So today, we have Rinde Eckert with us who is in the process of delivering a fantastic performance as Feste. Thank you. In CSS production of Twelfth Night. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks, great to be here. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? You have a fantastically varied resume and I'd love to hear all of the things that you've done. Yes, I have one of the oddest resumes in performance history, I think actually. So tell us about that. My parents, number 1, we're Opera singer. So my first exposure to the arts was through Opera. Then I got a degree in Opera, and then decided the Docker wasn't for me, and then I was casting about for what to do and got involved with a group of musicians who were doing odd avant-garde music theater in Seattle, and spent a couple of years working with them, and then got attracted down to San Francisco to work with a director who was doing some weird stuff in San Francisco with a composer and a couple of other performers. Then I got together with the composer and we had a 10-year relationship. Paul Drescher is a wonderful composer in California, and I had 10 years building new work together at the time, then I got involved with the Dance Community in San Francisco. I started composing scores for dancers and also I was creating texts for dance pieces and directing dances. So I got involved there, and then my wife became the angel in Angels in America on Broadway, and said she didn't want to leave New York, and I was pretty much done with San Francisco. So I headed out to New York, started working there. Immediately, I had a commission from the Public Theatre to do a piece based on Shakespeare actually. I did for them a one-man "Romeo and Juliet", very different than the Romeo and Juliet we're doing now. In the meantime, I also got another commission to do a piece for Foundry Theater in New York, which ended up being a popular piece downtown called, "And God Created Great Whales" based on Moby-Dick. Then I went off at ACT to make another piece for Director Robert Woodruff and American Repertory Theatre, ART in Boston. I did two for them. One was Highway Ulysses, and that was followed by another one, Orpheus X, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2007, I think. Awesome. I've had a career as a writer, and then a singer. I've been a principal soloist with the New York Philharmonic. I'm one of the weirdest guys in the scene. Then I got a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Trust to do basically a trip around the country doing free concerts, solo concerts. I put all my instruments in a van, and when I saw you first- That's how I met you. -it was at Timothy's house, and he had me do a house concert for various friends and sponsors and supporters. He was reminded of me and then when Twelfth Night came around, he thought, I bet you, he might write some songs for this. Called me up, asked if I'd be interested, the timing was perfect and I said, yeah, I really could use three months. So it just be somewhere, parked myself somewhere, and I hadn't ever done serious three-month run of Shakespeare. So it was great fun to come in and do that. So that's how I happened to be. That's excellent. You have already answered the first question I was going to ask, which is that I think that you were pretty central to his vision for the production. I know that Tim has a big music background. He does. He's an excellent musician. In fact, he's very heavily into this play. Yeah. I'm excited to hear your talk about it. So how has it been spending three months digging into this play and getting behind? Oh, it's been great. It's really been fun tackling Feste. Feste is a weird character, and traditionally, a difficult one to make work. One of the problems with a character like Feste is that, as opposed to the others who are funny because they're funny characters, Feste is funny because he's being witty. But witty is not the most funny thing in the world. Generally, wit is not terribly funny. The other characters are far more funny than Feste is. So it's somewhat of a challenge to make Feste funny, because Feste in and of himself is not very funny. You feel as the clown role and obligation to be funny? Because it's true that certainly in the later plays, the Shakespearean fool increasingly becomes the touchstone. Exactly. The truth teller. The truth teller, and Feste in this is not exactly the truth teller. To a certain extent he is, but he's not the developed truth tellers of the later fools in Shakespeare. In a way, you can look at him, it's what Circa 1601 maybe is when this is. It's not not early in [inaudible] but it's not the lady either. But you feel like it's Shakespeare exercising his wit, and that's, of course, always a difficult proposition. But when you decided to be the clan, and I think a lot of the mistakes people make with Feste in previous productions I've seen, is that they try and make him into something that Shakespeare didn't make him into. They try reading all things into him that Shakespeare actually didn't read into him. They're just trying to make him a character that has a through line. Very often they'll try and make him in love with Olivia because. Everybody else is. Everybody else is, so they try and make Feste and I think he is in love with her, but he's in love with her, he's admiring of her. But in this, I also make him admiring of Viola as well. I think he admires virtue, and I think he finds virtue in Olivia, and he finds virtue and Viola. Wherever he sees