Daily Inspiration Quote by Mark Rylance

Mark Rylance’s line flatters Shakespeare while quietly demystifying him. Calling it “an intuitive exercise” is a small rebellion against the way Shakespeare often gets presented: as a museum piece, a scholastic hurdle, a thing you “decode” with footnotes and reverent dread. Rylance, an actor’s actor with deep stage credentials, reframes the work as bodily knowledge. You don’t conquer the play; you go through it. That phrasing matters. It implies duration, weather, friction - a process that changes you as you move inside it.

The repetition (“to do... and to go through...”) isn’t sloppy; it’s revealing. “Do” is craft: blocking, breath, cues, the muscle memory of performance. “Go through” is more interior: letting the language drag you into emotional and rhythmic currents you can’t fully intellectualize in advance. Rylance is signaling a rehearsal-room truth: Shakespeare’s meaning often arrives late, after the voice has tasted the line and the body has found the turn.

Contextually, this is also a cultural correction. Shakespeare is treated as a prestige brand - ticket prices, canonical status, classroom anxiety. Rylance’s intent is to return it to play: something felt, discovered, risked. “Intuitive” doesn’t mean unthinking; it means the thinking is embedded in action. Subtext: stop asking permission from experts. The plays are built to be lived in, not merely interpreted.