'This book gives some of the very best of Shakespeare's twenty-first-century colleagues an opportunity to share insights that can only come from playing him' Nicholas Hytner, from his Foreword

Twelve leading actors take us behind the scenes of landmark Shakespearean productions, each recreating in detail their memorable performance in a major role.

Roger Allam on his Falstaff in both Henry IV plays at Shakespeare's Globe
Eileen Atkins on Viola in two productions of Twelfth Night seventeen years apart
Simon Russell Beale on Cassius in Deborah Warner's modern-dress Julius Caesar
Chiwetel Ejiofor on his Donmar Warehouse Othello, directed by Michael Grandage
Sara Kestelman on Hippolyta and Titania in Peter Brook's iconic white-box Dream
Ian McKellen on one of Shakespeare's most demanding of roles: King Lear
Michael Pennington on stepping in at the eleventh hour as Timon of Athens
Alan Rickman on re-evaluating the melancholic Jaques in As You Like...