Armin Shimerman Episode Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to Phil and Ted's Sexy Boomer Show with your hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. Phil and Ted's guest today is actor, author and professor, Armin Shimerman, best known for playing “Quark” in the TV series Star Trek: the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Armin’s a professor of William Shakespeare’s life and works, and shares amazing stories that will flip your Elizabethan wig. And now, your Sexy Boomer hosts, Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt.

Ted: [00:00:00] Welcome to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Phil: Oh, that means, yeah, I must be Phil Proctor.

Ted: How are you?

Phil: How am I?

Ted: You look lovely.

Phil: Well, thank you. Yes, I've gained weight and lost it.

Ted: You really fill out a bathing suit.

Phil: Now I'm wearing a bathing suit. Now why? Because we are at the lovely home of Armin Shimerman and Kitty Swinks over in the Valley somewhere.And I'm looking at a beautiful swimming pool, cause we're doing this recording under a gorgeous gazebo. And [00:00:30] that means that sitting across from me is Armin Shimerman.

Armin: I mean, that must be me, I guess. Yes, absolutely.

Ted: We're in the beautiful backyard of Armin's house. We were in bunkers for so long doing the show from bunkers remotely. So now we've decided to just invite ourselves to our guests’ homes.

Armin: Well, thank you. It's very nice to have you, even though I lost my travel pay.

Ted: Armin, you are an actor, you are a teacher. You're an author

Armin: and I was a union activist. [00:01:00] Uh, I was, uh, I was a journalist at one time. I was a caddy at one time.

Phil: Oh, you were?

Armin: That's where I got these shoulders. It was carrying two bags at the same time.

Ted: Carrying two bags was always very good money.

Armin: Yeah. And you got a lot of walking in because you had to go from one person to the other and back and forth and keep your eye on both those balls, but it was a lovely job. Um, and then. I got the opportunity to play caddy again, this time on Seinfeld. Uh, but none of my experience came into play for that. So it's okay.

Ted: You’re best [00:01:30] known for your longtime role on the Star Trek series, “Deep Space Nine” as…

Phil: Snark.

Armin: oh well, snark snark is with my fellow actors called me. Yeah.

Phil: Cause you were kind of a snarky, snarky,

Armin: I was lucky, uh, to play quark. I, um, when I heard. The new Star Trek series. That was about to be produced Deep Space Nine. And I heard that there was a Ferengi on and I had played a Ferengi on, on the previous star Trek [00:02:00] series Next Generation. And I thought, well, they must be looking for somebody like me.

Phil: Looking for an Armin Shimerman.

Armin: Get me a young Ferengi! And, uh, at that time I wasn't so young, I was 40. Um, but I auditioned and was very happy and lucky to get hired. I'm a very proud to say that on that show, I was the first actor hired for, for the show that, uh, there were seven series regulars, uh, in that [00:02:30] first season and of the seven, I was the first one hired because, because they had seen me play it before.

Ted: For people who don't know, what is a Ferengi?

Armin: A Ferengi, what is a Ferengi? You know what? I've never been asked that question. That's amazing. Um, what is a Ferengi? Ferengi is an alien creature from, uh, the planet for and, uh, they are acquisitive beings. They like to accumulate things [00:03:00] and they like to trade back and forth.

Originally when I first played them, on The Next Generation, they were described to me as. Clipper captains, American clipper captains from the 18 hundreds, um, from new England, uh, very hard-nosed sort of people, but unfortunately they hired me for that first episode and they became overnight sort of comical characters.

Ted: Very funny. The scene where your character was lodging a [00:03:30] complaint about living underneath your superior officer. Uh, and making noises because he was shape-shifting all night and it was bothering you and, and your character says at one point, I could even hear when he scampered like a mouse and a commander, a woman, character says you could hear that? And you point to your ears and say, “HELLO!”

Armin: The irony of ironies is, uh, actors who played for Ferengi had large prosthetic ears, but because we had large prosthetic years, [00:04:00] which were made of rubber, we could, because it was like wearing, you know, big, uh, earplugs.

Ted: Did you take liberty with the character and make it more comedic?

Armin: I did originally. I, it wasn't something I wanted to do. I actually was trying to be dramatic and next generation, and it came out very comical.

Phil: Well, that's what they say, though. If you're going to play comedy, got to play it straight.

Armin: Absolutely. Phil. And when I auditioned for Quark on Deep Space Nine, uh, my good friend, he wasn't my good friend [00:04:30] then, but later on became very close friend. He was my brother on the show. His name is Max Grodénchik. We both auditioned for the character of Quark. And we sat down on the, on the steps of Paramount and we discussed our auditions. This is before either one of us had the role. And I said, uh, Max, how did you approach this role? And he said, as you said, Phil, uh, he said comedically because they’re comic characters.

And he said, how did you approach it? And I said, following your advice, Phil. [00:05:00] Um, I said, no, I. I approached it dramatically that I wanted to make it as dramatic as possible, even though they're comedic characters. And I suppose the producers, the powers that be agreed with you feel they took the dramatic approach over the comedic approach, although Max would have made a great Quark.

