On the BBC show “Who Do You Think You Are?” Judi discovers that she has a family connection to the play Hamlet, in which she made her theatre debut in 1957 as Ophelia. She also learns that the son of her nine times great aunt, was Tycho Brahe.

“Who Do You Think You Are?”

One of Dame Judi Dench’s ancestors probably saw a performance by Will Kemp at Elsinore, (which translates as star castle!) the castle setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

See Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are real people with genuinely Danish names.

Who feature on an engraving of Brahe published in 1586, showing him surrounded by the names and heraldic shields of his noble relations.