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Listener supported. WNYC Studios. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. A co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. You don't like me, Bond. You don't like my methods. You think I'm an accountant. A bean counter more interested in my numbers than your instincts. The thought had occurred to me. Good. Because I think you're a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War.
So, wild guess here, a lot more of us have seen Judi Dench as M, the intelligence chief who's the boss of James Bond, than anything she's done in Shakespeare, particularly in the theater. Hail King that shall be. Hail King that shall be. They met me in the day of success and I have learned by the perfectest report they have more in them than mortal knowledge. But it's in Shakespeare's plays, in the theater, that Dench made her home and her reputation.
She's played nearly all the big female roles, and she's distilled that body of knowledge and experience into a book called Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays the Rent. It's a collaboration with the actor Brendan O'Hay, and it delves into each role in each production that she's performed in. Dench has trouble with her vision, and she can't read a script anymore, but she has an enormous store of Shakespeare always at the ready. Could I ask you to recite a sonnet? I can do one for you.
Now, if you like. Sure, that would be fantastic. When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, and trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, and look upon myself and curse my fate, wishing me like to one more rich in hope, featured like him, like him with friends possessed, desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least, Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Happily I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate. For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
What a remarkable poem that is. I think that's how it goes. It's astonishing. Let's start in a way from the beginning. Do you have any memory of first hearing or seeing Shakespeare in your life? Well, yes, in my home. My father used to be able to recite the whole of the Morte d'Arthur.
And so recitation and singing and swimming and all those things were very much part of my childhood. And my brother, Geoffrey, only ever wanted to be an actor. And as a little boy...
Somebody would come to the house and eventually they would say, oh, Jeff, what are you busy doing? And he'd say, oh, a school play or something like that. And suddenly he would launch into Julius Caesar as a really small boy. I can remember it now.
for once upon a raw and dusty day, the troubled Tiber chafing with the shores, Caesar said to me, dare San Alcacias to keep in with me into this angry flood and swim to yonder point. And I could go on for a very, very long time. And it's in you like that. It's internalized like bones and blood. It was. I mean, going to school plays and seeing Shakespeare, which we all did at school,
It was just, yes, it was an organic part of the family. Very lucky for me. I hate to ask you this question, but as you look at the way modern life has developed, and I'm holding up an iPhone on Zoom to show you Exhibit A, and all the media that has come in this way, do you think that kind of life, that kind of childhood, and that kind of literary education is at all possible anymore?
I think it's possible, but maybe not probable. The barriers are too high. It's very sad, I think, for this kind of attitude towards Shakespeare is that it is a foreign language and something we don't understand. You know, he was, well, in my estimation, the greatest writer who understood about every single emotion that any of us might feel at any time.
and it's not in a language you can't understand if it's done well. Tell me about the first role that you ever had in a Shakespeare play. I think it might have been, as it was, as Titania played.
at boarding school. And do you remember anything about that performance, about that experience? I do remember about it. I wore one of my mother's old evening dresses for the party. I remember that very clearly. I'm not sure that she knew, actually, at the time. But, yes, I do remember that. And that's a play I know unbelievably well. I never dreamt that I would...
play Titania at Stratford or the first pair at the Ovik or Hermia or never dreamt that I would. I was very lucky in that at school I was taught drama by somebody who had been an actress. I learnt that it wasn't a bookish kind of thing. There's nothing to be frightened of. That's what I learnt from her.
That it is something that is accessible. And it needs to be performed in front of you to get that sense more than just reading it from the text, don't you think? I do think that. I do think. When did ambition kick in for you? At what point did your attitude toward acting, much less acting Shakespeare, cross over from something that one did in school and as a lark to something that you wanted to do as your life's work?
Well, I originally wanted to be a designer and I was taken to Stratford by my parents in 1953 to see Michael Redgrave as Lear. And the set for that was so exquisite and so minimalistic.
This was a set that was completely made the play continuous. I was training then to be a designer at York Art School. And I can remember thinking, I can't. That will never, ever be in my imagination to do a set like that. And then because Jeff, my brother, was already at Central and being an actor, I thought, I'll have a go at that.
So I went and fortunately got into Central, which is a three-year training. For American listeners, what is Central? The Central School of Speech and Drama. So I went there for three years, and at the end of the three years, we did a public show. Well, it wasn't a public show. It was a show in a West End theater that we had chosen scenes from Shakespeare to do.
And to that show was invited a representative of films, somebody I don't know, a representative from the Old Vic. And there were about seven people there, that's all. And we all came on and did our things. What was your thing? Mine was a bit of Miranda in The Tempest. And the next day I got a message saying,
to go and see Michael Bentall at the Old Vic, 21 or 22. And so suddenly the Old Vic comes calling, and Destiny comes calling. Yes, and not only that, but they cast me as Ophelia in Hamlet.
For the next season. Who was Hamlet in that production? John Neville. Oh, my God. And, yes, oh, my God, it's well, you might say, David, because all during our training, we used to go to the Vic to sit in the gods for ninepence and watch...
I mean, watch the seasons with John and Richard Burton who were in them before the Beatles. But nevertheless, that incredible thing of people going, wow, look at these two beautiful young men. You know, it was the same thing, only the Beatles kind of, you know. Overwhelmed it. Yes. But.
That's what I did. Tell me a little bit about performing Ophelia at the Old Vic as a relative beginner. Not good enough. Not good enough. That's what I have to tell you. What do you mean? Not good enough. Well, critics were very cross because, you know, the Vic at that time was the so-called National Theatre. We didn't have a National Theatre then. And they were very cross that Michael had cast somebody who is a newcomer.
I'm talking with Judi Dench, and we'll continue in a moment.
