical approaches as as subjective because I I think digital scholarship it can aspire to objectivity just like literary analysis but it's still dependent on a subjective interpretation of the data yeah I'm I'm I'm in digital Humanities but I'm uh leaning Darren on this because it uh let's say was the uh Marlo's Timberlane which I know way well uh I just have just always felt that there was a strong line there uh that uh you know John what the Mighty Line very much there that is not hid like and but that I might if there were something kid-like in there I could probably feel it at some point you know like when you get into Faustus and the textual problems with Faust is you you see the hands of other playwrights and so forth but um certainly there's signatures that I have felt Shakespeare's very complicated because you have 20 years uh or more you know of a developing playwright there's a distinctive stylistic difference between the Henry the six plays and what we would consider to be later plays that you can feel it but you still are feeling a lot of Shakespeare no matter what in my in my feeling um however you have done some attribution on the Henry VI uh in terms of kid and establishing a Canon for kid and I'm interested in hearing about that because this is a little bit you know you've gone beyond three plays on um on with your kid Canon I attributes acts two to five of having the sixth part one to Thomas Cades uh minus scenes added by Shakespeare so for me the the plays known as Henry six part two and three in the first folio I actually think they're entirely Shakespeare and you know there's a big movement at the moment towards seeing Marlow as a collaborate and I've got forthcoming work on this I'm not remotely persuaded by those arguments I actually think stylistically they're quite distinct from Marlow and unique in in various ways to to early Shakespeare but I feel if we're looking at chronology particularly the brilliant work of Martin Wiggins for instance then the he's Henry VI plays uh Shakespeare's least mature works and you know they they do feel very poly vocal because I think Shakespeare is articulating the theatrical vernacular of the time you know having acted in the plays of contemporary dramatists and I I theorize that Shakespeare actually writes those two plays as a two-parter or a two-part story a bit like the tambling plays for I think that's most likely the the company Shakespeare started off with and just thinking about commercial rivalry I think in 1592 the following year uh Lord strangers men then produced a play called Harry the sex which I think is is designed to capitalize on the success of Shakespeare's uh two-parter and it gets very tricky when you're thinking of textual scholarship and Theater history because when Lord strangers men disbands you know some of their books make their way into the company of Lord Chamberlain's men so for me I feel like after in or after 1594 Shakespeare actually revises that play that Harry VI play in order to link it with his own efforts and he adds three scenes so act two scene four the famous temple Garden scene pretty much transforms this play from a pione to Lord Talbot often considered at least a a titular ancestor Ferdinando Stanley Lord strange and very much makes it part of a serial about the wars of the roses and he adds a couple of other scenes as well involving Lord Talbot I feel he actually rewrites one of Thomas kids scenes which is the rhyming dialogue between Talbot and his son John when they're saying you know we must leave the battlefield no we must stay here and yeah it doesn't end well either way so I I think it's a fascinating play Harry VI that when performed at the Rose I don't think Shakespeare actually had a hand in it whatsoever I think it was very much pitched uh as competition but then Shakespeare transforms this into a Serial and I think there's a good chance that these having the six plays probably in tandem with Richard III would perform for many years after their original composition uh thinking of the the epilogue to Henry V as Ops our stage has shown for instance so Shakespeare engaging very closely with with the work of Thomas kids act one of how the six is often attributed convincingly I think to Thomas Nash I've not found any evidence of Shakespeare tinkering with act one it's it's the scenes I attribute to Thomas Kidd that that he seems to be really delving into and really engaging with kids dramatic voice so what you have there is is a different model of collaboration it's it's a form of adaptation or revision but I also argue that Shakespearean kids co-wrote the reign of king Edward III probably around 5093 potentially for the company Derby's men so before Shakespeare goes on to join Lord Chamberlain's men and I I think there's something of an apologist narrative when it comes to Shakespeare in many respects because the scholars are more inclined to see Shakespeare salvaging or improving the work of other playwrights and in the case of having the sixth part one and the folio I think there's very good evidence for that but when it comes to plays like types andronicus and Edward III I think what we see there is a process of simultaneous collaboration so you know one author or maybe the author's getting together plotting the play probably in the pub I imagine and then going off at the same time and writing their respective stints so when we're thinking of collaboration I think Shakespeare engages with kid in in many different ways collaborating directly with him through that process of simultaneous uh collaboration uh co-authorship also revising his work adapting his work so I think if you're having a look at Shakespeare's dramatic Canon it owes a great deal to Thomas kid I actually think if you're looking at that collection of 36 plays a 1623 first folio I think kids is the main hand in Henry VI Part One so you've actually got kids writing alongside that the writing of dramatists such as John Fletcher or Thomas Middleton for instance yeah um yeah and our people who are listening viewing or whatnot you have abundant examples in your book and as soon as you get into it uh Sparks start flying you know just as we're talking I'm thinking of poison on the lips well there's Juliet trying to get the poison off Romeos there's so much collaboration you know in our modern times and it might be a sort of post-victorian thing or a post-romantic thing we think of the solitary author often uh his or her study uh uh putting together um you know this work you know independent of of the world in a way uh and while engaging in some kind of fictional Enterprise