It was “Macbeth” that drew Judi Dench to the theater, after she overheard her older brother in a school production  recite the line from the play: “What bloody man is that?” and she thought: “My God – swearing! If this is Shakespeare, this is for me.”

That cheeky attitude has persisted throughout her career as one of Great Britain’s greatest living actors, judging from “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays The Rent” (St. Martin’s Press, 391 pages.) The title is an inside joke she shared with her late husband, Michael Williams, when they both were members of the Royal Shakespeare Company. But there is a reverence for the Bard, as well as a nearly unmatched expertise in his work, which is manifest in these lively conversations between Dame Judith and her longtime friend, actor and director Brendan O’Hea, conducted over four years, and originally intended as recordings for the archive at the Globe Theatre.

It’s an unusual and delightful book, a kind of hybrid of memoir, critical analysis, sturdy reference work, loose textbook on acting, and a random collection of the wit and wisdom of a smart woman with a dry and bawdy sense of humor. (“Tit, Bot and the Fs” is how she refers to the characters in “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” adding “I don’t think that’s in the Folio.”)  It even includes some of her watercolor sketches of Shakespeare’s characters (She is said to have a photographic memory of the sets and costumes of every production in which she performed.) The book takes us through six decades of Dame Judith’s Shakespearean roles, from her first professional gig as Ophelia in “Hamlet” at the age of 22 in 1957 (“I was terrified. Absolutely petrified”) to Paulina in “The Winter’s Tale at the age of 81 in 2015. (“I haven’t finished learning”)

In each of the individual chapters dedicated to twenty of Shakespeare’s plays, O’Hea and Dench walk us through highlights of the plot, selecting a choice line of dialogue, with Dench analyzing the characters who speak it, explaining what Shakespeare accomplishes with it, pointing to the cleverness of his language,  reminiscing about how a director worked with her on it (from Peter Brook and Peter Hall to Kenneth Branagh),  and more often than not offering a humorous anecdote or joke connected to it. Interspersed with the chapters on the plays are more general ones, on her reminiscences on life at Stratford-Upon-Avon, and her take on such topics as (to cite some chapter titles) Failure, Rehearsal, Critics, Shakespeare’s Language, Audience. 

“Acting is a three-way conversation between you, the other actors and the audience.” 

“There’s no right way of performing Shakespeare. And that’s why the plays are still being done.”