The New Yorker Radio Hour - Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Probably far more people have now seen Judi Dench as M—the intelligence chief who’s the boss of James Bond—than anything she’s done in Shakespeare.  With that unmistakably rich voice, she played royalty in “Mrs. Brown” and in “Shakespeare in Love.”  But it is in Shakespeare’s plays, onstage, that Dench made her home as an actor, performing nearly all the major female roles in a stage career of some 60 years.  It’s not just that the language is beautiful, she thinks; Shakespeare “understood about every single emotion that any of us might feel at any time.”  Dench has distilled that body of knowledge into a book called “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent,” a collaboration with the actor Brendan O’Hea that delves into each role in each production she performed in.  Having trained as a stage designer, Dench decided to “have a go” at acting, and made her début at a young age as Ophelia at one of the most prestigious theatres in Britain.  She talks with David Remnick about what’s hard—and not hard—in performing Shakespeare, and why she considers M in James Bond just as challenging.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

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 and 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 Judy Denge 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've 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 life, 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 Mort 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, dares that now Cassius, he'd be in with me into this angry flood and swim to yonder point. And I could go on for a very, very old 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 wake, 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. toward 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 at boarding school. And do you remember anything about that performance, about that experience? I do. I do remember about it. I wore one of my mother's old evening dresses for the part. 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. know unbelievably well, and 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 learned 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 minimal. 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 years 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 theatre 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 OVick. and there were about seven people there, that's all, and we all came on and did our things. What was your thing? And mine was a bit of Miranda in The Tempest. And the next day, I got a message 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 aphelia in Hamlet for the next season. Who was Hamlet in that production? John Neville. Oh, my God. And yes, oh my God, you 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 Vick 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 Judy Dench, and we'll continue in a moment. You played, as I remember, in 1962, in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream, You played Tatania.

And then you played the same role 50 years later in 2010. What was it like to... 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... 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 it 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. 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, so 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-da-da. That's all it is, 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 what's uppermost in your mind. I'll do a little bit of Titania. 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 Rushiebrook, or on the beeched 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 other things that you do? James, there's nothing easy about James, Really? Tell me. Acting a very tall girl in an office. Trying to know about things. Oh gosh.

I find all a bit difficult, all a bit difficult and all a bit of 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 that beat of the heart. Because some of those lines there,

Guantvala is asked by Orsino, and he thinks she's a bore. 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's, 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 of the bud feed on her damage. cheek. She pined in thought, and with the 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 will, 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 it's equally hard to do that?

Why I love Shakespeare so much is because I feel very, very. very, very supported by it, by the text. You know, with M. In Bond, yeah. In Bond, well, I knew Bernard Lee very well, who was the original M. And I knew him very, very well.

He's the person I first did my first television with. So in my mind, it's always Bernard Lee. 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's why I've done a lot of them more than twice. And you get another go at something. Have you ever forgotten your lines on stage? Oh, oh, David. Have you ever forgotten? Oh, yes.

And more times than I can. 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, and he had yells 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 foot would chase the ebbling net and you know the moments past and you always think did he go bub not so rough 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 are 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 is... 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 nobody do it for myself.

Well, you do. And the camera is not a... I'm only going to do it for you, David. If I know you bought a seat, 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 whole, 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 said, that's absolutely terrific. I do 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 Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Alicia Zuckerman.

With guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Parrish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccat. And additional help this week from Hamza Salmi.

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