virtue, I think Feste acknowledges it and has a respect for it. What about Malvolio? Malvolio. I think one has to look at the traditional raison d'etre for the jester. In medieval times, the jester was there to poke fun at the vain. He was there to poke fun at the vanity of the king. He was there to actually mitigate that vanity. He was there as a truth teller for the king. The jester was always in a difficult position because as a jester, that was his role. He was there to say to Lear, you're a fool, you're an idiot, and here's why. Look at the way you're looking at the world. You're completely vain. You're missing the point. He was there to point these things out when nobody else could. Nobody else had the license. The fool was there to do that for the king. It was a service done to majesty so that it could bring them down to earth and hopefully make them more wise leaders. He had a valuable function within the court, and I think Feste inherits that role. I think that his job is to poke fun, to expose vanity, and so he does that with Malvolio. He doesn't find that vanity in Olivia, so he doesn't need to fulfill that function for her. Although, he does. He says, "Give me leave to prove you a fool." It's basically give me leave to be what I'm supposed to be, which is the jester. I'm supposed to tell you when your grief has made you lose sight, and in fact, why mournest thou, is what he says. "Why mournest thou good madonna?" That's the typical role of the jester. It's like, you're mourning too much. He exposes that to her and she takes it in that spirit. She takes his criticism and turns to Malvolio and says, "Doesn't this fool improve?" But Malvolio, of course, is humorless, he's both vein and humorless. He's ambitious, all the things that a jester would need to expose. He needs to expose Malvolio and so that's why he gets involved. He has to be that goad for Malvolio. Malvolio takes himself seriously right to the end, which is why I think, Feste actually has to say to him finally and mock him again, saying, "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrown upon them." I was once in this interlude, one [inaudible] sir, but that's all one. Then he said, and he reminds him who he is. He says, "Yes, you're pathetic. By the lord fool, I am not mad." Then said, "But do you remember? Remember your vanity. Remember your offense." Against you. Against me, but against good sense. Against, it's a lack of wisdom that he accuses him of. he says the whirly gig of time, brings in his revenges. You deserve this. Remember you deserve this. If you don't remember that you deserved it, then you don't get any wiser. As the fool says, "My foes tell me plainly, I'm an ass, and therefore I profit in the knowledge of myself." He said this is what he's trying to do for Malvolio, and Malvolio unfortunately proves that he is not a wise person, and he says, "I'll be revenged on your all." Which is beside the point. Although, you also say the whirly gig of time brings in its revenges, the one thing you have in common is that you seem to desire revenge. There are many ways, as you pointed out, that Malvolio and Feste are different. Yeah. But yet they both seem to want to teach a lesson or exact revenge. I mean, that's always interested me about the two of them. Yeah. But I think the difference between Feste is revenge, at least in my view, is that revenge against vanity is his job. It's not Malvolio's job. I hear that and that's a really interesting perspective. Is it his job to dress up, to as involved? I mean, the escalation of cruelty in this play is interesting. What do you think Shakespeare was after there? Why does Feste hang in and get so involved with the wisdom and perspective that he clearly has? Then we have to go to what was happening in the turn of the century in Elizabethan England, where the Puritans were in an ascendency, which 40 years later would result in the shutting down of the theater. For what? 15,16 years. The Puritans did that. I think Shakespeare saw the writing on the wall politically, and so by putting Sir Topas in there as the Catholic priest, I think it was facing off of the Catholic and the Protestant within that Elizabethan culture. I think neither one of them comes off particularly well. Right. But it was that necessity on Shakespeare's part to humble this Puritan Revolution that was burgeoning, and he saw the handwriting on the wall. They were anti-art or anti-theater. As a result, he wanted to punish them. Yeah. I was telling you about this in an earlier interview as well. But putting a Puritan or a sympathizer of the Puritans in a play about identity, and a play about people who were playing other parts besides feels appropriate. Because that was one of the things, as I understand, that Puritans really hated. He's basically accusing them of hypocrisy. Right. Which most self-righteous people are hypocrites. It's just one of those things that comes along with self-righteousness. It's just the way it is. So I think Feste has Shakespeare's ghost inner peace. A lot of times I think the fools are Shakespeare's ghost. Yeah. He ghosts himself into the play so that he can make certain things available to his audience, to be their spokesman within this, to appoint up things that may not be quite so obvious, but everybody's thinking or wants to say to Lear, to Malvolio, to any number of these people. Although Malvolio gets plenty of derision from everybody else. But I think then the facing off of the priest is definitely Shakespeare kind of putting himself in