Phil: I think that the secret of that from an actor’s perspective is. The audience gets to be funny. The audience gets to have the fun, [00:05:30] you know, cause they feel superior to you in a certain way, “What a jerk!”

Armin: You're taking it very seriously, which makes you a jerk. Yes. But you must not ever think that you're a jerk. You simply want what you want.

Ted: Deep SpaceNine took the Trek concept and made it a little broader. I mean, there seemed to be more humanity in, in, in those aliens.

Armin: Yeah. I think one of the glories of our show of Deep Space Nine was it wasn't about boldly going to some planet and solving their problems in 47 minutes. But [00:06:00] rather it was about a long extended view into relationships. How do people who don't necessarily like each other live with each other.

How do we live together in a society that is a partisan? How, how do we live together in a society that, um, uh, is abrasive against each other? And in our show, tried not to show you how to do that. Absolutely not. We did not do that, but, but, but we explore. [00:06:30]

Phil: The problems and the successes of that situation and people could identify with that.

Armin: I think so. I, I, and I'm very prejudiced about this, but I think that's why our show has stood up so well to the test of time, because we weren't about technical things so much. We were, of course, but, but not really. We were about relationships and in relationships.

Ted: And there was one monologue that was sort of a morality play. You weren't playing for laughs in the scene, you were talking about a [00:07:00] false equivalency. It was like, you think you're superior to us. “We may do this. We may do that. We always may be looking for a deal, but we're not killing each other.”

Armin: Yes. I remember that monologue. That was one of my favorite monologues. Actually. I believe I was saying that to captain Sisko. Um, from the very beginning of starting. The character of Spock. Everyone knows Spock. He had the ability to look at humanity and make judgments or appraisals of [00:07:30] humanity. And so for those of us who were aliens, we often got what I would call the Spock speech.

We would get, we'd get a speech where the writers are making comments about human characteristics, uh, human values, uh, that only an outsider, an alien.

Ted: I heard one very funny story. I wish you could share is about, uh, you were on the set in 1994 during the earthquake.

Armin: Sure. [00:08:00] On that particular morning, my calls were usually about five o'clock in the morning because my makeup took two hours to apply every day. And so at seven o'clock when the camera crew was ready, I was ready to go at seven. So I would come in and. So this particular morning, and I don't know why, but they had called me in, I believe at four, instead of at five, my makeup artist who applied my prosthetic makeup.

Her name is Karen Westerfield. [00:08:30] She had put my prosthetic song. She, she had glued my rubber head on the dome, my dome and the face mask as well. Cause there was two parts, the dome and the face mask and the earthquakes. Actually, we weren't shook up that much because we were in a makeup trailer and although the, the city shook, we were, you know, we were sort of stabilized by it by the shocks.

Yeah. But we found out pretty quickly what had happened. I mean, for me that the most telling thing that I remember was [00:09:00] walking outside, it was still dark and looking up at the sky and seeing stars, seeing stars in the sky. No lights, no. And I, and I went, whoa, that was the most, uh, uh, telling thing of that morning.

It was except for what I'm about to tell you. And at that time we didn't have cell phones. So those, somebody had something like a cell phone. Yeah. Mobile phones, a mobile phone. His house hadn't been shook very much. [00:09:30] I finally got in touch with my wife and found out here in the valley that we had been rocked quite a bit.

Um, the perimeter walls around the property had come down. The French doors had all been blown open. The dogs had gone frantic and, uh, she was in a

rather shook up state. And I said, well, I'll be home as soon as I can. So I said to the A.D. (Assistant Director) and said, I'm going home now understand I'm still in my dome and face masks and get [00:10:00] makeup.

And, and I'm not going to wait to have it taken off because it takes an hour to undo that. Wow. And I didn't want to wait an hour. And my makeup lady, Karen, luckily for me, lived about two miles from where I live. And I said to Karen, come over to my house with your materials, you know, and, and, and take it off after you've checked your house and, and your family and everything.

So we agreed on that. The AD actually said to me, you can't leave. My contract with Paramount said that I could not leave the lot in makeup. Oh, that that was forbidden. And he said, “so you can't leave.” And I said, “I'm not waiting around to have this taken off. I'm taking off now”. And he gave me, you know, argument for about 30 seconds or so is his job.

That's his job. And he fulfilled his job and I said, you know, screw you. I'm going. And he said, gun, I'll see you tomorrow. So I'm [00:11:00] driving from the paramount lot to my home in the valley and because of the earthquake, because I remembered in our last major earthquake in Los Angeles. One particular area of freeway had had fallen down.

So I took the local roads and the people in Los Angeles were incredibly gracious that morning. There were no street lights working, no traffic lights working. And so people were very kind about letting the person on the right go through the intersection. First, I got to an interstate. [00:11:30] And understand I've got my Ferengi prosthetics on.