and we think of the modern film producer you know the strong director with the uh guiding the actors through this um um you know drama you know without the director the actors or nothing the screenwriters are sort of underneath the thumb of the strong director this I compare much more with musical trends that we've had you know when a new technology develops you know just recording you know how we have this boom and all of this Innovation and all of these people collaborating and sometimes you see one guy playing with one band and going off to the other and uh and everyone trying to out do find Their audience and outdo each other there's something more of a similarity a parallel there in this era than I than what we consider to be a traditional authorship or a strong directorial hands um yeah and you know I think thinking of influence as well I I think there's still some scholarly reticence to acknowledge the degree to which Shakespeare borrows from other dramatists and you're thinking of that process of simultaneous collaboration right in the start of Shakespeare's career he's learning from other artists it's a he's a musical terminology but I I think we're we're still stuck in this notion of Shakespeare is something of a a Patcher up uh a tinker of older plays improving the work of other dramatists whereas actually I think this is this is Shakespeare's Learning Journey right from the start of his career collaborating with other playwrights and being heavily influenced by them particularly through having acted in many of their plays I think or at least having such a capacious verbal memory that on his afternoon's off he could go to the theater and of course he's going to be you know listening out for a particular mediums particular lines looking at particular tropes I think Shakespeare you know we often think about actors remembering lines they've delivered on stage I think Shakespeare of all people he's going to be listening to that drama throughout during rehearsals where he's in the tiring areas backstage I think Shakespeare really has an acute ear and he's looking at the strengths and limitations of these early dramas and effectively collaborating with these other playwrights through through uh I guess articulatingly a dramatic language but consistently doing something a little bit different with it I always think of that famous T.S Eliot quotes about great artists uh stealing yeah well I don't think that the idea of theft was the same uh as in our time I think that uh you know I just remember going way way before uh Chaucer apologizing at the beginning I think of Taurus and Crusade where he uh says this is the original story I'm not changing it and of course he's lying uh he does change it uh and uh uh he changes it a bit from boccaccio but I think that that was still in play people were familiar with a lot of these narratives and they'd read them in histories and they some of them had studied them in Latin or whatnot but a lot of people have read read them been perfectly uh scripted you know uh print versions of English Arthur Brooks Romeo and Juliet been around for 30 years and uh painters Palace of pleasure and you can see these people just yanking stuff from the pages and saying okay let's dramatize this and we want it to look uh we want to do something else with it innovate but we wanted to look like this narrative no problem there and all when you get into the minutia of certain stylistic habits and so forth uh it's just absolutely fascinating to me to to look at these things yeah and that's that's the thing you see in the popular press I think we often kind of extract Shakespeare from the period in which he was writing where the emphasis was not necessarily telling new stories but telling existing stories in in you and you know innovative ways as you say and I think Shakespeare is a real master of using those literary and Theatrical ancestors uh in order to subvert to audience expectations you think of a play like King Lear for instance which consistently has a happy ending and there's an old King Lear play which which seems to have been popular which I attribute to Thomas kids actually which you know like all of Shakespeare's sources concludes happily and I can imagine that that would that would still be buzzing in audience members Minds when they went to see Shakespeare's tragedy and they'd be very mindful of that happy restoration with Leon cordella as she as she's caught in that play restored to the throne and Shakespeare just pulls the rug from under his audience's feet so and gives them the most devastating conclusion to any theatrical or literary work perhaps so I think it gets to be a real master of subversion yes I can't think of a sad or Indie you know I mean you know if you go to a Russian novelist or some something I you know you can you can get depressing very quick but just just destroying everything you know there's just nothing less left standing and yeah that would have been a shocker you know that you were uh familiar with oh let's go um let's go see the happy ending or whatnot and after all of this tragic stuff but nope uh you don't get it there's a there's a hamlet question in there too with kid and yes yeah if you could refresh us a little bit on the on the ER Hamlet uh oh yes yeah yeah I mean yeah Hamlet Still Remains very enigmatical and you know we only have around one six of all plays composed during the early modern periods yeah uh and I think you know people often talk about cardinio one of Shakespeare's last plays lost loves labors one ironically seems to have been you know loves neighbors lost it's lost to us but is that Earth Hamlet that that's the one I'd love to get my hands on oh yeah your viewers and listeners could check their attics check their basements and let me know you never know what new discoveries they might come across but yeah I think I think the evidence but Thomas kids authorship of this older Hamlet Play Written In the late 1580s is is fairly compelling so Nash Nash refers to to this old play it seems in the pre-faced her to Robert Greene's manathon and he's he's talking about a writer who is very dependent on Seneca he actually uses the the plural so some people have inferred that he's he's talking about you know a team of writers but the biographer kid biographer Arthur Freeman um pointed out that Nash often does that even if he's got a very specific individual Target you'll often use the plural form so he's speaking about a writer who is very dependent on Seneca and I think Thomas kids it's fair to say refine Seneca for the commercial stage very much sees Seneca as his