By studying the female characters in Shakespeare’s plays in the order in which the playwright wrote them, I have been tracing their development and maturation over the span of the canon. Through his relationship with the women he creates, Shakespeare reveals much about his own character and spirit as an artist. Because the women generally survive outside the power structure of society, they look at, maneuver and reflect upon the workings of that society, not unlike an artist. The feminine sensibilities of intuition, feeling and relationship parallel those of the artist. So, if you want to know what Shakespeare thinks, listen to the women. Because there are fewer women than men in the plays, the women often have a clear definition of being the “other.” And often they manifest the very souls or spirit of the stories.

The women have a specific progression from the fighting warrior women and virgins-on-the-pedestal of the early plays to the heroines who struggle to find themselves in the middle plays; to the daughters who, through their own wholeness, are able to guide their fathers’ back to life in the late plays. I believe the women reflect the development of Shakespeare’s own psyche. Shakespeare, being one of the greatest artists who ever lived, is able to reveal­— over a 25-year span— his mind to us, and this in turn actually exposes on an archetypal level the development of a universal human psyche.

I have come to understand myself through this study. I, too, have been immersed in the plays for 35 years, both as a director and as an actress and have an intimate relationship with most of Shakespeare’s writing. In many ways, my own development as an artist is reflected in the development of his women.  First there is the battle, then the negotiation. In order to survive, I personally went underground and now I am coming back from the underground to a new birth— the maiden phoenix, if you will. And whole, in a way I never was before.