Mark Rylance quotes:

Burleigh, absolutely; and a lot about Elizabeth. I mean I found when I play Henry V a lot of connections with the hidden history of the connection between Francis Bacon and Elizabeth.

I think that was very important to Bacon... personally. I think he went to great efforts to get a house for the Stratford man, to make it so difficult for us to prove that it was Francis Bacon, because it is very difficult to prove.

But I find with Francis Bacon, some of the things were in the place, and someone who was connected with these schools of thought, and someone who had a motivation that equals the scope of the comedy and the tragedy in the plays.

Well, my wife always says to me, and I think it's true, it's very difficult for us to understand the Elizabethan understanding and enjoyment and perception of form as it is to say... it would be for them to understand computers or going to the moon or something.

It's an intuitive exercise to do a Shakespeare play and to go through a Shakespeare play.

You know, I don't think you need to be educated to be a great actor.

And it is a very beautiful idea, and possibly true, that a common man from Stratford with a common education was able to write these plays.

Moments are incredible, but in my fantasy mind I see a Globe company which is renowned throughout the world for what it does with pure storytelling. So that people come and say: it's not just the building, it's the only place you can hear this kind of work.

But I don't sit down at dinner and have clever ideas.

Our job is to make manifest the story, to be it. In a sense, the theatre is such a big star itself, bigger than any Shakespearean actor I could hire, that we should take the opportunity to fill it with voice and verse and movement, not interpretation.

There have been more books alone written about Hamlet than have been written about the Bible.

It's nice being offered a lot of interesting films and being asked to take part in things that are quite curious. If you hunt and keep looking, there are some wonderful things that come out.

Great actors try to dismiss all ideas from their conscious mind in order to provide an experience that is real.

So there's a lot of people tied into believing that the traditional response to the authorship question. In terms of actors, some people get very angry about it.

And people do enjoy the plays at completely different levels. And, likewise, they enjoy the authorship question... at completely different levels.

It's difficult for me to say, but I don't think the sex scenes are particularly erotic.

I think I find it easier to live on the stage than in life,