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Most soft interlayers tend to be key factors affecting rock slope stability due to their low strengths. A series of ring shear tests is conducted on reconstituted overconsolidated soft interlayers to investigate the influences of remolded water content and normal stress on shear behavior under drained conditions. The soft interlayer raw samples taken from a potential landslide site in China are first remolded into overconsolidated samples with different water contents but the same dry density and further drained under different normal stresses. The peak strength, residual strength, corresponding shear displacement of the soft interlayers and the loss rate of water content are positively correlated with water content and normal stress. Transformation of strain softening to strain hardening occurs for samples under higher normal stresses. Variations in water contents have notable effects on the shear strengths. Meanwhile, displacements, fragmentations and orientations of samples differ, showing strain softening and hardening behaviors of soft interlayers. • Stress-strain characteristics of soft interlayers are systematically investigated. • Ring shear test is utilized successfully for shear behavior studying. • Variation in compaction moisture content has an obvious effect on shear strength. • Shear behaviors are closely related to the microstructure of soft interlayers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]