Artistic Success in Canada

Abstract

ANADA 'S Stratford Festival was even more successful this year than it has been in its seven previous seasons-it played longer, sold more seats, and attracted a much larger number of people. In addition, it was an artistic success. The choice of plays was intelligent, the actors (with certain formidable exceptions) competent, and the direction of two of the three plays shrewd and pointed. All three plays were from Shakespeare's early maturity as a playwright, all have good main parts, all are in simple language with a strong rhetorical beat to help the non-Shakespearian actor along with the speaking of unfamiliar verse. And though King John is not a favorite in the theatre, as are Romeo and Juliet and Midsummer Night's Dream, it is still better known than, say, Coriolanus which is one of three announced for Stratford next year. At this period of his development Shakespeare was experimenting with technique, and trying out characters and ideas which he was to return to later on. The theme of spirit and substance, merely glimpsed in the Dream, becomes the main theme of The Tempest; the twists and dishonest sanctimoniousness of diplomacy are the theme of King John, but Shakespeare is not yet firm enough in his opinions to give them the cynical rein he does later on in Troilus and Cressida; and in Romeo and Juliet the idea that the world may not always be well lost for love appears as ironic underscoring in the last act whereas in Antony and Cleopatra it has become the main theme. The characters in these relatively early plays have not the multidimensional quality that we find later in Measure for Measure, in the great tragedies or in All's Well, but they are firmly conceived, none the less, and even the minor roles are fully realizable on the stage as believable people. The director of these plays does not, therefore, have to struggle to impose a pattern by an ingenious reading of the play nor does he have to go out of his way to be different in order to interest a modern audience. He can, if he wishes, put his faith in the story line, trust his actors for the verse, deal with the virtuoso scenes as they arise and, as a result, please both the gallery and the critics. In two plays this is exactly what happened. King John, which had a shaky start, grew in stature as the season progressed until it became a clear interpretation of a play which has been unnecessarily maligned by some critics. Douglas Seale, over from England to direct it, made his king a real king in the first movement, then showed him entrapped by his own scheming in the second, and finally presented us in the third movement with a physical and moral wreck, a burden to himself as well as his country. The Bastard, a more sophisticated jingoist than some who come later (there