tragic ancestor he also writes of a a a dramatist who who meddles in Italian translations which is something kid did he translated torkato tassos padre de familia in in a pamphlet known as the householders uh philosophy you've also got that that phrase the kid in ESOP um which which seems like quite an obvious pen on on Thomas kids uh unworthy name you've also got references to the Spanish tragedy in there uh particularly Thomas Kidd thrusting um Elysium into hell if I'm remembering correctly in the prologue uh to the Spanish tragedy and Nash also says that this this particular writer is prone to bodstrip a blank verse with ifs and ands uh I came across a a a review recently which said you know this this is an evidence for Thomas kids authorship because that was a common phrase so it occurs in the Spanish tragedy what villain ifs and ands uh one of the characters says says but actually if you look at you know using modern databases if you look at all examples of that phrase ifs and ands it only occurs in the work of one drama test before Nash's account and that is Thomas kids the Spanish tragedy so I think it's not just a case of you know punching a phrase into Evo or literature online or whatever and saying oh no dismissing it is is common you've got to be sensitive to these things have a look at the chronology in which search phrases occur so I I think the evidence for for kids authorship of this older Hamlet play you know it's it's not definitive it it strikes me as as fairly compelling and I think you have to do quite a lot of interpretive gymnastics in order to to claim that you know this is is not uh uh a fairly solid case for for kids authorship in order to argue for instance that you know Shakespeare might have written hamlet in the late 1580s one of the the key points that Nash makes I think is but he says this writer has left the trade of novorins and Thomas Kidd's father was uh the right center of the Court letter he was a scrivener a professional stride so it's quite uh quite likely I think that the kid actually followed in his Father's Footsteps so his handwriting has been noticed in two surviving letters is very neat and suggests the training of a professional scribe so quite likely that kid did indeed uh partake in the trade of novrint that he was a scribe and then turned his hand to writing plays so yeah I think fairly solid case for kids authorship of this lost Hamlet play and just going back to those additions to the Spanish tragedy uh although they were printed in 1602 we we tend to think that they were written in the late 1590s yeah due to sort of contemporary Illusions they're mopped by John Marston in his answer Antonio plays for instance so I think Shakespeare's memory of the Spanish tragedy was very much refreshed as a result of engaging with it so closely in the late 1590s and it's it's long been noted that the Spanish tragedy seems to have served as a model or Hamlet so when you combine that with with this notion that kid might also have been responsible for a dramatic version of the Hamlet or amulet amla Smith then you know you think it's it's feasible that without kid we wouldn't have two of the the four Great tragedies we wouldn't have hamlets and if he's responsible for that Old King Leah play I mentioned as well we wouldn't have King Lear so like I said I think it's Thomas kid absolutely crucial to our understanding of of commercial drama of the period but but also the dramatic trajectory of Shakespeare's career I think I I agree and I it's very difficult uh because of the number of plays in the Shakespeare Canon to draw people away and say well let's let's start with 41 42 43 44 wherever you want to start and uh however you number them the uh and I would argue that you know hey five or six Shakespeare plays let's get a Nash in there I'm not a Nash I'm sorry get a green in there get a uh a kid in there get it Marlo of course in there you know because these plays rank right there in any by any critical judgment um and you know going back a bit to Green uh even though you don't track his influence so much in Shakespeare you are arguing that there is there's this competitiveness and that Shakespeare is learning from all of these people there's this um uh I don't want to call it an echo chamber there's a lot of noise in there there are a lot of things going around and these people it almost depresses me when I think about how prodigious their memories were I've never I've never experienced that kind of thing and I talked with Peter Holland about memory and you know too much memory is a Bad Thing uh it's another yeah but these guys if they were just like I mean magnets they just drew in and they kept these things in there and of course the actors had to do the same thing too uh and here they are drawing from classical sources Seneca while at the same time doing these absurdly Innovative things in the English language and with dramatic structure that that seem we don't know there's so much lost out there that seemed very unprecedented it just seemed to blow up at one point yeah yeah it's it's very interesting with Robert Greene because as as I've discovered he was he was hugely influential on on other playwrights and on uh rival companies Shakespeare when you compare his his engagement with green to his engagement with the likes of plays of George peel Christopher Marlo Thomas kids there's actually very little evidence of Shakespeare attending particularly closely to Robert Green's dramatic language which I think is quite ironic given that you've got this discourse of plagiarism surrounding the the growth's worth of uh wit pamphlet which I I don't agree with I I don't think that green or Henry Chateau you know whoever was responsible for this I don't think their um Bridge pertains to you know plagiarism or revisionism you know going back to that Edmund loan theory that Shakespeare is Henry the six plays were essentially just Henry six part two and three which is adaptations of works by green and peel and so forth I think with green he's a little bit unsettled as a university educated dramatist that you've got an actor on the scene who's able to to appropriate the sort of stylistic flourishes of his contemporaries and that bombastic language uh particularly in Henry 6 part 3 which which green uh uh directly references and you know these actors who who uh beautified in the feathers of dramatists because they're delivering their dramatic Dialogue on stage suddenly they're producing their own Works uh and and you know they're they're doing Innovative things they're playing around with stylistic registers they're seeking