The pop of a champagne cork would not have been discernible to the audience watching Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre one evening in 1987. But for Dame Judi Dench and two other actresses out of view on the set, it signalled the start of a secret lobster and champagne supper while Anthony Hopkins finished his lines, the star reveals in her new book.
Dench’s mischievous sense of humour emerges from the pages of Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent, which comprises a series of candid conversations with her friend Brendan O’Hea, a fellow Shakespearean actor and director.
She says: “Miranda Foster [Charmian], Helen Fitzgerald [Iras] and I were holed up in the monument for a long time every night during Antony’s suicide attempt. We used to sit in the dark, fantasising about our favourite supper. I said ‘mine’s lobster and champagne’. Then on the last night, the girls switched on a torch and there it was. We had to wait for Tony to do a bit of shouting so we could uncork the bottle without being heard. And then the three of us sat and ate lobster and drank a glass of champagne.”
From Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra, Dench has played a panoply of Shakespeare’s characters to critical acclaim. In the book, she opens up about the triumphs, disasters and backstage shenanigans she has experienced, as well as the secrets of her rehearsal process.
She also reveals another talent as an accomplished artist. Dench often sketches Shakespeare’s characters in the margins of scripts as she learns her lines, and in the book for the first time shares drawings and watercolours that have been her private pleasure. Bottom, depicted from behind with his ass’s head and “fair large ears”, as admired by Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is among the characters that Dench brought to life with ink and watercolour.
After playing Ophelia in Hamlet at the Old Vic more than 60 years ago, Dench established herself as one of the greatest thespians of her generation. Her roles have ranged from monarchs – including a magisterial Elizabeth I in the 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, for which she won an Oscar – to M in the Bond films. The late Sir Peter Hall, who headed the National Theatre and founded the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed her in that 1987 Antony and Cleopatra, while her many Olivier awards include her recent role as Paulina in Kenneth Branagh’s West End production of The Winter’s Tale.
Having seen an early draft of the book – to be announced on Monday and published by Penguin Michael Joseph in October – Branagh describes it as “a love letter to Shakespeare”. The book jacket features Dench’s sketch of a tree with a love letter in its branches, inspired by Orlando hanging poems on trees in As You Like It: “O Rosalind, these trees shall be my books.”
Final decisions on sketches are yet to be made, but the selection may include Ophelia, the twins from The Comedy of Errors and a bear, inspired by the most quoted of Shakespeare’s stage directions, “Exit, pursued by a bear” in Act III of The Winter’s Tale. They range from doodles in old scripts to more recent works.
The book marks the first time that Dench has opened up about every Shakespearean role she has played. She will talk about her rehearsal process, the craft of speaking in verse, and her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare’s greatest scenes.
On rehearsing, she says: “I need to be distracted and busy myself – play cards, go for a walk, swim, anything, in order to do the work. I need to leave it to my subconscious and trust that the internal engine is making adjustments and processing everything.”
Elsewhere, she says: “I believe you need to give yourself permission to fail during the performance, and to take risks. You obviously can’t vary things so much that you unseat the other actors, and you have to remain within the framework created by the director, but you must be open to new things each night. Because it’s only through failure, and trial and error, that you discover your performance. How can you learn to ride a bike without falling off? But you can only fail if you feel safe, and that stems from the director and the environment they’ve created.”
Daniel Bunyard, publishing director of Penguin Michael Joseph, discovered her “charming” sketches in collaborating on the book. Including them makes it all the more personal, he said, describing it as “one of the most heartfelt, passionate and personal books about Shakespeare”.
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent, by Judi Dench with Brendan O’Hea, will be published by Penguin Michael Joseph on 26 October, and by St Martin’s Press in the US on 23 April 2024. The authors will be on tour in Bristol, London, Salford, Chichester and Stratford-upon-Avon from 21 Oct. Tickets: www.fane.co.uk/judi-shakespeare.
