The Conversation: Harriet Walter

(Tuesday 5th May 2026)

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She Speaks: What Shakespeare’s Women Might Have Said

Dame Harriet Walter, renowned for her wonderful portrayals in Succession and Killing Eve among others, is one of Britain’s most esteemed Shakespearean actors. Now, having played most of the Bard’s female characters, audaciously she lets them speak their minds. With thirty new parts for Shakespeare’s women, written in ‘Shakespearean’ verse and prose, Harriet Walter goes between the lines of the plays to let us hear what she imagines – sometimes playfully and sometimes searchingly – these women were really thinking.

Gertrude tells Hamlet the unvarnished truth; Lady MacBeth has her regrets; Kate, the Shrew, challenges us; Ophelia surprises us; Olivia surprises herself; and the Witches have a good old rap.

Harriet Walter herself says, ‘I worship Shakespeare. His psychological insight is second to none but the mirror that he held up to nature reflected a predominantly male image of the world. I pondered the long shadow of his genius and tried to think of ways to let a little sunlight in on some of his women’s stories. I like to think he wouldn’t mind’.

Chaired by Lennie Goodings, chair of Virago Press.