“All I ever wanted to do was play Shakespeare, nothing else. It was a kind of zenith for me,” says Judi Dench, discussing her first professional role (Ophelia with the Old Vic) straight out of drama school in 1957. Despite the book’s jokily disparaging subtitle – “the man who pays the rent” is how Dench and her late husband,Michael Williams, used to refer to the Bard when they both worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1970s – her passion for Shakespeare shines through every conversation reproduced here.
The book is the result of four years of interviews with Dench by the actor and director Brendan O’Hea, who has known her for 30 years, and were originally intended as recordings for the archive at the Globe theatre, where he is an associate artist. Transcripts can run the risk of feeling somewhat dead on the page, but Shakespeare is saved from that fate, partly by skilful editing, so that the teasing, sparring and mischief that characterised Dench’s side of the conversation is faithfully reproduced here, with O’Hea as her straight man, but largely because her voice is so distinctive and familiar that you can hear it in your head. When she talks about Shakespeare’s characters, it is as if she is discussing the flaws and preoccupations of people she knows intimately. A further personal touch is provided by Dench’s own watercolour sketches of characters, which she was persuaded to include on the grounds that they might encourage others who, like her, are visually impaired, to paint.