there. I love that you mentioned the church, and I also love that Tim kept that scene in the play that is often cut. Yeah. Where at the beginning of coming out of the intermission in your production, the scene about, "Do you live by the church?" That was, I think a brilliant thing that Tim did. He came to my studio, and I was showing him my Gem bass and I played him a little Gem bass solo. He wrote to me and said, what if we started the second act with a drum battle between you and Viola? Could you manage that? Could you teach her enough to make that plausible? Can we make that happen? Because I you know, they're coming back. It's an open space. It's difficult to focus one's attention. If I just had something that could focus them on the piece, and then we can get them back into the rhythms of the play. Because it's an amorphous space, the outdoor space, and feel like we can bring them back in by this means. So I thought it was a great way to get everybody back into the world to play. To play. Yeah. You got to say those lines, that I think are just such great lines, professor to say. I got say those lines, which are great lines. Reveal so much about who he is. That's his best scene, and that's an important scene with Viola. Yeah. In some ways I have to come back because we already did this thing with him, delivering a line to Viola after Come Away, Death, where he, instead of directing it to Orsino. He says, "Now, the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta." Yes. He said that. It seems very pointed when directed to Viola. It's like, I hope you get to be yourself. Because it reads that you see what's going on. I see what's going on. I think that Feste would. Yeah. I think he would. So he kind of knows. So I'm trying to play him like the guy who's the outside looking on, seeing what's going on, playing his role, and being a clown. But he's also one of the things that I feel about Feste is too, he's the clown for the audience too. He's the audience, which is why in many of those instances, you'll see me mugging to the audience. Just like when I'm asking for cash, when I'm begging for another coin, I look out and the audience go. They're going to give me some money, I know it. Then I get something and I asked for more, let's see how far I can take this. Then I asked her more and say, can I get three times, can I do this three times? Yes. It's just a way of knowing. Also there's nothing that says I have to come down and say, he has heard this word of some, he says, vent my fall elsewhere and I say, vent my fall, then I come down to the audience and go vent my falling. He's heard that word of some great man and now applies it to vent my falling and then I turned back into the scene. But it just says I'm your gesture to. Yes. I am your gesture, I am everybody's gesture, and as he says to Viola in that wonderful scene, the fool should be as often with their master as with my mistress. So I'm not apologizing for the fact that I go everywhere, foolery does walk about the orbit like the sun, it shines everywhere. Yes. We all need this. I want to go back to that opening scene with Olivia where you immediately resumed the role of fool, which is to say you've been gone. Where have you been? I loved the idea that you a traveling musician, is playing this traveling musician. Yes. But have you given thoughts to where he's been or what perspective he may have gotten? I took it to mean that he has been bouncing between houses. So that I took it as a later reference to the fact that Orsino talks about him having played for him earlier. Yes. So since there's that later reference, where's that fool who sang so beautifully that thing and so he refers to the fact that Feste has already been in his court singing. So I'm assuming that even though he's paid by Olivia to be fair, he has been moonlighting at Orsino's court and perhaps elsewhere, but I took it as a direct reference to that later reference of Orsino that the fool was here before. It seems to me to have a worldly perspective, or as we've already talked about, just gets that the world seems to live in shades of gray. Yes. That's the thing he knows, he understands human nature, and somebody in there has to understand someone who was the outsider who can comment on the world that he finds, the society he finds. That's an important function of art to do that and Shakespeare is making a point about his own art. He fact that Shakespeare doesn't take sides, I don't know of any instance where he took a political side in anything, he is kind to his villains. He's ambivalent about Malveaux. He obviously finds him incredibly vein and obnoxious, and yet in the end, he feels like, well, I don't know if he deserved that. Yes, he asks us to feel for him. Yes, he asks us to feel for him and he generally asks us to feel for all of these. It's the human condition. He understands the human condition, and it says we aren't above this and by choosing aside, you say well, this is inherently right and he says, well, it might be right to a certain extent, but then we all know what happens. You gain a certain power and you think you're right and then all of a sudden you become self-righteous and tyrannical and suddenly you're wrong. He said this happens over and over again with him. So that is what makes him so enduring, his feeling for the human condition and it is not ambivalence, it's multi valence is what it is. He is multivalent, he sees all sides, what an important function that is for heart within society. Satire is important, but