The other thing I should tell you is I can't drive without glasses. And so in order to drive, I'm holding my glasses in front of my face, get them around the head. That's a possible, so I've got my glasses out in front of me. I'm I'm at an intersection. There's a gentleman in a, in a large truck. Uh, And once you can't [00:12:00] see on the radio, but for Phil and TEDS amusement, I will show them what this guy looked like, which was like this.

Phil: Oh, that was good.

Armin: His is, his mouth was a gate. His eyes were disbelieving and bugged out. And then all of a sudden. He very graciously just waved me through though. It wasn't my turn. He just waved me through the intersection and for the rest of the week, actually I kept an eye on the Inquirer to see if [00:12:30] anybody reported any aliens during that week. But there was no story.

Phil: you know, that reminds me of the scene from Close Encounters where Dreyfus is sitting in his truck and a UFO gets behind him with those bright lights and he, he just waves and waves. You Go, go on, go on. And it goes up and flies over his truck.

Armin: So it, it was, uh, you know, and that came home.

Um, and the nice thing was, although my wife had seen me many times on the lot with [00:13:00] the makeup on many times when I came home with the makeup, uh, she started to laugh, which was a very pleasant sound considering what the morning had done to her. And ironically, we had had tickets the night before to go see bill Irwin in a show.

Love, love him. And because my car was early four o'clock in the morning, I said to, to my wife, Listen, take somebody else go and I'm going to sleep in the master [00:13:30] bedroom. And you, when you come in, don't wake me up, go into the guest bedroom and go to sleep. So I got up, went to work. She was in the guest bedroom.

She was woken up by the earthquake when the earthquake hit. The TV cabinet had tipped over the TV and the cabinet had fallen on the bed in the master bedroom. Uh, so if she had slept there. She might've been crushed or at least hurt. Yeah. Wow. And luckily for us, she had been in the [00:14:00] guest bedroom where there was no such contraption and, um, and she escaped injury that way. So that was very nice.

Ted: Here we have a major earthquake, and yet you're told you can't leave because you may shatter the illusion. And that somehow it supersedes your, your actual life. Yes. This is a rule at Disney world.

Phil: Oh, for the characters?

Ted: The characters that walk around, as you can imagine in the summer in Orlando, those outfits they wear are stifling.

Armin: No one knows better than I do.

Ted: So, if you [00:14:30] collapse from heat exhaustion, you are not allowed to be revived. They can't take your head off. They have to, uh, drag you and they have a series of trap doors all around the park to immediately evacuate these people, put them behind walls and then take the helmet off.

They're not allowed to do it in front of the guests.

Phil: Well off with his head,

You’re listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer show with our special guest Armin Shimerman. We’ll be right back.[00:15:00]

Announcer: You’re listening to Phil and Ted’s Sexy Boomer Show with Phil Proctor and Ted Bonnitt. To hear all the Sexy Boomer Shows, go to sexyboomershow.com. Tell your friends about The Sexy Boomer Show and help us build our audience. To be notified when a new episode is posted, press the subscribe button in your podcast player. And if you’d like to toss something into the tip jar to help our habit, look for the donate button on our website, SexyBoomerShow.com. Any amount is greatly appreciated and for $20 bucks, we’ll send you a swell, Sexy Boomer Show bumper sticker that will help you get lucky. Back to Phil and Ted and their special guest, actor, author and professor Armin Shimerman.

Phil: Now I want to connect some things in your life. Not only are you well-known for doing this wonderful alien comic culturally changing character. You are a Shakespearian scholar and a teacher, a professor. Associate professor tell, is he a professor, right, USC, still working at it. Keep practicing.

Armin: Thank you.

Phil: [00:15:30] And in fact I have in my hand, your latest work Elyria book one, and it's called “Betrayal of Angels.” Could you tell me a little bit about this?

Armin: Sure. So I've been writing novels for a very long time. In fact, long before I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be a writer. And, uh, it's always been in the back of my mind, but I was seduced by the dark side of the force and became an actor.

But it didn't stop me from wanting to write. And I have written another [00:16:00] trilogy, which was a science fiction trilogy, which was easy to do because I was a science fiction actor. But in that trilogy, which is called the merchant prince trilogy, I wrote about a historical character named Dr. John Dee a very famous or infamous person from Elizabeth in England.

But that character in the merchant prince series. It was more about my character from Deep Space Nine than it was about John Dee. Uh, although we called him John Dee, but it was more quirk than it was John Dee. [00:16:30] And I sort of promised the spirit of John Dee that one day I would write a series of novels about the historical John Dee and keep cork out of it.

So this prompted this idea that I had of John Dee being sort of a Sherlock Holmes. Solving a problem that Elizabethan England was going through, which was the, the bitter rivalry or, or, um, [00:17:00] hatred really between the Protestants and the Catholics of Elizabeth and times, not only in England, but in Europe as well.

England, of course at that time was a Protestant country or at least the national religion was Protestant, but there were many, many, many Catholics, especially in the north of England who. Who had to secretly go to mass mass was forbidden pretty much after 1570, when the Pope excommunicated queen Elizabeth

Phil: Shakespeare, William Shakespeare, his [00:17:30] father, was it purported to be a secret Catholic, right?

