Playing a Shakespearian heroine is a challenge most actors long for. But he also wrote a range of smaller female parts, many key to the plot, which often fall into specific types – sluts and wenches or scheming older women. As the Royal Shakespeare Company continues its ‘Complete Works’ Season, Judi Herman has been looking at some of Shakespeare’s ‘best supporting roles’. In the second of this series, she looks at Shakespeare’s take on women in service, from handmaidens to waiting gentlewomen, and talks to some of the performers cast in these roles. She speaks first to Pippa Guard, lecturer in drama and English at the University of Greenwich.
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