to better uh the plays in which they performed so for me it very much comes down to Shakespeare as a player uh Shakespeare's background as an as an actor and it lies in I think with Green's General combating combativeness uh with with actors uh forming uh uh at the time in general I don't think it's an accusation of plagiarism but I do find it quite ironic that there's actually very little evidence of Shakespeare plagiarizing a green schematic language I I think Green's influence on on Shakespeare was a bit more subtle to that I think green very much assists for example with the development of Seneca on the English commercial stage so we often think of green as as a comic writer or a writer of romances I argue that towards the end of his period he was actually chiefly engaged when it comes to drama in writing tragedies so there's there's the influence of green but it's not a it's not a direct influence it's a case of green having such an important position when it comes to the development of drama to the development of the public theaters that without Brina I think Shakespeare's plays would read very differently so I I think it's uh it's a positive impact the green hat on Shakespeare whereas as I mentioned earlier it's often framed in military in terms when we're thinking about relationship yeah uh yeah well I'm just thinking about so much now but uh the uh the the thing about well kid and Shakespeare there's no evidence the kid went to University uh and I'm I'm getting that most recently from you uh there is uh uh great evidence that green was uh exquisitely well educated both at Cambridge and at Oxford and you know the argument is sometimes made that uh you know how could someone not a non-university guy write Shakespeare right well it you almost are saying that it may have impeded green a bit he had to he had to bring it down because you have to you know Shakespeare and kids seem to have an instinctive way to connect with people through language through uh stagecraft whatever through their selection of narratives and just an instinctive knowledge that got in the way of an earlier playwright Stephen failed Stephen gossen I think of you know which who complains about how these guys are just ransacking I think is the word he uses Ransom

these books and filling the playhouses of London with all this stuff you know there's they're just thieves and the commoners and whatnot and for my students I wanted to make the point that when you one way to get a title was to get a university education that marked you Christopher Marlowe gentlemen you had that basic status um and it would be hard on a guy who was so well educated to come in and begin competing with people like uh an upstart Crow and and also kid who are just a kid in particular just killing it and uh he's trying to you know stay with them and he goes you know I should be better I should be better than these guys maybe you know that's highly speculative but you can see that Dynamic at work you know I'm a gentleman you know uh these guys don't have the same rank you know so yeah yeah and and you know all author names selda mentioned on on play title Pages During the period but the Green's name actually is so he's far more marketable and salable than often giving credits I think and you know you get that emphasis on on gent gentlemen on that sense of his education I was thinking of a line from the uh I think it's the return to Parnassus which is few University men pen plays well which of course you know is is certainly not the case but I I think you you see a significant stylistic contrast between kids Shakespeare and University educated playwrights like green Marlow for instance uh you know thinking of the use of classical Illusions for instance the plays of University educated dramatists are often satiated with classical Illusions green despite his education often jumbles his his mythology action okay whereas you get the sense with Shakespeare in particular that he's he's very conscious of his audience again I think it comes down to his background as an actor and not not alienating the audience and one of the discoveries I I made while writing my book Shakespeare's tutor was that a lot of University educated drams here stick to the 10 syllable line you know uh

whereas Shakespeare is is very Innovative right from the bat as soon as he starts his dramatic writing career in terms of incorporating that extra 11th unstressed syllable the so-called feminine endings very very sexist term um but but we kind of have to to make two with that so I think Shakespeare right for the beginning of his career recognizes that the need for some linguistic flexibility and what I found was that the only other ramatis who reaches a comparable rate to Shakespeare is Thomas kids so I think that's very interesting that you know you've got two non-university educated playwrights there with with some stylistic similarities you also see it in the ways in which they put words together uh so-called compound forms so kid kid Delights in putting words together like flax and heads and uh particular favorite of mine occurs in Solomon and poseida pinky-eyed and this was something that's long been attribution and Shakespeare who he Delights in compounding words well well kid was doing it you know before Shakespeare actually came on the scene so lots of synergies there but I also think kid is a lot more proficient when it comes to rat correct than a lot of the University educated dramatists of the period and Shakespeare of course a real master of of revealing his rhetorical training that he would have received at grammar school on the stage I think Shakespeare really recognizes the the potentialities that lie behind using particular rhetorical devices now I think we see that in in Thomas Kidd as well he's often dismissed and fairly Thomas Kidd is being a bombastic writer but but even if you look at the Spanish tragedy almost certainly his his earlier surviving work you've actually got a play that's you know going up and down different linguistic registers and reveling in throws and it's incredibly fluid and you get a sense of individuality with his characters which is something Shakespeare also reveals in in his plays these dramatists characters weren't just functional you know they weren't just types in the way that we might think of some of George Peel's characters for instance so yeah I I feel that maybe the fact that Shakespearean kid lacked a university education uh it seems to have helped them in many respects it really aided when it comes to engaging theater that's not gonna put off audiences not just a case of