You, too, can be an Oxford professor !

This needs to be immortalised. I checked and Emma Smith is a real person, ‘Professor of Shakespeare Studies; Tutorial Fellow, Hertford College.’

'Skip the beginnings. Pick out the greatest hits. And don't feel you have to go and watch Shakespeare…

'If you start reading at the beginning of a Shakespeare play, you'll be bored by the time the main character arrives. Start with a famous speech, like Lady Macbeth's 'Unsex me here...'

'The theatre can be so respectful, as if these plays absolutely need to be three and a quarter hours long. I don't think any play needs to be…

'People didn't speak like that even in the Shakespearean period…

'There's a long history of him being thought of as a kind of sage, but he hasn't usually got the answers for our modern problems…

'Asking the questions can be revealing in both directions, though – talking about toxic masculinity and Hamlet, we can see him as a young man radicalised, on a mission to clear things up, and turning against women's sexuality in a very violent way, maybe like the guy who takes a gun to school. That was revelatory for me.’

Yes, the Daily Mail is middlebrow and reactionary, but… more here.

Unlike the Bard, I have no words.