The only William Shakespeare play Judi Dench hates with a passion: “I think it is terrible”
Every successful British actor of a certain generation got their start performing the works of William Shakespeare on stage, so it’s not as if Judi Dench carrying a torch for the bard is anything out of the ordinary for a performer with her background.
She takes it more seriously than most of her peers, though, considering she literally wrote the book on Shakespeare and called it The Man Who Pays the Rent. The diminutive legend knows she wouldn’t have a career without him, but that doesn’t mean she sees him as completely beyond reproach.
Dench’s first major acting role? Playing Ophelia in a 1957 production of Hamlet. Her first major leading role? Playing the secondary title character in a 1960 run of Romeo and Juliet. What did she win her Academy Award for? Shakespeare in Love. Her first Olivier Award? Macbeth. Needless to say, it’s a performative love affair that shows no signs of ending.
While she’s outlined that she won’t come running every time Shakespeare calls, although playing the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet is about the only role where she draws the line, Dench is so well-versed, immersed, and knowledgeable about his abundant plays that she figured out pretty early on that one of them wasn’t to her liking. In fact, she used some very harsh words to describe The Merchant of Venice.
“I loathe the play,” she said. “I think it is terrible; everyone behaves frightfully badly. Who cares about anybody in it?” Does that mean that due to her distaste for the source material, she’s made a point of avoiding Venetian dramatic comedy at all costs? Of course not, this is Dame Judi Dench we’re talking about.
However, once was clearly enough, with the awards-laden legend’s solitary flirtation with The Merchant of Venice coming way back in 1971 when she played Portia. It was likely done through gritted teeth, seeing as she added an extra word to the title in an interview with The Times when she refused to hide her distaste for the play by calling it “The Merchant of Fucking Venice,” which probably wasn’t how it was advertised to lure punters into Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Such is her distaste for the prose that Dench, of all people, accidentally dropped a penis joke into one of her performances, something she still found hilarious half a century after it happened. Instead of saying, “To stay you from election” to prevent Bassanio from picking out a casket, she said, “To stay you from erection,” which must have elicited a titter or two from the audience.
The only major theatrical adaptation of The Merchant of Venice came in 2004 when writer and director Michael Radford cast Al Pacino in a generally well-received movie. The ensemble featured several notable Shakespearian veterans, but it’s unlikely that Dench was extended an offer when she’d be more inclined to tell the filmmaker to piss off than put herself through the story she called “the one I liked the least.”
Dench barely has a bad word to say about Shakespeare, but there are always exceptions to the rules.
