Shakespeare Uncovered

Bonneville started his career at the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, understudying Ralph Fiennes as Lysander, one of the four lovers in A Midsummer Night's Dream. He and Fiennes meet up again to try to untangle the extraordinary plot of one of Shakespeare's most enduringly popular plays, a great comedy of love and enchantment.

King Lear is universally acknowledged as one of Shakespeare's greatest tragic roles. Plummer has played the role under the direction of Sir Jonathan Miller (who, we discover, has directed it six times).

Freeman first discovered Shakespeare in school in Mississippi. He went on to play the hero of this play–Petruchio–in The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park production in New York, set in the Wild West. Freeman notes this play has set the template for all of the battle-of-the-sexes comedies that have followed; many a romantic comedy has The Taming of the Shrew running through its veins.

Astonishingly, David Harewood was the first black actor to play the great Moorish Venetian general Othello at London's National Theatre, triumphantly taking on the role—but not until 1997. Now he returns to the play to discover how the centuries have changed our views of it.

Cattrall has played Cleopatra twice. Now she explores the real character of the great Queen of Egypt, and travels to Rome, ironically Marc Antony's city, in her quest to find out more about the historical Cleopatra. She also meets with her director, Dame Janet Suzman, who herself made an iconic Cleopatra at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1973. Together they begin to uncover the truth behind this astonishing middle-aged love story. Antony and Cleopatra are no lovesick juveniles; they are mature, heroic–real–political figures. As such they were quite dangerous roles to write, let alone to play.

Fiennes has a unique perspective on Romeo and Juliet. He played Shakespeare–both writing and performing as Romeo–in the film Shakespeare in Love. Now he wants to examine why it remains the most-performed of all Shakespeare plays.