Book Review: Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea (St. Martin’s Press, 2024).
Audiobook read by Barbara Flynn and the authors.

Some people will tell you that it’s boring to read about happy lives. Never listen to those people. Happy lives can be some of the most enjoyable and interesting to read about, as Dame Judi Dench demonstrates in her new book, co-written (in a question-and-answer format) with her friend and fellow actor Brendan O’Hea.

Of course, as the title makes clear, this isn’t meant to be a book about Dench’s life, but a book about Shakespeare. Over the course of four years, O’Hea interviewed Dench about the many Shakespearean roles she’s played in her celebrated career. But her thoughtful responses are colored by her vivid personality and wicked wit. Shakespeare—whom Judi and her husband, the late actor Michael Williams, dubbed “the man who pays the rent” when they were both acting with the Royal Shakespeare Company—has been so much a part of her life that she can’t talk about him without opening up her world to us.

And what a world it is. Dench’s reminiscences of her Shakespearean career are full of laughter and tears—mainly laughter. She does take her work very seriously and approaches it with iron discipline (she once skipped an Oscar ceremony because she was appearing in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and one can’t just “skive off to Hollywood for a jolly” and leave one’s fellow actors in the lurch). But she also gets a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of it.

She has wonderful memories of performing in The Comedy of Errors with her husband, who brought their little girl onstage for the curtain call; of nearly going onstage without her skirt in The Winter’s Tale and sending co-star Kenneth Branagh into fits of laughter; of sneezing while playing Juliet lying unconscious in the tomb (“and my Romeo, John Stride, had to throw himself on top of me and pass it off as some fit of hysteria”). She has thoughts to share on every actor from John Gielgud to Miss Piggy, and admiration for nearly all of them.

Not everything has been fun and games—there are sad and painful memories, too—but Dench clearly cherishes both the great plays she’s had the opportunity to appear in, and the great relationships she’s formed along the way. Her friendship with O’Hea, in particular, adds both warmth and spice to the book. He teases her about her cooking and her driving; she snaps “Don’t be ridiculous!” at him whenever she considers a question nonsensical. (He somewhat cheekily informs us that they’ve had to edit out several of her swear words.)

While Dench is incredibly insightful on Shakespeare’s writing and the characters he created, her approach to the plays is ultimately a very practical one. She loves being part of a company creating something for an audience, part of something bigger than herself. The actor, she believes, is there to serve the work; follow the writing, concentrate on telling the story, and Shakespeare will do the rest. While she’s happy to discuss all sorts of nuances and details of the plays and characters, she always comes back to the perspective of an actor trying to convey something onstage. “You can’t act a theme,” she reprimands O’Hea when she thinks he’s getting a little too academic in his analysis of Measure for Measure.

Above all, the conversation is permeated by her deep gratitude for this extraordinary career. “How lucky we all are to have done any of it,” she exclaims at one point, summing up her whole attitude. “We’re custodians of the language. Just for a little while.” She leaves us in no doubt that this is a splendid thing to be.

Whether you get the print book or the audiobook, you get a bonus. In the print version (and the e-version), you get Dame Judi’s own illustrations of the various characters she’s played—simple sketches, but well drawn. If you go with the audiobook, as I did, you get to hear a bit of Dame Judi herself.

Presumably because Dench’s 89-year-old voice is now somewhat shaky and unclear, actress Barbara Flynn (who sounds remarkably like Dench) reads her part in the audiobook, but Dench appears now and then to quote some lines of Shakespeare, and at the very end Dench and O’Hea do some extra chatting together. So whichever version of the book you choose—and honestly, I’ve rarely come across a book that makes so strong a case for getting both—you’re in for a special treat.

(Cover image copyright St. Martin’s Press.)

Book Links:

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent on Amazon
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent on Bookshop
Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent on Audible

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