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You played, as I remember, in 1962 in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream. You played Titania. Yes. And then you played the same role 50 years later in 2010. What was it like to... For Peter Hall. With Peter Hall. So what was it like to play that very same role separated by half a century? Well, I didn't have to learn it because I remembered it.
He set it up at the beginning like a group of actors coming into a building. And then he just wanted a character who was, in a way, representative of Elizabeth I coming in and looking down on them all and then coming down and...
as it were, going to see the play. And then she suddenly sees this young man who is playing Oberon. She thinks, oh, hello, I think I might have a go at this myself. And gives Titania a nudge and said, I'll have a go at this. And that's how that evolved. What is a rehearsal process that goes well and maybe sometimes a
doesn't go so well. Peter had this, I worked with him so many times, he would stand at a lectern with the script in front of him so that you learnt about the iambic pentameter and the way the speech should be observed. But that sounds in a rather schoolmastery way. I don't mean that it was like that at all.
But he would sometimes beat out the meter, you know. It sounds slightly terrifying to have him be a kind of metronome at a lectern. Yes, but I know. And that tunes your ear. The meter of it and the line endings was something you learned about very early. Can you give me an example? Some little bit of a play where you're how to do it well and how to do it poorly?
What you've got to get is the balance of the meter, which you must observe, the iambic pentameter, which is da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da. Mm-hmm. That's all it is. Da-da, da-da, da-da, da-da. But at the same time, you can't, you must observe that, but the audience mustn't be aware that that's what's uppermost in your mind. I'll do a little bit of Titania. Mm-hmm.
She says to Oberon, these are the forgeries of jealousy, and never since the middle summer's spring met we on Hill and Dale, Forest or Mead, by Paved Fountain or by Rushy Brook, or on the beached margin to the sea, to dance our ringlets to the whistling wind, but with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. Now you can, you see, you can elide lines together, but in a way you must...
You've got to learn a way, sounding as if that is one statement, which it is, nevertheless marking the ends of the lines. Is everything else easy, relatively speaking? Is Shakespeare in Love or James Bond or...
James, there's nothing easy about James Bond. Really? Tell me. Acting a very tall girl in an office. Trying to know about things. Oh, gosh. I find all of it difficult. All of it difficult and all of it a challenge.
The thing is that Shakespeare is in verse. You don't have to think about that, though. It's fatal to let an audience go away from a play only being aware of the fact that that was in some kind of verse. But it is equally bad that they go away from the play not hearing beat of the harp. Because some of those lines there, when Valor is asked by Orsino,
And he thinks she's a boy. You know, she's masquerading as a boy. She says, my father had a daughter loved a man. As it might be, were I a woman, I should your lordship. And he said, now that is in verse. And he said, why, what's her history? And she says, a blank, my lord. She never told her love. But let concealment like a worm in the bud tell.
feed on her damask cheek she pined in thought and with a green and yellow melancholy she sat like patience on a monument smiling at grief was not this love indeed we men may say more swear more but indeed our thoughts are more than wills still we prove much in our vows but little in our love
Does that go any way to explaining, David? It does. It does. What I meant? What it doesn't explain is why then you're saying that doing James Bond or Shakespeare in Love or seemingly more modern vernacular roles, why that is so hard too or is equally hard even. Are you suggesting that it's equally hard to do that?
I, I, why I love Shakespeare so much is because I, I feel very, very, very supported by it, by the text, you know, with M. In Bond, yeah. Uh, in Bond. Um, well, I knew Bernard Lee very well, who was the original M. Mm-hmm. And I knew him very, very well. He's the person I first did my, uh, first television with. Um,
So in my mind, it's always Bernadette. So that's quite difficult. But, you know, it's all difficult. I think it's all difficult. And sometimes you never crack it at all, I think. What did you never crack? Of all your Shakespearean roles, if you look back, do you look back on any of them as in a spirit of regret or I didn't quite...
achieve what I had hoped there that yet that's why I've done a lot of them more than more than twice uh
And you get another go at something. Have you ever forgotten your lines on stage? Oh, David, have you ever forgotten? Oh, yes. More times than I could count. And what's your strategy? What do you do when that happens? Well, I knew with Shakespeare, you just put in the beats. Sir Ralph Richardson used to do it.
Say, when he played Prospero, he had, Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, and ye who on the sand with printless foot. And if he dried on one of those words, he'd say, Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, and ye who on the sand with printless foot.
foot, or chase the emigrant, and, you know, the moments pass, and you always think, did he go, not so roughly. I like that. I like that. How is it different to do Shakespeare on stage and on film? Much easier on stage, because the audience is so much part of it. The audience are there, and there, and you know if you're telling the story properly.
So it's not a matter of endurance. It's a matter of the audience presence. That's entirely it's to do with. Incredible. I never would have guessed that in a million years. Well, otherwise, I'm not going to get dressed up and go out on the stage and do it for myself. And the camera is not. I'm only going to do it for you, David. If I know you bought a seat. Right.
You know, I said, oh, my friend David's here. And then you say, I'll do it for him. And I once said, I once was feeling very kind of off color. And I said to Ian McKellen, I'm going to pretend that Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God the Father have bought three seats in the stalls and I'm going to do it for them tonight.
And he said, Judy, he said, that's absolutely terrific. I said, they'll only need one seat, he said. It's the most adorable. Judy Dench, thank you so much. Thank you, David. Very much indeed. It was a great pleasure. Dame Judy Dench. She has a new book out called Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays the Rent, written with Brendan O'Hay.
I'm David Remnick, and that's our program for today. Thank you for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Jared Paul.
This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kala Leah, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman. With guidance from Emily Botin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandra Deckett. And additional help this week from Hamza Salmi. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherena Endowment Fund.
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