Judi Dench has returned to a Shakespearean role she played 50 years ago in a new video.
The actor recited excerpts from Portia’s “the quality of mercy” speech from The Merchant of Venice, in the clip posted on Twitter by Jade Anouka.
She appears alongside Harriet Walter, Paapa Essiedu, Paterson Joseph, Meera Syal, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith and Simone Kirby to deliver the monologue about the power of kindness.
Actor and poet Anouka shared the video, “spreading some #Shakespeare love in these theatre-deprived times”.
Dench first played the role of Portia in a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1971, starring alongside her husband Michael Williams.
Anouka and Walter appeared together in the Donmar Warehouse’s all female Shakespeare Trilogy in 2016 (which is now available to watch online at Marquee TV).
Anouka took inspiration from a video she made of her own poem I Am A Woman, in which she asked fellow actors, including Dench and Walter, to each perform a line.
