Shakespeare: The man Who Pays the Rent

 Shakespeare: The man Who Pays the Rent by Dame Judi Dench with Brendon O'Hea  373 pp.

I wish this book had been around when I was reading Shakespeare in school. This is not your boring, literary tome. Dame Judi recalls her abundant career performing in 19 different plays of the Bard, some more than once as different characters. Her insights into the plays are extensive as are her takes on the different actors and directors she worked with. Of course, interspersed are anecdotes about problems, mistakes, and amusing occurrences in the plays themselves. She is honest about mishaps like tripping over her skirts, forgetting her skirt, drying up on her lines (rarely), unplanned and uncontrollable laughter at wrong moments. The book uses a question & answer format during most of it, with Brendon O'Hea asking the questions to spark Dame Judi's memories and commentaries but the lion's share is clearly her thoughts. Occasionally they disagree on aspects of the plays and have small debates. I listened to the audiobook which is performed by Barbara Flynn, Brendan O'Hea, and Judi Dench. Flynn sounds remarkably like Dench and Dame Judi mainly reads various quotations from the plays. I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I would.     

William Shakespeare's King Lear

 

William Shakespeare's King Lear: a Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds 128 pp.

This graphic novel format of the play King Lear is somewhat difficult to read, not because it is Shakespeare, but because of the flowery lettering used for the dialogue. I have to admit I was underwhelmed at first by the difficult to read text and the artwork but it eventually grew on me. It helped that I had seen two excellent film versions of the play in 2018: The National Theatre Live production with Sir Ian McKellen as Lear and another 2018 production with Sir Anthony Hopkins in the title role. Without that familiarity with the story I believe this version is hard to follow although the notes in the back helps to clear up confusion. Not a bad version but it leaves out much of the play.