For 17 years, Washington's $12 million Folger Shakespeare Librarythe world's besthas sat in the shadow of the Library of Congress, attracting sightseers and scholars. Last week its custodians broke the hush of the folios and the quartos by giving Shakespeare a production.
Drama-starved Washingtonians approved; for the past eight months, the Negro-exclusion issue has left the capital without a professional theater (TIME, Aug. 9). Into the library's finely detailed, 270-seat reproduction of a roofless, balcony-ringed Elizabethan playhouse (which had housed many a learned lecture, but never a play), ticket holders crowded for seven sold-out performances of Julius Caesar. Television cameras moved in...