showing off your learning its case of being efficient you know with these particular stylistic tropes and Convention that you're playing with yeah yeah we could go on forever one thing that I'm finding in the way you approach this is uh the emphasis on the the actor the spoken line and the actor and I know you've done acting and I wanted to move a little bit into some of the other things that you do uh Beyond uh very tring research of uh you know title pages and uh excerpts from here and there and references to make make your case but you've done that you've written fiction could we go and look into that element uh because I think you're bringing that experience also into your perspectives uh in terms of your criticism yeah I guess that ties into what I was saying about Shakespearean kid try not to alienate their audiences and so so I've got a background in creative writing so writing for a more General reader so what I try to do is bring these very complex topics uh such as your textual scholarship uh Corpus Linguistics and so forth and and try and make them accessible for for broader audiences so I've always written uh I've always enjoyed creative writing I actually wrote A A perotic Trilogy um uh novellas about Christopher Marlow which is kind of you know combines the likes of Zorro The Three Musketeers James Bond and and Christopher Marlon this is not my magnum opus but it was it was it was it was great fun um and I've also always really enjoyed writing poetry so I've got a poetry collection uh forthcoming next year and and that was so wonderful to to return to poetry because I hadn't written anything for for several years and you know something just you know sparked that uh that desire to write poetry again maybe it was because I started listening to Bruce Springsteen yeah during my uh my drives back and forth between Stratford and and Cardiff so it was so wonderful to to return to poetry and you know telling stories that that sort that's always been something I've I've always uh thoroughly enjoyed and I've always enjoyed acting as well um uh it come back to memories I think I've had some tremendous memories coming to Stratford Upon A even from Wales in the UK you know you're essentially like a kid in a sweet shop there now if you're a Shakespeare lover and you're looking around you and you're seeing Othello taxis you're seeing a cafe called the food of Love uh you go into a a chip shop and you know I have to admit that I've eaten a kebab called the Shakespeare special purely because it had Shakespeare in the title and I was remembering in 2018 uh coming to Stratford starting as a lecturer at the trust and uh very swiftly having to learn all of Leonardo's lines in Much Ado About Nothing so I was asked to perform the outdoors uh in in a production of that play and Leonardo has quite a lot of lines and it was quite miraculous I kind of had them down and the performance happens to occur on the day of the the Stratford Festival so this little market town was just a birds with like thousands upon thousands of people fireworks going off uh music blasting and here we are performing on the outdoor uh RSE Dell stage and you know I thought I've got this I've got all these lines down thinking of Shakespeare is capacious actually memory I remember looking up and just seeing probably the biggest audience I've ever performed to and of course Leonardo has the very first line of the play I learn in this letter that Don Pedro of Aragon Comes This Night To Messina and so I just strolled onto the stage and said I learned in this letter that Don Pedro of Messina Comes This Night To Messina so I I had messed up the very first line of the playlist this is the joyous occasion I'm standing there looking like I've gotten upside down hanger in my mouth smiling away and in my head I'm thinking if I mess up the next line I'm gonna have to just stop this and we go again uh but fortunately you know it went really well um but you learned so much from performing Shakespeare I I think so you know when it comes to authorship attribution studies for instance there's been an argument that Shakespeare it must have been the author of parts of Arna favishan for instance which has been absolutely since Thomas kid since 1891 because he wouldn't have been on the stage for you know these different scenes which have entirely different characters so the the indication there is that Shakespeare would only remember the lines that he delivered on stage and I know from an active perspective that when a production ends the lines that often stay with me they're not necessarily the ones I delivered there's just certain lines that seem to to prick the ear to capture the imagination so I think it's really useful to to bring that perspective to it and you know put Flesh on these textual bones oh yeah oh yeah particularly when you're reading uh these people or uh green I think in particular you were talking about uh reading um the reading out loud uh you you get a sense of of what they're trying to do and particularly when you can get an actor uh to do it uh you go oh oh that's that's where that's where we're coming from you know it's it's so you could argue this with Shakespeare too but uh I I guess we don't we already know with Shakespeare but these are other more marginal to most of us outside of these uh smaller circles we're in uh yeah read it out loud and and uh these uh bombastic speeches there's a lot more going on there uh this really is uh you mentioned your affiliation with the Shakespeare birthplace trust and I thought we were going to lead with that but I was just so interested in what you just got now and I had this in my head I didn't want to lose uh you know what I uh was reading yesterday and the day before the day before uh but I do think that there are a number of our listeners and want and viewers who uh are not as familiar with the educational programs they may have heard that they may have gone to Stratford to know of the the trust I um I spoke with um uh Lena Orlin who's uh I believe on it serves in a capacity on the the board or uh and and um I want to know a little bit more about the programs I know there's a lot of uh educational their educational programs from childhood all the way up to University that kind of thing but uh your role in the birthplace trust and and what types of things that you get involved with there and yeah yeah yeah it's it really is a a role of infinite variety um you know like I mentioned if you're a Shakespeare lover just coming to Stafford upon Eve and and working there in absolute Joy but working for the Shakespeare birthplace trust comes