Armin: It is one of the great mysteries that someday will be solved. Was Shakespeare practicing Catholic because his father was a Catholic or was he a practicing Protestant? Because the only way you could get work. Was to be a Protestant. If you were Catholic, they would not give you work. That was forbidden.

So, so my novel is about testing the loyalty of a particular count in the English channel. Uh, [00:18:00] England has jurisdiction over several islands in the English channel Jersey, for instance, or white, I would have white. I love white and there were a couple of others. And in my imagination, I saw one of these islands as a halfway house or a, um, underground station to bring priests into England to perform mass. [00:18:30].

And this was happening. This is historically true, but not about the island, but priests were smuggled into England. So I started writing this actually while I was in my trailer of Deep Space Nine. And I decided in this novel also to bring in a very young William Shakespeare , uh, at the age of 16 as a sort of a sidekick, but as things would have it, um, although Dee was always meant to be the lead character and he [00:19:00] is.

Um, Shakespeare's character grew and grew and grew and became almost an equal co-equal in the books as well, because we do not know how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. How did this young kid from a small town in Yorkshire? How did this kid get to be so knowledgeable and so good or writer without a university education?

Any real education at all? How did that happen? We don't know how that happened. [00:19:30] So my premise, John Dee among the many things that he did had the largest library in England at the time he was a master educator. He was a master mathematician like harassments people would come from all over Europe to visit him, to learn more about what he knew.

So I have them linked up so that Shakespeare can learn from this, this incredible scholar. And it's from his relationship with John Dee, that it [00:20:00] becomes the writer that we all know him to be. So they're trying to solve the mystery of on the island, who is the person protecting these, uh, what's called seminary priests, uh, and getting them into England secretly.

My premise is that. Is educating will Shakespeare while both of them are trying to solve the riddle of this crime. And the island by the way, is not called Jersey. And it's not called the island white or any of the other [00:20:30] islands, but rather is called Illyria, which is the island that Shakespeare uses in 12th night.

And, and I combined a lot of his. With the characters of 12 Nights. So it's, it's both a historical novel and a fantastical novel at the same time. Dee is, is educating Shakespeare into literature, into writing into, uh, uh, literary illusions, history, history, rhetoric, all the things that was taught at [00:21:00] university, uh, Dee is teaching well.

And he is becoming a better writer as he studies. In the meantime, he gets, uh, an occupation. With the count that they're investigating, uh, whose name is . Um, uh, and he becomes court poet while he's in Elyria now. So when I sold the novel and the, and the publishers were very nice about buying it, they made the mistake of not [00:21:30] asking me when they bought it.

How many words do you know. They eventually did ask me that after all the paperwork was signed and when they realized how large the novel was, they insisted that it wasn't one book. It was three books. And the deal we made was that each book would come out each, November, uh, on November the fifth, which happens to be, uh, my birthday.

Oh, um, coincidence and Guy Fawkes day, which is a holiday in England. [00:22:00] Um, so, um, the first book. Betrayal of Angels is out the second book, which I haven't got a title for book two will come out next November,

Phil: Call it Proctor’s Revenge.

Armin: Okay. Proctors Revenge it is. And the third one, you know, will be a Ted's Happiness.

Ted: Great. As you said, this is a story about not so Merry old England.

Armin: Yeah. Cause we've heard that expression Merry olde England and the, and the truth is it wasn't so merry [00:22:30] the average age of a Londoner in Shakespeare's time was about 22. People died from the plague. People died from accidents. People died from many diseases.

It didn't have to be from the plague. Um, people were killed off by the government or by each other. Uh, it, it, it wasn't pleasant and, and certainly people in the lower ends of society were starving, um, were mutilated. It wasn't pleasant. They drank a lot. I mean, the, the, that was drunk.

Phil: Water was [00:23:00] dangerous.

Armin: It was dangerous. Uh, everything was dangerous about life at that time. Uh, England was a backward backwater country compared to most of Europe and they were coming out of that, but it, wasn't not a pleasant place to be. And, and Shakespeare took his life in his hands, literally to go from Warwickshire to London and, uh, and probably why he never visited his wife that often, because it was a dangerous journey back and forth.

Phil: Because even if you didn't do it, [00:23:30] Of disease or anything you could be robbed highway man. Absolutely.

Ted: So as a professor of Shakespeare, this is an opportunity to ask you for people who aren't familiar with Shakespeare, someone who would like to learn a little more, I would like to find an “in.”. Do you have a particular way of doing that for your students?

Armin: I do actually. Um, usually what's off putting about Shakespeare is the language and the truth of the matter. Most of the language is current language. You know, people say, well, it's old English, it's not old [00:24:00] English old English is when that operated with your to the root. And that's actually not old English.That's middle English.

