TWO aspects of cross-dressing will feature in the Shakespeare plays at next year's Ludlow Festival.

In Twelfth Night, the shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as a boy when she joins the court of the lovesick Duke of Illyria.

In Cymbeline, the wronged heroine Imogen does the same as she tramps off to Wales in search of her lost husband. Fortunately both can resume their proper identities by the close.

For the second year running, Michael Bogdanov is contrasting an all-time favourite with a lesser-known play. Twelfth Night was shown in 1962, 1975 and 1988 but Cymbeline is making its Ludlow debut.

Bogdanov is saying nothing yet about casting because some of his regular company will be touring in Under Milk Wood next summer. He sees Twelfth Night as a "bitter comic piece that raises some very fundamental questions", so that leaves him plenty of scope.

One possible hint is that the steward Malvolio may have been a forerunner of the killjoy Puritans, who were to clamber to such prominence in the Civil War half-a-century later. Could that mean a Roundhead Malvolio trying to spoil the fun at the Cavalier court of Duke Orsino?

Even those who have never watched Cymbeline will know the dirge "Fear no more the heat of the sun" which is spoken over the supposed dead body of the boy Fidele.

The play has an unusually complex plot - involving a dangerous wager, misogyny, mistaken identity and divine intervention to sort out the mess.

Cymbeline was written between Pericles, which played at Ludlow in 2000, and The Winter's Tale, shown this year. Ludlow has a rare opportunity to see a deeply moving play, which defies all convention.