Most parts don't have the privilege of acknowledging the audience as much as Autolycus. That's his function. It's written into the part, and what is there is probably the approximation of the way the last actor who played it did it. There must have been massive extemporising then, which you can't do now because the idiom has changed. We're no different from our ancestors, and you can't freeze things or bring them back to life.
Mortality is mortality.
The printing word survives, but what you learn by creating this time machine for Shakespeare is the extraordinary exquisite sharpness of modernity and the moment. The greatest lesson that you learn from the Globe is actually what is happening now, because it's exactly the same thing as then. The response in Shakespeare's day to the moment is the same as the response now. I feel strengthened by that feeling, and it's got implications in every area of my life.