Phil: Chaucer,

Armin: Chaucer. Right. Um, so it's really modern English what's off-putting is, is the way the words are put together. The modern words are put together it's in a style. That we are not familiar with, mainly because it's written in a rhetorical style and rhetoric, although still talked, but not very [00:24:30] much was absolutely what was taught through the middle ages up until I would say the beginning of the 20th century and in America, for whatever reason, they really stopped teaching that as fundamental English.

But when you begin to recognize the rules of rhetoric, When you understand why these words are put together in the manner that they're put together and begin to accept that as part of, of your, as your understanding of [00:25:00] English, then the language becomes exponentially clear. Now there's still going to be some trade terms that you way may not be familiar with. This was a mercantile society. It was a, it was a society that, uh, that made its money off of shipping. So there's a lot of shipping terms and a lot of horse wrangling terms and, and a lot of terms that were everyday usages to people who live in that time, [00:25:30] but aren't necessarily, so to us today, many of them still are used, but, but we're not as familiar with those crafts as these people.

Um, and also sometimes words have slightly changed a tiny bit. One of the ones that I'm particularly fond of is the word F R O M from, um, in Shakespeare, uh, for us from means from, as we understand and moving away from yes, and moving, but even more so [00:26:00] in Shakespeare, actually, that's the very definition that Shakespeare would use. Phil. There's a great sense of divorce in the world. So my example to my class usually is I can tell you that I am from New Jersey and you'll understand that. But if Shakespeare wrote that line, he would expect his actor to say, in this sort of way, I am from New Jersey. There's a great sense of divorce that never going back. This is from any understanding.

Phil: If you lived in New Jersey, [00:26:30] you would be “from” New Jersey

Armin: And I am from New Jersey. So, uh, and there are other words that we use all the time, but we never think about it. For instance, the figures of speech, why are they called figures of speech? And this is actually goes back to rhetoric, the hundreds of ways to put words together, all have their own individual Greek name and those that collection of Greek names for ways to put words.

We're all called figures. [00:27:00] Go figure that. Well, that's a different fake. I think that that is essential. Unfortunately, for those who are, who are thinking about learning more about Shakespeare is to have a very good dictionary because you need, sometimes you are misled by a word that you think, you know, you absolutely know, you know, But the word has changed its meaning or has a double meaning.

I mean, look at the word check for instance, um, check can mean someone from checklists, a box check [00:27:30] coming, give me the bill at the end of a meal check can be check out the, the woman who just walked by figure on that woman. Uh, and I'm sure three or four other checks.

Phil: You can write a check.

Exactly. So they're check off the list. Yeah, it goes on and on. Yeah. Oftentimes, we have a limited awareness of what a word means when it means what it means today, but it also has another meaning. For instance, again, my favorite example is want [00:28:00] for us want means I desire something. I want a coffee. Um, I desire a coffee, but if Shakespeare writes, I want a coffee, he means there's no coffee here. Right? We're lacking.

Phil: I need a coffee.

Armin: And for the want of a nail, the war was lost.

Ted: Would be interesting for people who are getting into Shakespeare to maybe read it an electronic version of it, where you can tap on a word and get an instantaneous definition.

Armin: You know, if the instantaneous definition includes some archaic [00:28:30] definitions or, uh, or a sufficient amount of depth of definitions? I think that's a very good idea.

Phil: Well, listen, in, in Shakespearians time, they would have a monk sitting at your feet while you…

Armin: Catholics are forbidden.

Phil: Yeah. Oh, so it would be, uh, a what's the word for a scribe. A scribe is scribbling. Right. And you tap him on the head.

Armin: That's right. And he tells you what the word means. It tells you the different meanings

Phil: tells you the different meanings

Armin: of the word. Yeah.

Ted: For someone who would know nothing about Shakespeare, but is curious, why is it worth the [00:29:00] effort?

Armin: Great. Okay. For two reasons, first and foremost, primary reason, very few writers have ever succeeded. Explaining the human condition as well as Shakespeare has.

And he's able to do it in a few words, just a couple of words put together suddenly crystallize exactly a human emotion, a human response to things, and, and the way he puts words [00:29:30] together are so galvanizing that, that it just gives you an epiphany about your own human. To be or not to be, that is the question that by the way, is a figure called, um, uh, antithesis.

And it's because it's an opposite. If I, if you recognize this as the figure of antithesis, oh, it's, it's an opposite to be, or the opposite not to be. And that's the rhetoric rhetorical figure of antithesis. And so not only do you recognize that, but you understand [00:30:00] why he wrote it the way he wrote it. He's using that figure to, to write that line.

And antithesis is absolutely Shakespeare's favorite figure of rhetoric. He uses it constantly. And, and as long as you begin to see that the relationship, the tension between these opposites, you have a better understanding and a better appreciation. You can still. But you have a better appreciation of what's being said.

Phil: So if you say, I want to be, you're saying both, I [00:30:30] need to be, and I don't think I can be .

Armin: Exactly.

Ted: What works would you recommend as a starter? My novel

Armin: Elyria Elyria, and the reason is I, and I'm slightly being facetious, but. It gives you a very good understanding of the history of the times. And that too is part and parcel of the, of the misunderstanding of people.

