"Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th"
About this Quote
There’s something disarmingly candid about an actor admitting she’ll need “years to state what I mean.” Fiona Shaw isn’t selling expertise; she’s describing obsession in real time, the slow-burn kind. That humility is the tell: she’s drawn less to a neat historical thesis than to a volatile moment when language started to matter as much as cannons.
The “rise of democracy” gets framed here not as an inevitability, but as a period you have to squint at and live inside. By anchoring it “with Tom Paine,” Shaw points to democracy as a literary event as much as a political one. Paine wasn’t a statesman polishing institutions; he was a pamphleteer, a viral engine of his century, turning abstract rights into portable sentences. For an actress, that’s catnip: history powered by voice, cadence, and persuasion, where the performance is the politics.
The timing she marks - late 18th into early 19th century - is a pressure cooker: revolutions, backlash, widening publics, and the birth of mass argument. The subtext is that democracy doesn’t rise politely; it surges through messy rhetoric, moral certainty, and propaganda before it ever becomes “civic culture.” Shaw’s phrasing suggests she’s interested in the seam between ideals and their staging: who gets to speak, who gets believed, and how a new “we” is manufactured.
It’s also a quiet self-portrait. She’s pointing to a role she can’t yet play because it isn’t a character; it’s an atmosphere. The years she anticipates aren’t procrastination. They’re respect for how hard it is to articulate the moment when words began rerouting power.
The “rise of democracy” gets framed here not as an inevitability, but as a period you have to squint at and live inside. By anchoring it “with Tom Paine,” Shaw points to democracy as a literary event as much as a political one. Paine wasn’t a statesman polishing institutions; he was a pamphleteer, a viral engine of his century, turning abstract rights into portable sentences. For an actress, that’s catnip: history powered by voice, cadence, and persuasion, where the performance is the politics.
The timing she marks - late 18th into early 19th century - is a pressure cooker: revolutions, backlash, widening publics, and the birth of mass argument. The subtext is that democracy doesn’t rise politely; it surges through messy rhetoric, moral certainty, and propaganda before it ever becomes “civic culture.” Shaw’s phrasing suggests she’s interested in the seam between ideals and their staging: who gets to speak, who gets believed, and how a new “we” is manufactured.
It’s also a quiet self-portrait. She’s pointing to a role she can’t yet play because it isn’t a character; it’s an atmosphere. The years she anticipates aren’t procrastination. They’re respect for how hard it is to articulate the moment when words began rerouting power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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