it's also very important in satire to see as the comedian used to, everybody is a fool. Arlecchino maybe in charge, but he's also got his weaknesses. Right. So that's the tradition of comedy that Shakespeare comes out at Italian comedian. All these characters that he paints so broadly are from are the comedian, which he loves and tried to love I'm sure. But it seems like in his plays the mask comes off. Yes. Exactly. We get to see behind the mask and see all that. But it's interesting to see as you pointed out, the fools, the later fools, they get pretty heavy. That's a heavy duty place to be. Even Edgar as playing the fool, he turns into a fool character for his father. That's great. So it's really interesting as he treats him. But I think that Shakespeare is getting older. He can't help himself. He's looking at himself as he gets older, as an aging maker of art in which culminates in The Tempest, where he takes it on right there. He talks to his own muse. Yeah. Ariel questions his power, even the power of his theatrics. It's amazing because he's a play writer of such empathy that he's able to write Liya when he was much younger than Liya But as you say, there are things that he clearly learns as he starts to return. But as I said, just to come back to where we are. With Feste, if you anticipate the later fools, you miss the fun that Shakespeare is having with the early fool. That's great. So that that's been the temptation for a lot of productions, and as a result, they've lost the clown and they see it as ironic. It's not ironic in that first instance, it maybe ironic later, the fool. But in this early instance, it owes much more of what a comedian should. So that's why I'm playing him in that multi-faceted and somewhat goofy way, and it's far more in keeping with what the place seems to suggest in that character. That's great. I would love to talk about music. I read that he wrote for his actors and that the actor who joined his company around this time and started playing was very good with language and good with wit, but also was musically skilled. Yeah. So writing or taking advantage of those. That would be who? Will Kemp or? Well, Armin. Armin. Yeah. Robert Armin. That's him. Again, it's all guess work. Yeah. We don't know. It's always fun for me to think about, but I mean leaning into the music, this is the only play of his that begins and ends with music. There is more music, more songs in this one than in the rest. I would love to hear your thoughts about having composed for these lyrics and really spent time with these songs. What do you make of them? Well, there are a few things. You go through a kind of protocol in dealing with something like this. Lots of people have tackled these. So number one, you try and avoid listening to all that because it's just a stream of stuff, a lot of serious composers who have worked with these texts, with these lyrics. But I was looking at this particular production and they sent me drawings, the designers drawings and then talks with Tim, we talked about what the approach was going to be, it was going to be slightly anachronistic, but we were going to be referencing period costume, but it wasn't going to be exactly period, it was going to be a combination of elements. I looked at the set and these beautiful orange fish lamps, and Elyria was by the sea and there was a sense of what the sea brings, which is a cultural diversity, that's what port cities do. They just bring in trade and they bring in people from other cultures, and ships come and enter, and culture enters and leaves, and so there's a sense of breathing. So this whole idea of Viola coming from the sea as the exotic creature from the sea, who then transforms the nature of what's going on in the town. So anyway, there was that idea of transformation. I had to pick instruments. I wanted to pick instruments that, number one, I could play, but also that had a little Wimsey to them, that could speak of multiple ages. Tim had wanted the accordion in there. I don't think you'd seen my red accordion, which I showed him and then he went crazy because of the red accordion was so Italian and so beautiful. That was one of his initial ideas, so he wanted me to sing this particular song to begin the whole thing. He had this vision in his head of exactly what that was. That was the first impetus for inviting me, was he heard that in his head and he wanted that to start the thing. So I knew the accordion would be involved, and I thought, well, let's begin and let's end with it, so we have this sense of a closure. Bookending. The bookending, the thing. Then in the meantime, I had just refurbished mandolin, I was excited to play that. I had this banjo ukulele, which I thought would be whimsical enough and it would be funny enough, and yet would be poignant to enough for Feste. Because these are poignant songs, they're not comedy songs. Right. It's like both of them have this poignancy to them. So in them is the sad clown, it's like those are where the sad clown comes out for him. Yeah. I thought also he's a serious musician. That, as he says to Orsino, "No pain, sir. I take pleasure in singing sir." I think that's a serious moment. He's finished this song, he's proud of the song, and Orsino's comment that what a great song it was, and it has to be, live up to that hype. Yeah. We have to have an arresting song somebody's going to get. The beautiful thing that Tim did, which I just think is brilliant, is that he made this comic scene in front of it. This beautiful, touching