The Theater: Shakespeare Outfoxed

Shakespearean Actor Donald Wolfit, whose wares are popular in the English provinces (TIME, March 3), had no luck selling Hamlet, King Lear and As You Like It to Broadway critics, and only fair luck selling The Merchant of Venice. But last week when he fished up Ben Jonson's Volpone (rhymes with macaroni), a play that modern Broadway had never seen as Jonson wrote it,* the crowd— or, at any rate, the critics—made an excited grab for it.

They were not being capricious. Not only is Volpone Wolfit's liveliest production, and Volpone his lustiest role, but the play itself is one of the...

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