Shakespeare and Me: Great Writers, Actors and Directors on What the Bard Means to Them – and Us

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Shakespeare and Me, Susannah Carson invites 38 actors, directors, scholars and writers to share stories of their own personal relationship with Shakespeare.

We hear from Ralph Fiennes on interpreting Coriolanus for a modern filmic audience, James Earl Jones on reclaiming Othello as a tragic hero, Sir Ben Kingsley on communicating Shakespeare’s ideas through performance, Julie Taymor on turning Prospero into Prospera, Brian Cox on social conflict in Shakespeare’s time and ours, Germaine Greer on the playwright’s home life, Dame Harriet Walter on the complexity of his heroines, and Sir Antony Sher on feeling at home in Shakespeare’s language. Together they provide a fresh appreciation of Shakespeare’s works as a living legacy to be read, seen, performed, adapted, revised, wrestled with, and embraced.