comic scene that completely undercuts the lugubriousness of the actual lyrics, "Come away, come away death. I had been slain by a fair cruel maid." Yeah, you're singing the song and watching this- Watching this thing go on. The more it goes on, the more poignantly I try to sing it. Yeah. Because I think that there's a sacredness and a profanity within the scene itself and it just points at this beautiful comic. The comedy is broad in a way, but the sentiments are so beautiful. Yeah. So you have this wonderful broad comedic gesture that has as its underpinning this huge sentiment and we're all rooting for them. We want them so badly to do this, we see the danger of it for them, we see the pathos in it, we see the comedy, and then we also get to experience this mournful thing that's going on and it's a gorgeous wedding of different impulses. I think Shakespeare would have loved it. I think he must have intended something like that. So for me, it's the centerpiece of the entire thing, is watching that beautiful thing happen and knowing it's undercutting my own performance. Your own beautiful thing. It's perfect. Yeah. Because it's perfect, I feel perfect in it. Yeah, that's great. So talk about the last song- The last song. - we were talking before the camera was on and I want you to share. When I read the lyrics, "When that I was a little tiny boy with a hey ho the wind and the rain foolish thing was but a toy. For the rain, it raineth every day." Then it goes on. It's basically a picaresque little song about how a guy just grows up and doesn't learn essentially. The last verse is, "When I came unto my beds with a hey ho, the wind and the rain with toes, but still had drunken heads." So I haven't really learned. Yeah. It's like by swaggering, how could he say, "when I came last to wive with swaggering, I could never strive." It's a chronicle of his failings. Then he finally says, "A great while ago, the world begun with a hey ho, the wind and the rain." Then you think there's some moral inside. But that's all one, our play is done. It's like, wait a minute, where's the moral? A great while ago, the world begun and where's the moral? So I decided, well, we should wrap this up. Then I started trying wrap it up and I've written shakespearean lyrics before and I wrote a whole song that was a summary of the plays, events, and a little moral tag and it just didn't work. Then I thought, it's Shakespeare. The ambiguity is more important here than to make some moral statement. But I felt like I don't want to leave them with just, and we strive to please you every day. It felt a little weenie. So then I asked Tim what he'd feel about if I wrote a little coda, just spoken coda, that was a little more along the lines of some other codas that you find in Shakespeare where puck comes out or somebody comes out and says, "We're done." Just forgive us for. We had talked about Malvolio and I thought let's make a reference to the fact that there were offenses here. So I wrote the last little piece which has the line in it. So forgive us for these offenses, whether sang or spoken, and we bid you now God's speed and home to bed. Yeah. He said that our play was not but what would entertain, reward the just, unite true lovers, mock the vein. So it's like, okay, this is what we did. We did all these things and for that offense, forgive us and then we wish you all good night. It was simple and it didn't come up with anything moralizing, but it said, we did all these things so remember. It was a complicated affair. Yes. Forgive us our offenses. Yeah. Which is supposes a kind of moralizing. It is a kind of moralizing, I suppose, but it does acknowledge that, yes, we know. Yeah. It's a complicated thing. It is a complicated thing. To mark the vain, forgive us our offense because as I said here. When you unite true lovers remember, we mark the vain, we rewarded the just, we marked the vain, and then forgive us our offenses. Yeah. That's great. So that was the reason for that, and Tim, of course, we looked at a lot,. He looked at it a lot and how it was working and finally said, "Yeah I think this is good and I think this is a way to kind of cap everything." After the song, I could reference the earlier song by actually making the accordion shimmer again and remind us back where we began. We all are going to get a good time. We all are going to get a good time was back where we began. Yeah, you're making me think about, I mean, it is interesting that the progression of that song, I mean he's writing that play right around the time that he's writing as you like it, which is the stages of man, and he's also writing Hamlet, where he's talking about how humans have such great potential but we just can't seem to live up to it and this song seems to capture both of those things that you're progressing through life. But that last line, but the rain, it raineth every day. Yeah, he keeps coming back to, we are in the end human. Yeah. And the rain is going to come and just does. In the end, I can't come up with a moral for this. There is no moral here and he's not a moralist, he doesn't moralize, he philosophizes. Alright. But he rarely moralizes it seems to me. His character is moralize. Right. But then there's a counter-argument. I was having this conversation earlier, it's not right versus wrong. Exactly. It's right versus right. Exactly, and so you see the counterargument and so you understand. In Hamlet, he's not against Gertrude. He doesn't come down on her for being charmed into marrying the