Because if people don't understand what was happening at that time, they can't relate [00:31:00] to the, to the characters. Because Shakespeare is learning about rhetoric from John Dee you'll get some principles of rhetoric in my novel as well.

Ted: No one really knows how William Shakespeare learned what he learned to be able to write.

Armin: Yeah, we don't know. He didn't go to university. He was always, um, in conflict. With the, with the writers. And there were many wonderful Dramatists at the time. Shakespeare is not the only dramatist at the time. They were really great writers at that time, but [00:31:30] they're all overshadowed by, by shows like Johnson and bacon and, uh, Nash, uh, green.

Phil: Yeah. And they all kind of hung out. They knew one another, they tried to kill one another and they were in bitter feuds with each other.

Armin: And on all of them, except Shakespeare all went to university and they all studied rhetoric and they all competed as writers do today for the top spot in the literary world.

Ted: Was he resented because he didn't have an education?

Armin: Yes. A [00:32:00] Green wrote a great one. Last thing she wrote. Was this a treatise on, on this upstart Crow, uh, that he called wheel Shakespeare because he wasn't upstart. He didn't go to university and he thought himself better than the university, which who thought that they were at the top of the pack and history has proven that green was wrong and, and Shakespeare was the one that we all admire.

Phil: My favorite description of Shakespeare for those who may. Really want to see a players, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, sword fight!. [00:32:30]

Armin: And, you know, Shakespeare was aware of that. Yes. There's very few plays that he doesn't have a sword fight because they were, they were appreciated.

People wanted to see the sword fights and most actors at that time, like you and I felt, um, were very good swordsman. So if you want to. And you killed someone. Normally you'd go to jail for that. But in Elizabethan times, if you could prove to the judge that you could read and write, you were let off really that you can read or write.

Ted: What if he killed somebody that could read and write?

Phil: [00:33:00] Oh, they'd write it off!

Phil: Thank you, Phil. Oh, you're way ahead of me. I

Ted: What was Shakespeare like, personally?

Armin: Hard to know. He was very reclusive. He certainly , one could assume that, um, he didn't get into trouble.

All the playwrights that I've been referring to, they all got into trouble. They all got hauled before court Shakespeare never did. Um, it may be in my humble opinion and it's very humble [00:33:30] that because he was a secret Catholic, um, he, he kept his nose clean so that, uh, he would not get into trouble. But there's relatively little known about Shakespeare because he did keep his nose clean.

He didn't get into trouble. We know that he lived with a French couple on silver street while he was writing the plays and he was involved in a lawsuit with them, but he wasn't the person [00:34:00] involved in the lawsuit. He was merely a witness. Um, but, but this relatively little known about him, we do know. You know that he was not only a playwright, but also an actor.

And there is a rumor, uh, that he played all the, the Kings that weren't the title role. So all the plays that have Kings in them, but are not the title role. The rumor is that Shakespeare played those parts.

Ted: Did he speak truth [00:34:30] to power?

Armin: No, he didn't speak truth to power, so

Ted: he didn't get into trouble with the powers that be.

Armin: There's relatively little. Politics in his place, there's politics, but not controversial politics. Uh, he, he pretty much stayed true to the tutors that hired him and kept his nose clean. The other playwrights often did get very political and got home hauled into court, or brought both courts, whether it was legal court or, or, uh, the Queen's [00:35:00] court, uh, in order to get there, um, you know, their comeuppance for doing it.

And how did he live out his life? Well, most of the time he lived in London, when he retired a very rich man, he returned to Stratford where, uh, he got into one or two lawsuits because, um, he was part of a consortium that was buying out the common land, taking common land away from the peasants, away from the people who couldn't afford it were using that common land to put their sheep on their cattle on, [00:35:30] um, And he was taking, he was part of a consortium that was, was, was disappearing that land.

Um, he, he finally pretty much died of a cold. Uh, he caught cold and died.

Ted: Caught a cold. How old, how old was he?

Armin: He was 48, I believe, when he died.

Phil: That's a pretty, pretty good long life, but he also developed writer's cramp. I understand.

Armin: He did. He did. When you look at his signatures, right. And I talk about a signature.

Imagine that there's no such thing as a spelling. In Shakespeare's time. [00:36:00] What I mean by that? There's no definitive script for Shakespeare because we're never sure really about what words are correct. For instance, Americans tend to say, uh, oh, that there's two, two solid flesh when marathon resolve itself into a Jew, whereas the English tend to say.

Oh, that there's two too solid flesh would melt. And the reason is there is, there is no correct spelling of words in this period of time, and you can spell a word any way you like. So [00:36:30] going to Phil's comment in the, uh, I I'm, I don't think this number's right, but in the dozen or so, examples of Shakespeare's spelling of his own name on legal documents in six of those.

He spells it differently. He spells his own name differently. And in fact, in my novel, I do not spell shit. S H a K E S P E a R E as it is normally written, but [00:37:00] I, I, I take one of the spellings, other spellings, S H a K E S P a R No E at the end. Saves on room in the novel. And, uh, and it's, it's an acknowledgement of the fact that spelling was up for grabs.

