ll I ever wanted to do was play Shakespeare, nothing else. It was a kind of zenith for me,” says, discussing her first professional role straight out of drama school in 1957. Despite the book’s jokily disparaging subtitle – “the man who pays the rent” is how Dench and her late husband,Michael Williams, used to refer to the Bard when they both worked for the Royal Shakespeare Company during the 1970s – her passion for Shakespeare shines through every conversation reproduced here.
Over the course of her seven-decade career, Dench, now 88, has played most of Shakespeare’s major female roles on stage, from her 1957 Ophelia to her 2015 stage run as Paulina inat the age of 81, in addition to memorable performances for film and radio.