Actors and Scholars: A View of Shakespeare in the Modern Theatre

Summary

Here am I presuming to adjudicate between actors and scholars, when I am not an actor and certainly no scholar. My only excuse is the old saying that “the onlooker sees most of the game”; and certainly in the last eight years and more I have been kept busy peeping at it from the touchline. For I have had the job, the very delightful job, of reporting for Shakespeare Survey on current productions. The delight lies in this, that my reporting has not had to be hurried, and I have had full time to browse. The regular critic, poor man, must telephone his notice to his paper as soon as the performance is ended—sometimes, we suspect, well before; and that is that. The Survey reporter, however, can wait to garner in not only the initial, the overall, impression of a production, but later amplifications and modifications of these first reactions. In other words he can go back and back, to see the play at different stages in its run and to concentrate in turn on particular elements in it.