Phil: Now, by the way, the Firesign theater, you play wrote a Shakespeare is lost comedy. Right. Right. But we always thought of him as being shaken spear, which is what you guys are playing with.

Armin: Exactly.

Ted: It was almost as if [00:37:30] back then, before spelling was standardized, uh, writing was almost in dialect.

Armin: Yes, exactly. It's a good way to put it. It was in dialect and that is. If you look at the first folio, um, of for Macbeth, um, you'll see that it's, it's not written murder. M U R D E R and or Martha, because somebody in the, in the printing process, must've had a Northern English accent and they wrote it the way it sounded.[00:38:00] They said it. Martha,

Phil: Martha. Hi, Martha, Martha.

Ted: Interesting. What for you personally makes him relevant six centuries later?

Armin: His appreciation of the human existence and that never really changes history can change. Cultures can change, but the human condition is pretty much the same. We love, we hate, we desire. We need to eat. We need to propagate all the things that are essential to humanity he deals with and in [00:38:30] such a beautiful way. And, and as such. Educated way. Um, it's what makes him appreciated by people for all these countless years.

Phil: And to take it back to what you're saying about Star Trek. He was very much involved in the friction between people and the frictions and tensions in society and history.

Armin: Exactly. Well, put, I'm put that in my next class. That's very good. It's timeless. Yeah. And, um, and again, the beauty of, of his, of his word construct. [00:39:00] Is just glorious. If we like poetry at all, not that he's always a poet. He's not. And a lot of times he says things that are stupid as well. So it's not like he's brilliant.

Phil: Well, what's wrong

Armin: with that? Well, you know, all the

Phil: Groundlings

Armin: Exactly. Sometimes the jokes are so bad for them. Not even, you can make it funny!

Phil: Firesign theater did, but it took four of us.

Armin: Yeah. But you wrote your own lines. But a lot of his work is. For an actor anyway, that's what, as a reader, but for an actor they're [00:39:30] just delicious words to speak and to get into his speeches and to get into the scenes and to, to kind of, uh, uncover the wit and, and, uh, uh, rhetoric, you know, the, the give and take of what he's doing, makes it such a joy.

Phil: Uh, you've done about a third of Shakespeare's tone.

Armin: I think I'm a little closer to half.

Phil: You've done almost half.

Ted: And how many are there?

Armin: Uh, th that's debatable, debatable, but I think 36 or [00:40:00] 37.

Ted: Your job as a professor. USC. How many of the students look at Shakespeare as medicine as opposed to candy.

Armin: I’m going to brag here. And thank you for that question. It's a wonderful question. Most of my students tell me, uh, after they've finished my class and have gone on for another year or so. That it was all medicine. They all thought it was medicine when they came in. And certainly my first class is, is a lot of medicine because I'm introducing them to a [00:40:30] language they've never heard before, which is the language of rhetoric.

And I'm using a lot of the Greek terms for figures that they've never heard of before. But I will say that I've gotten a ton of feedback from a good majority of my students and it became their favorite class while they went to USC. Because I think they discovered something they didn't know about before and, and, and the discovery of learning became delicious to them.

Ted: You've been using the word rhetoric. [00:41:00] A lot when you're talking about Shakespeare's writing and this day and age that we're dealing with politically in the United States, rhetoric is a bad word, has become a bad word. So what is the relevance of the word rhetoric in terms of Shakespeare and today?

Armin: Great, great question. Let me answer. That's a two-part question for me. So the first part, what is rhetoric? Rhetoric is the art and science of putting words together to say something meaningful and memorable for those of us of our generation. We [00:41:30] remember Kennedy's, uh, “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

And that's a very rhetorical sense. It's put together, very rhetorically words are repeated, um, and, and repetition is part of rhetoric. So it becomes memorable. It's not only do we, do we think it's wise, but we can repeat it because it's easy to repeat because of the pneumonic of the repeated words, that was something that all knowledgeable people.

All people [00:42:00] who wanted to write, had to understand in order to right up until about the 20th century, everybody learnt that. How does it deal with, with our 21st century problems here in this country? Well, first of all, they've made rhetoric into a bad term because rhetoric in the 20th century became something.

You were sold something you didn't. That was the definition of rhetoric disingenuous. Yes. It was disingenuous that they, they, they spoke so well about a product that you had to buy. And then when you bought it, [00:42:30] you found out it was a dud. Okay. Rhetoric has also come to me and in the 21st century, that, that a particular topic is repeated and repeated and repeated and repeated ad infinitum.

Phil: Fraud, fraud, fraud!

Armin: Right? So that either takes on a great deal of meaning or a buzzword. It becomes a buzzword

Ted: “Fake news.”

Armin: Or fake news. Or all value to that word is lost because it's repeated so many times that wasn't the original purposes of [00:43:00] rhetoric rhetoric was to make you remember it and to value it.