back to Memories again I have made the most incredible memories so my role is lecture and Shakespeare studies so part of my role is to develop relationships with organizations around the world so domestically in the United Kingdom but with with a particular emphasis on organizations in the USA so often attend conferences um I've gone on lecture tours very early in my days of working the trust I traveled to the states and visited I I think it was five states in nine days and gave something like 14 talks um and that was to you know high school students and and also uh Leisure Learners as well I'm also thinking of digital Humanities uh deeply involved in in the trust digital output so for instance I project manager a course called self-led Macbeth which is very much pitch to teachers who want to broaden their understanding of the player or even if they're just looking for a refresher before going into High School teaching and I lecture online uh often from my home in Cardiff so there's a relentless on on digital pedagogy at the trust but I also lecture in person and I tend to lecture from about the age of 16 to 17 upwards so elections are teenagers uh elections college students lecture to University students lecture to Leisure Learners um so you're thinking about the whole the whole pathway there and as you mentioned uh the educational team the learning team at the trust start very young and you know go go throughout life's journey really and when I think of audience uh that's something I really love about this job in particular because sometimes you know a lecture is so much younger audiences and I always remember uh within the first couple of years of working at the trust that I gave a talk on Shakespeare's Life and Times to a very young audience there must be about seven or eight years old and then immediately afterwards I walked into another lecture theater and had to deliver a lecture to the Norwegian Shakespeare Society so you know really going up and down the gears in in terms of picture in terms of you know audience comprehension I love that I love engaging with this broad an audience as possible and on so many different topics because you know a lecture in Shakespeare studies well that covers an awful lot of course uh and you know you you you're speaking about all of these different plays or or such topics as Shakespearean gender uh for instance uh Shakespeare's history plays when you think you're thinking generically and you know sometimes we give pre-performance talks um for for audiences visiting from around the world uh uh and going to see a production of the royal Shakespeare company so a few years ago I joked that I was probably one of the world's leading experts on the restoration dramatist Thomas Otway because I was teaching his play Bennis preserves uh yeah uh and and you know really had to imbive all of that information so you know we we lecture to to groups in the United Kingdom but we also get an awful lot of international groups who come to Stratford upon even for a week or two or some groups actually sort of come back and forth to us sporadically over a period of several months and it's just it's just incredible it's a real privilege for me watching these students and how they develop their confidence how they broaden their knowledge as these courses progress and engaging with different voices I I think that's the key thing they get to hear different voices in that setting of Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford upon even and the trust also offers workshops for instance as well which which you give give audiences opportunities to engage with Shakespeare's language in quite different ways to really put these things on their feet becomes a form of practical criticism I think so yeah it's uh it's a it's a wonderful wonderful role and uh I I would hope that what the trust has to offer in terms of Education that will become more widespread in in terms of people knowing that that we're doing this this work and we have been doing this work for for many years and if you come to Stratford Ron Abram and partake in in one of our talks or one of our courses I think you'd be making memories for life really uh I I know I certainly have as a lecturer well all right let's let's talk about that let's say someone wants to visit Stratford and maybe spend a couple of days there and take in some plays uh and I want to participate uh or or sit in for a lecture do you just walk into the door and write your name down or is there a kind of you know uh no and no unfortunately on an individual basis but the the trust also offers uh Leisure learner courses uh so at the moment there's there's five courses uh over the period of this year 2023 uh revolving in large parts around different aspects of the first folio but also focusing on on various plays you know from Julius Caesar to cymbaline to Macbeth Merchant of Venice as you like it for instance so there are frequent opportunities over the course of a year for individuals to to partake and it becomes this one wonderful Community it's really lovely because some of the people who take part in these Leisure learner courses have been doing so you know before I was born uh but you also often have people coming for the first time and you know they're offering new voices it's very much uh discursive it's all about you know communicating having conversations about Shakespeare so there's there's plenty of opportunities for for individuals to to join these courses I think uh if you check out the uh Shakespeare birthplace Trust website shakespeare.org.uk yeah you'll see a great deal of opportunities I really would encourage people to partake uh yeah and you know of course try and I should just walk on um walk in but the um I I saw that there's an uh just an enormous number of offerings uh coming from the trust um and so forth and uh it just reminds me so much I'm so sentimental about this I'm sentimental about the 19th century and maybe ways that other people aren't but the Hazlet the the Surrey lectures uh Hazlet did where he's filling rooms up with uh Working Class People Who after this you know hard shift are coming in to listen to him speak on Shakespeare and then the stories of uh uh was it Edward Dowden uh filling up the Trinity Halls in Dublin and people lifting up their friends so they could look in the window because the auditorium's full you know the I see this kind of Enterprise coming on you know where you're connecting with these people who are just hungry for Shakespeare uh I've I run across uh people you know I'm friends of mine from high school and so forth and it's