brother, and one suspects maybe the brother has more to offer than that old goat of a ghost that compels his son to do this thing. It's like really? You're going to ruin everybody's lives for a revenge. Good for you, I hope you're happy in hell, because now you killed your son, you killed your wife, you've killed so many different people because you needed your vengeance, good for you. You're sounding a bit like Feste. Yes I am. I mean you are kind of saying that there really is no sin, but maybe vanity or seen. Well that's one of my main. But being too sure that you are the one who was right. That's one of my main philosophical contentions, is that that's the great, great fundamental human error. That it all comes down to our fundamental vanity, and that's why Malvolio, ill will, is what is the name means in Italian, ill will. Malvolio, a bad want, ill will, and ultimately that ambition is driven by vanity and if he hasn't learned that lesson, which by his last line I don't think he has, then we are all going to be subject to his revenges just as we are subject always to the vengeance of the vain and in one form or another it's just the sin for me, all the other sins come from vanity as far as I'm concerned. Anger comes from vanity, slot comes from vanity, it all comes from vanity. If we can solve that, and that's where Buddhism comes in is that the fundamental realization of Buddha, is that it comes down to this fundamental desire and that's our fundamental suffering. It's a vain desire, it's vain to imagine that you're going to escape this condition, as soon as you give up that vanity, the world is open to you. Suddenly you see what you are and who you are, and then you can see your place in the world and then you're free. Boy, you are the right guy for this role. That's why I looked at it and I can see Feste and I hope that comes through. It does. I hope it comes through, he felt thank you, because that would be a blessing to me, if they can see, that's what he's there to do, and he sees his own vanity. Yes, that was absolutely my thought when watching the show is this actor really understands this character. You have segued the final question I've been asking in these interviews has been why this play today? Just to really bring it to 2019 and how is it landing on audiences in your experience and why should we be doing it? You've already answered that question, I think, but I'm wondering if you have anything else to say about it. There is always a way in to the difficulties that we face today in any Shakespeare play. A work of great art, to me, is always relevant because they portray a deep understanding of our condition. As such, we can find in it parallels, and depending on our situation, we draw from it the lessons that we need. There are some obvious lessons within Twelfth Night that are parallel to our situation, just in the transgender issues that we face right now, that we can look at that and see something to draw from in the vanity that we face, in our leadership at the moment, there's an obvious parallel. To the umbrage that a character like Malvolio and the ill-will that comes from our leadership at the moment, and the vanity that comes from our leadership and how willingly we've been accepted to a lot of our people. It's there, all there. There are also lessons to be drawn in this for the minor characters and this idea of a reaction to that vanity. I think that's an important thing to bring up too, is that our reaction to it, our desire to punish it. Right. Yeah. That's why we don't feel so good about Malvolio even as vain and as obnoxious as he is, revenge on him through that is not exactly right. It is an offense that we have to be pardoned for. Yeah. It's human to want to lash out and to punish that vanity and yet doesn't really serve the purpose, does it? Doesn't help us in the end. I really loved that I was able to talk to the actor who played Malvolio. Gareth is best Malvolio I've ever seen. He's really good. He talks a lot about, it's just really interesting to have these conversations. Of course, you're taking first his side because you were there. He said, "I don't want to forgive Malvolio," but he certainly is a victim to the class structure. That's one of the most important things that he brings up, is that the reason for his ambition is that he is stunted by a class conscious society. Yeah. Of course, Shakespeare was equally stunted by that same class consciousness. Right. He understands Malvolio's position, his ambitions, he is incredibly competent. He's a very good administrator, which is what Olivia says, "I would not have him fail for half my dowry." Right. She says, when he exhibits this weirdness, she says, "Don't let him go down the tubes. He's important to me. I don't want him to fail." He's very good at what he does and provides. I think that's an important thing to bear in mind. Right, and that Shakespeare has a little bit of compassion for the very type of person who was trying to shut his theater down, you know what I mean? Exactly. Speaks to what we've been talking about. Succeeded in shutting his theater down after, well, I think that was after. That was later. Yeah. But they did. They shut it down. But as you said, I think he saw the writing on the wall. Yeah, I think so. That's why he has Andrew Aguecheek say, "I have no more wit than a Christian." He's constantly poking at that little contingent. Yes. That's great. Anyway. Well, this has been a great pleasure Andy. Thanks Kelvin. Thank you for coming in. Yeah. My pleasure.
