THE STAGE (See Cover)
In a frenzy of transcendental hyperbole, Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: "In climes beyond the solar road, this planet is probably not called Earth, but Shakespeare." Even a simple solar observer could supply Emerson with startling evidence this summer that all the world is, or shortly will be, a Shakespearean stage.
In Scotland, a third witch cackles at NBC's color cameras as TV prop men bring Birnam Wood—root, leaf and branch—to Dunsinane. Along the brooding battlements of Yugoslavia's 12th century Lovrijenac fortress, the ghost of Hamlet's father spurs his son's revenge; deep in Russia, at Tashkent, the jealous Moor strangles the blameless Desdemona. A marble shard's throw from the Parthenon of Sophocles and Euripides, a Greek Shylock pleads, "Hath not a Jew eyes?" —while halfway round the world, black-jeaned Australian troupers tour the outback by bus, with a crown and a sword or two as their props.
The deaf-mute students of Washington, D.C.'s tiny Gallaudet College last year mimed Othello in sign language. Next year tribesmen in Southern Rhodesia will play Macbeth costumed as Zulu warriors in animal tails and feathers. As for his native England, the playwright's blessed plot resounds with Shakespeare, from the Old Vic to Regents Park, where the lyrics of The Tempest boom through stereophonic loudspeakers suspended from the trees.
The Three Shrines. Nine U.S. festivals are tuning up or have already launched their programs. Of the plays done on college campuses last year, Shakespeare topped the list. Actor Arnold Moss, who won raves for his magical Prospero some seasons back, has completed a 7,000-mile barnstorming tour of eleven states with his Shakespeare Festival Players. No breath of Shakespeare stirs at the moment on Broadway, but off-Broadway's Phoenix Theater has just concluded an excellent revival of Henry IV, Parts I and II. John Gielgud's Ages of Man recording, patterned on his brilliant stage readings of last season, has sold 30,000 copies. Macbeth is being taped for NBC.
In the theaters, tents and schoolrooms of every land, wherever the sun sets and curtains rise, Falstaff struts with his gorbellied wit, Bottom bumbles through the woods, and wide-eyed Ophelia trembles before Hamlet's abuse. Malvolio preens like a toad in yellow stockings. Hotspur wells blood. In soliloquy and song, in bantering bawdry and scalp-tingling rhetoric, in the kingliest English and in tender or rough translation, they speak to man from mankind's heart. Never in the nearly 400 years since their creator was born have Shakespeare's characters spoken to so many, or meant so much. Nowhere do they mean more than at the three Stratfords—in England, Canada and the U.S.
¶ Stratford-upon-Avon, at the age of 80, is not only the oldest continuing Shakespeare stage, but also a shijne and an industry. A quarter-million tourists a year, 25,000 from the U.S., pour into this medieval town in the green-girt Cotswolds to poke curiously through Anne Hathaway's neighboring cottage and peer reverently at Shakespeare's crypt in Holy Trinity Church. The red brick Stratford Memo rial Theater receives 1,000,000 ticket requests annually, is forced to turn down four out of five. The lucky ducat holders this year will pay $500,000 to sit on three sides of a