Note from the author

I was raised by two physicists in the knowledge that women are full human beings, that science is the study of God's universe and that literature is the best expression of our questing adventure. I thank my parents for this firmament. I thank my husband for our partnership and for keeping his eye on the horizon while I rock the boat. Our sons when small revealed an innate hope of gender imbalance, until they grew into enlightenment and companionship. I have been aided by my sprite Ariel's beagle view of what it is to be human.

I thank myriads of students for their stimulus, questioning and challenging. This book is a response, from extremes of young men who were surprised that women characters in Shakespeare were at all important, to the young woman who asked, "Can you tell me why I like Shakespeare so much?".

Writing Shakespeare: Listening to the Women has been a rewarding conversation with many great minds in search of meanings which have grown in hundreds of years of civilisation. Shakespeare has come to Australia less destructively than have many other aspects of Europe, and he still has much to reveal here about compassion and the multiple roles in our lives.