kind of like oh you know a lot of eye rolling when you say you're Shakespearean or you're working with Shakespeare there's a lot of that but I think these people don't understand that however small the group is is a lot of people however small the percentages it's a lot of people like you say this streets are full of people in Stratford Avon when you're uh at certain times of year and it's not these shopping tourists they're there for Shakespeare and uh whatever small percentage is it is it's a lot of people and this public Outreach is just absolutely what uh what is needed to argue not just for Shakespeare or for any of these other playwrights for the uh public Humanities uh which you know just have been under assault for now several decades uh uh against being nefarious uh I I don't know utilitarian voices you know that goes back to the 19th century too yeah you you need roads roads and bridges but uh golly gee a lot of people want this and when you give it to them it's just surprising how infectious it is and how many people how so many people when they realize oh I can participate I can understand they uh just well I think that was probably us as you know younger versions of us you know we probably were pushed in One Direction I know I was and I just kept coming back to this um and the trust seems to be doing that type of work and it's such good work I know we talk about it a lot with other speakers on this uh series uh that uh Outreach is a very very important thing and letting people know that now hey we're just regular guys you know no ascots in pipes here nobody's going to look down on you my goodness you know it's It's A Hard Road for us you know so um that's very good well now what can we expect coming up here in your scholarship and the work that you're doing what do you what do you see in the next two or three years

so at the moment I'm working on a third book uh which is is titled Shakespeare's bottled feathers so that's very much aiming to to bring this sort of discourse revolving around authorship and different methods to to a much wider audience so it's a book that focuses on the ways in which Shakespeare was influenced by the dramas of his fellow playwrights so I begin with John Lilly and I conclude with John Fletcher so we're going you know throughout uh Shakespeare's dramatic writing career and and using online databases and cutting-edge digital Technologies uh in order to offer a more methodical approach I think when it comes to understanding how Shakespeare was influenced by imitated and adapted the works of other playwrights so that's been quite a fascinating project where the the results often tend to to validate and extend you know existing scholarly hypotheses but also challenge prior assumptions as well so I'm very much arguing for early one traumas as being a community of playwrights you know there's a there's a lot of scholarship on the ways in which Shakespeare influenced other dramatists but I just want to offer A New Perspective on the ways in which Shakespeare attended closely to the plays of of other writers of the period uh so yeah fingers crossed uh that that will be that will be out in the next year or two um sort of at the tail end of the uh initial manuscripts at the moment but it's just been wonderful and I think it's great it's a learning Journey isn't it it's great to broaden your own knowledge and and you know I was really Keen to learn more about the likes of John Lilly and Thomas Decker for instance and Ben Johnson's fascinating relationship with Shakespeare so so charting Shakespeare's entire dramatic writing tree it's I've learned a great deal from it and I hope that you know read is uh can can get a lot of knowledge and enjoyment from it as well yeah they should and I love the idea that you see it as a composite a period that is a a a composite of many voices of many people you know where you know who built that Cathedral well a lot of people did a lot of people you know the guys carried the stones there was a whole process there there were there were guys swinging hammers down at the theater building scaffolding for plays you know all the way up to whatever your featured uh actor and uh uh whatever given play uh I did want to mention a bit that you you do mint I I've done work on Lost plays with David McGinnis and his database and uh uh the work that uh Rosalind Hudson did uh of course uh from some years ago and and now and also you mentioned Martin Wiggins uh in terms of digital humanities my focus would be more much more on databases and having the all of that information and uh the multi-volume set that uh Wiggins has put out this is brilliant research you look in there and you go this is just there's just so much here that connects and I would love to see somewhere down the road a digitized version of that kind of information where you can collaborate this idea with that idea of where you can do a a search for any you know whatever we're looking for which is just a just a multitude of things because Page by page volume by volume uh you do have to have a prodigious memory to to bring it in but you there's so much there even without the play it's just amazing when you look at that composite and then working it into a period where these plays did survive or at least uh some of the percentage of them did I love it so you think you're you'll be starting more or less in the 80s and moving out through through to maybe the first couple of decades three maybe of the 17th oh yeah starting off 15 80s 1580s with with John Lilly and uh ending you know around 16 12 16 13. um 16 13. okay I was thinking of uh retirement I mean it's been it's been really fascinating but particularly learning more about Lily because what I've discovered with Lily's dramatic language that Shakespeare doesn't appear to have attended particularly closely to it in the early stages of his career of course we see elements of Lily's dramaturgy particularly in Shakespeare's comedies but as Shakespeare starts writing plays for the the black Friars theater that's when you suddenly get this engagement with John Lilly's dramatic language and of course you know some of Lily's plays had been performed at that site previously so for me that gives you a real insight into Shakespeare here as an author coming towards the end of his career but he's he's looking into the past again for inspiration because he's deeply conscious of his black Friar's audience I think so that that's just one sort of insight into to the sort of discoveries I've made with this book I think the key thing is that Shakespeare really emerges as a man of the theater in