Hils's journal

There's a series of books entitled Players of Shakespeare which is essays by actors who've done various parts for the RSC. You've Derek Jacobi on Macbeth, Patrick Stewart on playing Shylock, Nigel Hawthorne on Lear, etc. David Tennant's done two -- the first on playing Touchstone in As You Like It in 1996 (which appears to have been something of an experiment in terror for him because it wasn't the part he auditioned for, he didn't think he was funny enough to pull it off and it looked like he was right for a while) and the second on playing Romeo in 2000.

If you like digging into the how and why of the choices actors make about characters, I highly recommend the series. This is Shakespeare as theatre, not literature, how it breathes and moves and the choices an individual actor makes in interpreting it. I've done stage work and I've done Shakespeare in a professional capacity. In fact, I played Juliet when I was really way too young. Both Romeo and Juliet are difficult parts to play because the characters are terribly young (Juliet's not yet fourteen according to the script; I was almost thirteen) but they demand a certain maturity which is impossible to find in actors of the correct age.

I've got a copy of the Romeo essay in PDF form and it's an interesting look at the way his mind digs into a character. It isn't the greatest writing in the world (there are a few places the grammar seems a bit awkward), but if you like that sort of stuff, it's a fascinating read. I've got the first two volumes of the series and getting my hands on this reminded me I really need to get the rest. Alas, they are not inexpensive over here.