Susannah York scored a hit at this year's Edinburgh Festival with her solo show, The Loves of Shakespeare's Women.

Next month she will perform an extract from this one-woman show and her accompanying book, The Loves of Shakespeare's Women. An enchanting anthology of speeches and sonnets by Shakespeare's multifarious female characters on the theme of love, they are interwoven with astute commentary and personal insight.

Well-known speeches from the younger generation such as Juliet's "Come night! Come Romeo!" and Portia's "The quality of mercy is not strained" feature alongside less familiar ones from Viola, Hermia, Rosalind and Cressida, while words from more mature characters such as Lady Macbeth "How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me", feature alongside others from Gertrude, Mistress Quickly, Cleopatra and Queen Katherine.

With this anthology, Susannah York has sought to do for Shakespeare's women what the famous Ages of Man (Sir John Gielgud's one-man evening) did for his men.

—by Paul Webb Theatrenow