The Theatre: Play on the Road

Five Kings, Part I (adapted by Orson Welles from Shakespeare's King Richard II, Henry IV, Parts I & II, Henry V; produced by the Theatre Guild Inc.). When Richard Bentley, the greatest English classical scholar of his age, read Alexander Pope's famed translation of the Iliad, he remarked: "A very pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." In Boston last week, when Orson Welles presented the first half of his much-touted, much-trimmed version of Shakespeare's chronicle plays, certain it was that—pretty or otherwise—Welles should not call it Shakespeare.

Bold...