this book and that that's that's very much how I see him uh I don't think Shakespeare ever you know neglected that actually sides of of his career and you know we know that he was acting at least until at least you know 1603 in Ben Johnson's for JNS but the first vodial tells us that he he acted in all of his plays ostensibly so that goes hand in hand for Shakespeare I think he's not just a dramatist he's also an actor he's also a shareholder in the theaters he is a man who is deeply cognizant of the strengths and limitations of the stage and his audiences yeah and he outlived at least by uh he didn't he didn't die as an old man by any means but he outlived these contemporaries of his uh the uh uh one kind of maybe going toward closing uh this notion of Lily there seems to be a lot there that would have to be considered uh with the it's not a diametric opposition but you have uh children's companies that are uh strongly used all the you know and Johnson you know with Lily all the way through you know they kind of they kind of uh go out for a period and then come back uh and at one point I studied that but I forgotten it the precise uh times uh and uh Shakespeare of course I was just gathering this from Hamlet I guess mainly that was on the side of the full you know age range in an acting company including uh children or boys and so that to me would be a very complex thing because you think of the more gentrified theater with the boys Productions perhaps and then with the uh wider range age range the more popular the globe type theater ah that brings in a whole huge element of consideration of how oh yeah you engage with your audience yeah that that's been that's been a wonderful uh thing to learn more about I think those Boy actors were clapped tyrannically and and also it was part of the book look at the ways in which the language of of the court and the language plays performed by the children's company you seep into the language of of the public theaters when of course we know that writers such as Marlow uh and George peel were also writing for these children's companies just thinking of the Elizabethan periods before you get to the likes of Johnson for instance so so yeah there's there's a great deal to to think about uh but it it's truly fascinating and then thinking about Shakespeare's relationship with those companies sort of beyond that uh most famous instance in in Hamlet of course yeah well and there's a ton more stuff that we could talk about uh Darren I have kept you through your morning uh and uh I'm getting um it's getting sort of late here in Tokyo and um I I hear um uh Bells going off at home where uh there may there there may be uh uh a meal waiting for me uh if I'm lucky uh I may be told to cook my own I'm not sure uh the uh the thing is it's wonderful now I I don't want to uh probe too much into your private life but you did mention that you have your home is in Cardiff actually yeah and you you do a good bit of commuting and my memory is uh you're on that's that's a good that's a good uh hop there to uh stop trying yeah it's about a two-hour drive a two hour yeah which is not which is not too that's not bad why was I thinking Cardiff I'm thinking is it the M4 that connects with London from Cardiff but you shoot up so you're you're not you don't hit the um M25 going around that turns into a parking lot from the time from time to time if my memory if my memory serves uh there's a great deal of luck in it of course but yes usually the M4 and um I thought it was a lot further yeah okay it's not too bad so you you could do it in a day back and forth again and uh yeah yeah it's always lovely to arrive in uh Stratford it never gets old see that beautiful yeah well I have done I I came honestly kind of uh I I commuted oh my those are horrible memories in the last century when I was just out of graduate school but the those uh the when you your destination is Stratford and then on the back end Cardiff you know perfectly beautiful a place uh are you are you Welsh by any chance oh yes yeah the hyphenated name I'm thinking uh gave away uh the name uh I uh had for uh some years a friend in Pembroke share and would uh go uh visit him this is we're going back 10 years now but I had the chance to visit him four or five times uh and I've just always just absolutely adored driving through Wales any any place that I can find it um because uh the north is gorgeous uh the south is to pembrokes here it's just wonderful and uh uh that my I have uh on my mother's side family name Reese r-e-e-s my son's name and my older brother's name and so forth and I remember going to an old church and there was a a marker there an old old marker with r-e-e-s you know spelled that way as it is in my fam family so I guess we have some sort of genetic connection there you feel it we're related yeah I'm very Pro whales very pro-wales uh and I post I don't know if I should say this but I you know the Six Nations I I tend to you know feel have strong feelings for the Welsh team oh yeah yeah feelings of disappointment in recent years but uh well you know it goes in waves I remember stopping and I thought you know we were about I was getting tired uh We've driven and I stopped about an hour and a half away from where my friend lived and I said let's just go up to here and have a pub I think we're allowed a pint you know and I I'm still good to finish the drive you know and just take a little break and we were stopped on the street in this little village by this guy who saw my wife and me as tourists and uh he said okay now you just must know that we have this town has provided two of the players on the Welsh national rugby team and he was very proud of that and we had to know that before we were allowed into the pub and we were graciously received yes it's just such an intrinsic part of the culture here and I got I've steeped in rugby uh yeah you know right before my life it's uh yeah it's uh one of my foremost passions in Life program I think yeah yeah well as it should be I mean it's in your blood and uh yeah uh Darren I cannot uh uh Express how uh grateful we are you know for your time here because you know as we've picked up in this conversation you're a busy guy and uh to take the time to speak to us on this little uh series here is just wonderful if I could ask you to stay a little bit after we record uh we can debrief just a bit but uh for our listeners and also for our viewers thank you so much and we just wish you the very best in your efforts uh both uh you know with family and Cardiff and they're in Stratford upon Avon thank you so much Tom thank you