Judi, me and Shakespeare makes three

My rent will eternally be spent on Shakespeare.

9/10

As a certified Shakespeare freak, I can confidently say this is the best book on Shakespeare I have read in ages. Judi Dench’s iconic voice rings out from every page, and with it comes her decades of experience and expertise. It is a fantastic read, for both the Shakespeare fan and the casual reader. Dench deftly delves into the intricacies of 20 of the Bard’s famous plays, as she recounts her own experiences with the roles. Triumphs and failures, Dench does it all, and you can feel her love for these roles and plays in every paragraph.

            The interview style of the book makes it very easy to ingest, and allows Dench’s wicked sense of humour to shine through. She talks not just about the plays themselves, but also her mentors, critics and friends. You can practically picture her sitting in front of you as you read her answers, and it feels almost intimate, as well as entertaining and instructive. As someone who spends most of their spare time (and money) at the theatre, it is exciting to get a glimpse behind the curtain.

            Dench tells countless stories, from the ridiculous tale of a production of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, (where the only sunny day to be had was precisely the day that the director required rain and so hired a fireman to hose them down who got so flustered by their state of undress that he dropped his hose) to the incredibly moving story of the discovery and preservation of the foundations of the Rose Theatre, the site of two of Shakespeare’s earliest plays.

Judi Dench’s ‘The Man Who Pays the Rent’ is a wonderful insight into Shakespeare and his plays, and unequivocally proves that there is something for everybody. Dench has opened my eyes to how Shakespeare has captured the full range of human emotion like nobody before or since. By the end of the book I felt as though I had completed an entire university module on Shakespeare taught by the most delightful and wisest of professors.