The “bloody awful” 1971 role Judi Dench couldn’t stand playing: “Oh my god, I loathed it”
With good reason, the general public has been conditioned to believe that Judi Dench is of the opinion that the sun shines directly out of William Shakespeare’s arse, and the playwright could do no wrong.
After all, she’s one of the most experienced and successful Shakespearean actors of her generation, if not in modern history, her association with ‘The Bard’ stretches from a 1957 production of Hamlet to a 2015 run of The Winter’s Tale, and she can still rattle off a soliloquy at the drop of a hat.
Dench would be the first person to admit that she owes her entire career to his work, but that doesn’t give him a free pass. Well, most of the time it does, but there are always exceptions to rules. In her case, it was a 1971 performance that she completely, utterly, and absolutely loathed from start to finish.
There’s something jarring about hearing her badmouth Shakespeare, if only for the fact that the decorated veteran is usually found fluttering her eyelashes in the direction of his prose. Ever the professional, Dench gritted her teeth and persevered, despite her animosity being rather palpable.
“The Merchant of fucking Venice,” the Academy Award winner raged. “Oh my god, I loathed it. I used to dread going to the theatre every night. I think it’s a horrible play. Shakespeare must’ve been having a funny turn when he wrote it.” Of course, that begs the obvious question: why did she agree to do it?
As it turned out, because Trevor Nunn talked her into it and her real-life husband, Michael Williams, was also part of the cast, with the relatively newlyweds playing Bassanio and Portia, respectively. An eternal optimist, Dench began her stint under the impression that The Merchant of Venice would eventually grow on her. “But it didn’t,” she callously added.
“I’d spend the day thinking, ‘God, I’ve got to do that bloody awful show again tonight,'” the dame confessed. “The whole thing was very below par.” The way she puts it, “very below par” is an understatement, with Dench making her disdain for not only her time spent as part The Merchant of Venice, but the play itself, abundantly clear.
Needless to say, Portia was not a role she had any interest in reprising in the future. Over the years, the star has returned in various guises for multiple runs of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and other Shakespeare plays, but The Merchant of Fucking Venice remained a one-and-done thing.
That was over 50 years ago, and the fact that she still bristles at the mention of the play she can’t stand says everything about how little regard and how much contempt she holds for it.
