When my publisher suggested I might write something to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Bell Shakespeare Company, I nearly ran a mile.

The last thing the world needed was another book on Shakespeare, I thought. They come at the rate of three a week and so many of them are brilliant! Whether it’s the erudition of Stephen Greenblatt and Frank Kermode or the more populist approach of Peter Ackroyd and Bill Bryson, they’re all wonderful—what more was there to be said on the subject?

But then I thought of all the knowledge I’ve picked up over the last fifty years as an actor/director, and the ten years before that as a university and high-school student, the theories and ideas I’ve read, researched, heard about or been taught by various professors, directors and commentators. And I thought about those many theatregoers who enjoy seeing Shakespeare but have a lot of questions: Did he really write all those plays? How do you remember your lines? Why do you do Shakespeare in modern dress? Is he still relevant? How do you prepare a role? What’s it like doing a long run? Should we translate the plays into modern English? Was he a Catholic? Did he believe in ghosts? Was he a feminist? A subversive? On it goes . . .

So this is a response to those sorts of questions based on my personal experience and reflections—the thoughts and reminiscences of a theatrical insider, and an Australian one at that. I have limited my comments to productions I have been involved with or that were especially significant to me. If I were to comment on every Shakespeare performance I have seen, even in the last ten years, that would mean at least one more hefty volume. Some of my musings are, necessarily, conjecture. For instance, I dare to undertake some fictitious ‘interviews’ with various acquaintances of Shakespeare. This is simply to put my research into dialogue form rather than attempt a scholarly essay. But the facts are as close to the truth as I can ascertain. The one person I could not interview was Shakespeare—because I couldn’t hear his voice. The man had a thousand voices, but which one comes closest to his own? Do any of them? How can we ever know?

The more I write of this book, the more aware I become of how much I’m leaving out; the subject of Shakespeare is simply inexhaustible. So this is a book I shall never finish. I’ll just stop.

It’s not a book for academics or theatre buffs. But I hope it may encourage students and other interested readers to delve further into the complexities of Shakespeare in books weightier and worthier than this.