From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.

I'm Farah Kareem Cooper, the Folger director.

The actor, Sir Simon Russell Beale, has a seriously impressive range.

He's played not only Hamlet, Macbeth, Iago, and Lear, but also Malvolio, and Falstaff.

But thou art my son. I have partly thy mother's word, partly my opinion, but chiefly a villainous

trick of thine eye and a foolish hanging of thy nether lip that doth warrant me. If then thou

be son to me, here lies the point. Why, be it shown to me, art thou so pointed?

Biel made his film debut in Sally Potter's Orlando as the Earl of Moray,

played Rachel Wise's older husband in the Deep Blue Sea,

and has appeared in not one but two satires about Joseph Stalin,

the stage play collaborators and Armando Ianucci's film The Death of Stalin.

Goodbye, myelope, old friend. Goodbye forever.

You're on the list. It'd be simpler and cheaper if they just drove straight into a river.

He's won three Olivier Awards, two BAFTAs, and a Tony, for best actor, for his role as Henry Lehman in the

Lehman trilogy. He had been dreaming of America. Three brothers, travelers, immigrants.

They came with nothing, not even a word of English, and they built an entire universe.

Now Beale has written a memoir, a piece of work, playing Shakespeare and other stories.

Here's Simon Russell Beale speaking with Barbara Bogave. They began their conversation by talking

about Beale's most recent part, the title role in a Royal Shakespeare Company

production of my favorite play, Titus Andronicus.

It's such an extremely violent play, and it's problematic violence. I mean, on a lot of levels

for modern audiences. I'm especially thinking of the victim blaming with Titus

...