"Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation"
About this Quote
Denzel Washington is slipping a quiet manifesto into a sentence that sounds almost like common sense. By putting Shakespeare in the same bucket as "material", he demystifies the bard without diminishing him. Shakespeare becomes not a sacred relic behind museum glass but a living script actors can spar with. That word "ought" does real work: reinterpretation isn't just allowed, it's the obligation of anyone serious about the craft.
The subtext is a defense of artistic permission, and it lands harder given Washington's career. As a Black actor who has moved between prestige theater and mass cinema, he understands how "classics" get policed: by accent, by casting expectations, by the idea that authenticity belongs to people who already hold cultural power. Reinterpretation is how you break that gatekeeping without begging for entry. It's also how you keep canonical work from becoming cultural homework - dutiful, respected, and dead.
There's a pragmatic actor's logic here, too. If a text is truly "good", it can survive stress tests: new politics, new bodies, new emotional temperatures. Bad writing collapses when you change the furniture; Shakespeare, Washington implies, gets sharper. The line also nods to a modern audience trained on remakes and reboots: reinterpretation isn't vandalism, it's the engine of longevity. The point isn't novelty for its own sake; it's relevance earned, again and again, in performance.
The subtext is a defense of artistic permission, and it lands harder given Washington's career. As a Black actor who has moved between prestige theater and mass cinema, he understands how "classics" get policed: by accent, by casting expectations, by the idea that authenticity belongs to people who already hold cultural power. Reinterpretation is how you break that gatekeeping without begging for entry. It's also how you keep canonical work from becoming cultural homework - dutiful, respected, and dead.
There's a pragmatic actor's logic here, too. If a text is truly "good", it can survive stress tests: new politics, new bodies, new emotional temperatures. Bad writing collapses when you change the furniture; Shakespeare, Washington implies, gets sharper. The line also nods to a modern audience trained on remakes and reboots: reinterpretation isn't vandalism, it's the engine of longevity. The point isn't novelty for its own sake; it's relevance earned, again and again, in performance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|
More Quotes by Denzel
Add to List
