Shakespeare in Film

Catherine Tate and David Tennant on Shakespeare

July 2, 2008 – 7:42 pm | by Duncan & Ennis

English comedienne Catherine Tate and Scottish actor David Tennant appear together in this sketch for Comic Relief 2007, produced for us here on the BBC YouTube channel.

Tennant plays Mr Logan, a new English teacher attempting to introduce a high school class to the wonder of Shakespeare sonnets. Tate plays Lauren Cooper, a troublesome student who easily slips into Shakespearean verse from Sonnet 130. The sketch was in aid of Red Nose Day.

Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

Tennant, known for his role as Doctor Who, developed his career in the British theatre, frequently performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company for whom he played Touchstone in As You Like It, Antipholus of Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Tennant is about to start in the roles of Hamlet, alongside Patrick Stewart, and Berowne in Love’s Labours Lost.

Tate has also performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, taking the role of Smeraldina in a 2000 RSC production of A Servant to Two Masters.

Transcript Notes

“Look at my face. Am I Bothered?” are catchphrases of Lauren Cooper, designed to mock the chav culture in Bristain. Here she says, “Amest I bothered? Amest I bothered for soothe? Looketh at my face…looketh at my face. Is this the bothered face thou sees before thee?”

See the whole transcript here.

Sonnet 130

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.