DAME JUDI DENCH was so impressed by the set of her latest film, Shakespeare in Love, that she kept it.The actress said yesterday that she found the authenticity of the three-storey replica of the Elizabethan Rose Theatre so exquisite and extraordinary that she urged David Parfitt, the producer: "It mustn't be pulled down."
If it had been wobbly, like a set, she said, she would not have wanted it. But this was the real thing - carved in oak and topped with a thatched roof. "It took my breath away when I saw it." She would like the 60ft wide construction, designed by Martin Childs, to be used as a permanent stage on which drama students could learn their trade.
After shooting, it usually proves more profitable to dispose of something as large as a film set than to try to sell it. "A lot of the time, it ends up in skips," Mr Parfitt said.
More portable film props are now being saved for posterity, however. Film companies such as Miramax and Sony have begun keeping objects for their archives.
But the Rose reconstruction was too large for any archive and is in more than a thousand pieces in a storeroom outside London. "I can't go on storing it," Dame Judi, who plays Elizabeth I in the film, said. "I want it to be used."
Warwick University - near Shakespeare's birthplace - is among those interested in owning it. Dame Judi suggested that profits from productions could go towards paying drama students' fees. Every week she receives between eight and ten letters from students begging for financial help to keep them in drama school.
Mr Childs's other movies have included the Oscar-nominated Mrs Brown, which also starred Dame Judi, as Queen Victoria.
He created his version of the Rose Theatre to hold the required number of actors, extras and technicians and was taken aback to discover that the dimensions of the original Rose matched his figures.
If Dame Judi had not wanted the set, the film company would probably have sold the timber. Although oak is valuable, it would have been little more than scrap, as it had been painted, distressed and cut. But why had the company gone to the lengths of recreating the theatre with original materials and techniques? "Faking it would have taken longer," Mr Parfitt said.
He did consider filming in the Globe, the reconstructed Shakespearean theatre on Bankside, but decided it looked too new and perfect. The film company wanted a theatre that looked dirty and used.