Give a listen to masterful reading of Virginia Woolf’s “Shakespeare’s Sister”

In the video posted here, Fiona Shaw does a masterful reading of “Shakespeare’s Sister” from Virginia Woolf’s feminist polemic,  A Room of One’s Own (1929), which was based on a series of lectures Woolf gave at Cambridge University in October 1928.

Woolf’s speech is one of several featured in the digital project “Figures of Speech,” presented by the Almeida Theatre in London.

The project places history’s greatest speeches centre stage through a series of films read by well-known actors speaking the words of important historical figures and moments, to explore how they resonate in 2017.

Besides Woolf’s speech, the project also includes talks by:

• Labour Party Politician Neil Kinnock spoken by Ashley Walters
• American politician Harvey Milk spoken by Ian McKellen
• Nelson Mandela spoken by Lucian Msamati
• AIDS activist Elizabeth Glaser spoken by Nicola Walker