Zoe Wilcox, 34, lead curator of Shakespeare In Ten Acts at the British Library from 15 April

I love Gertrude because she’s not wholly virtuous but a complex character, who goes through a process of self-discovery as the play progresses. She is Hamlet’s mother, who, after the death of Hamlet’s father, immediately marries his uncle. She’s initially blind to how much hurt this causes her son but slowly realises her error. I watched a number of Hamlet adaptations in preparation for the exhibition I’m curating and I realised Gertrude was almost always given a prominent role – she doesn’t have a huge amount of lines but she’s such an intriguing figure that directors have always been fascinated by her. Anastasia Hille’s Gertrude in the recent Lyndsey Turner adaptation [in which Benedict Cumberbatch played Hamlet] was, for me, the most mesmerising, particularly the scene in which she brings the news of Ophelia’s death to her distraught brother Laertes. It was heart-breaking and the perfect portrayal of such a flawed but brilliant character.

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