On today's show, Eddie Izard accepts one of acting's biggest challenges, playing Hamlet, solo.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited. I'm Michael Whitmore,

the Folger director. Eddie Isard has a long record of dramatic

roles. She is starred in two plays by David Mamet and earned a Tony nomination for her

Broadway debut in the play, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. She had a recurring role in

Oceans 12 and 13 and even played the title character in Christopher

Marlowe's Edward II. But it's her decades of experience as a stand-up comedian that really

prepared Isard for her recent solo shows, first, Great Expectations, and now Hamlet.

Performing every role in those shows requires a marathon or stamina. Fortunately,

Isard also runs marathons. Hamlet is currently running at New York's Greenwich House Theater.

Here's Eddie Isard in conversation with Barbara Bogave.

I was thinking you've been doing dramatic roles in films for, what, more than 20 years,

and almost every serious actor that we've talked to here has had Hamlet in their sights.

So has Hamlet been on your wish list, too, for a long time?

That is a very interesting question question because when I was seven,

I wanted to act. I saw a play, a boy with a cart by Christopher Frye, and it was about St. Cuthbert,

and it was, anyway, I was seven, my mom had died a couple of years before. I hadn't been,

I'd done one little play-let thing before mum died. And I remember not being that bothered about it.

And then I saw this play and I thought, I have to do this.

And I think it was probably substituting the audience's affection for mom's affection.

So at the age of seven, I wanted to be an actor, tried like crazy to get into school productions.

Being smaller and being dyslexic, so I couldn't do sight reading.

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