ABSTRACT
That my views on Shakespearian production are in our society heterodox, I well recognize; but it seems best to state, unequivocally, that my objection to much that passes current remains deep-rooted. There is room for divergences of opinion on detail, but to certain basic Shakespearian realities our contemporary stage is, as I see it, blind. It is not that the workmanship is bad; on the contrary, one cannot but feel respect for the efficiency shown. But something, some soul-essence, some metaphysical centrality, some heart to the organism, is missing. Too often the production is all surface, all body, all pieces, like the animal in Julius Caesar in which they ‘could not find a heart within the beast’. Sometimes a very little would be needed to turn a third-rate into a first-rate effect: let that actor hold his fine position a second longer; remove that one unfortunate setting; let that particular sound-effect be correctly timed and then allowed to reverberate as it should instead of being done perfunctorily; why then, an improvement would be registered out of all proportion to the labour engaged. Our technical skill lacks guidance.
