Harriet Walter talks to Rebecca Jones

Having played most of Shakespeare’s female characters, actor Dame Harriet Walter now lets them speak their mind, going between the lines of the plays to imagine what these women were really thinking. Hear what Gertrude longed to say; why Lady Macbeth felt she should be King; how Juliet’s nurse bemoaned her loss; and what Cleopatra’s handmaidens really thought of her.

“Though Shakespeare's empathy for his female creations is miraculous, his plays mirror the hierarchy and patriarchy of his day with the result that women are seldom centre stage, have far fewer lines, and their function in the plot is always and solely in relation to a man. But not in these pages…”