Phil: It's interesting that railer rhetoric has become more of a negative power in, in our modern vernacular. Hasn't it? You know, the politicians usurped it.

Armin: Yes. And one of the reasons why. It's hard that Shakespeare was never intended to be read. It was always intended to be performed.

Phil: Very good point.

Armin: So when you read it without the actors [00:43:30] bringing life to those characters, it's very dull. It's, it's, it's very, without actors.

The second part of the problem is unlike people like Phil. A lot of times actors don't know what they're saying. When they're saying Shakespeare, they don't understand the principles of rhetoric. They don't understand that want means loss and not, not desire. And so you, as an audience member are listening to a Shakespeare play, watching a Shakespeare play [00:44:00] and, and you're confused and you feel stupid because you don't understand what they're saying.

The fault is not in you. The audience, the fault is in the actors that they have not done their homework sufficiently so that they can. Communicate what's on the page to the audience. There's nothing better for me as an actor to hear an audience member come up to me after a Shakespeare show or a classical show and say, that's the clearest I've ever understood that.

And you know what? It was [00:44:30] always clear. It's just that the communicators, the actors hadn't done their work in order to make it clear to you. That's right. The play's written in the middle of his career. Enormously accessible. The plays written in the beginning of his career are usually very funny and very accessible.

The play's written at the end of his career are, are harder to get into why like a musician. You start out learning the [00:45:00] chords, the simple chords, the simple keys. And as a beginning, playwright, he's writing rather simple rhetoric, understandable rhetoric. Um, The language is, is relatively easy as a musician progresses and he becomes, or she becomes infatuated with jazz.

They begin to syncopate, they begin to play with the music they improvise. They begin to not be worried about the form. But decide to take [00:45:30] liberties with the forms. And that's what he starts to do with language in his later plays. So plays like The Tempest or Winter's Tale. Those are difficult plays to, to understand because now he's, rifting awning on the English language and it's not as easy as Hamlet or, or comedy of errors, uh, because he's.

Having fun with language, which he wasn't doing before

Ted: Shakespeare wrote for it to be delivered, not [00:46:00] read.

Armin: Yeah. He never was printed until after he died. He never made any effort to have. And in fact, the place long to Shakespeare, once he wrote them, they belong to the theater, they belong to the theater that he worked, the kicking man or the Queens men.

Absolutely. And in fact, if, uh, Came into the audience or a printer's boy or somebody. And he surreptitiously wrote down all the lines and printed that, that [00:46:30] play belonged to the printer, not to the theater and certainly not to Shakespeare. And that's why we have some versions of Shakespeare's play.

They're called the bad quartos that, that were, were surreptitiously taken down. And, and they're not close to the, to the first folio at all. And because they. They were just written as quick as that boy could write, uh, down the line. It's also

Phil: My supposition that the great comics, the gestures in his company would improvise.

Armin: I will go further with [00:47:00] that. And I'm very proud of this. There were two main comics in Shakespeare's. They didn't work at the same time. Uh, one replaced the other, the first one was, Will Kempe and he did exactly what you will, can, will camp, uh, improvised all the time. And I think Shakespeare was very happy to see the back of Will Kempe when Will Kempe left the company.

Now, what I love about the fact was the common character who replaced wheel camp was a man named. Robert Armin. And he was very [00:47:30] much a linguistic comic character. He's the one that created all the great fools. The fool in king Lear, uh huh. 12th night. Uh, he's not a comic. He's not a pratfall type of actor. He's a linguistic he's. As he, says in 12th Night, he is a corrupter of words and. Quite brilliant, but, but all of them, all of them had some comedic virtues. Absolutely.

Phil: Will Kempe. I wonder if we get “Kemping it up” from that, from that?

Armin: [00:48:00] Could be. Right.

Ted: So the takeaway is that if you want to get into Shakespeare, go see a good production.

Armin: Yes. A good movie. Go see good movie because all the difficult stuff is usually cut out of the movie.

Phil: See anything with a number. Richard, the Third. Henry, the Fifth.

Armin: Yeah. Those are all middle plays. Uh, cause he was writing history. Uh, a lot in his middle years, he was interested in the conflict, uh, in, in English politics without getting too political.

But I think a movie is a very good idea [00:48:30] because you're startled by the magnificence of the costumes.

Ted: Any particular movie you'd recommend?

Phil: Henry the fifth, is a tremendously inspiring movie, tremendously inspiring

Armin: and easy to understand, easy to

Phil: understand because there's a lot of sword fighting.

Ted: Armin, thank you so much.

Armin: My pleasure. Thank you.

Ted: It's been a delightful being in your backyard.

Armin: Thank you. Our backyard is better off where you were having been here. Thank you so much, chairman,

Ted: another fascinating conference. Yeah,

Phil: [00:49:00] and I didn't have to learn any lines.

Ted: I really love barging into people's homes and interviewing them. We have to continue doing this on the next edition of Phil and Ted sexy boomer show. I'm Ted Bonnitt.

Phil: And I'm the other guy. Stay tuned.

Ted: Bye.

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