Shakespeare and Me: Great Writers, Actors and Directors on What the

Why Shakespeare? What explains our continued fascination with his poems and plays? In Shakespeare and Me, Susannah Carson invites forty actors, directors, scholars, and writers to reflect on why his work is still such a vital part of our culture. We hear from 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 his 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.