In Their Own Words

There are as many Hamlets as there are actors to play him. He can be tall, short, fat, thin, black, white, whatever. There's always something in there that you absolutely respond to. It never ceased to frighten me. I always would be very nervous when I went on. In fact, it was the trigger for me "catching" - if that's the right word - stage fright, which stayed with me for nearly three years; and I didn't go on stage in nearly three years.

I'm standing in the wings, waiting to go on, and I suddenly thought, you know, "To be or not to be": that's the speech, they all know. At least they know the first line or the first two lines, the most famous speech. And whenever you got to that speech, there was a particular silence that falls on the audience. Tangible, you can touch it: because this is the moment he's saying "To be or not to be"; and every Hamlet feels it, I'm sure. And I'm in the wings, waiting to do this, and I thought: "What happens if I dry? What happens if I forget it?" I started, and I dried. I didn't know what... Every pore in my body opened. My shirt, my grey shirt turned black with sweat, pouring down my face. I'd asked all those questions that people ask and you think "what a silly question". "How do you learn your lines?"; "How do you get up in front of a thousand people?" Yes. How do I? How do I remember? How do I get up in front...?  And asking those questions was wrong, because I couldn't answer them.


Sir Derek Jacobi, British Actor, born 1938