Harriet Walter in conversation with Katherine Rundell

Harriet Walter has taken on almost every female role in Shakespeare. Her new book, Brutus and Other Heroines, ploughs the furrow of gender-bending to give us the inside story from a performer whose repertoire includes Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice and Cleopatra, with a fair few of Shakespeare’s men thrown in for good measure.

This month she’ll be talking to the children’s novelist and fellow of All Soul’s College Oxford, Katherine Rundell, to tussle with the challenge that faces any actress reviving the Renaissance: what do women lose playing Shakespeare’s weak women, and how much can they gain by slipping into the shoes of his men? Boys have been trading in their breeches since drama’s beginning – must women still be confined to the speeches of mothers, daughters, wives and mistresses?

The two promise to take Shakespeare to task for his treatment of ladies. Never mind that he was buried 400 years ago, the Bard will have a tough job coming up with answers to the questions these two women will come up with.