Something for Everyone The great wave of Shakespeariana is now
upon us. I bow to the Bard with the rest, but I hope this quatercentenary deluge is not about to make him seem the great bore which innumerable reluctantly-heeded English lessons have miracu- lously failed to turn him into. A churlish thought, perhaps, amid so much celebration. Boredom, at any rate, seems to be absent from the slap-up exhibition which Mr. Richard Buckle has or- ganised at Stratford-upon-Avon. This is a com- memorative festivity which is evidently worthy of Garrick's jubilee—and sited in much the same place on the river bank opposite the theatre. A colleague who had a preview wandered in through a side-door into a maze of murals, giant papier-mâché statues. up and down and round and through what appeared to be a tribute to the inventiveness of man. Mr. Buckle was making calm sense of this latter-day Angkor Wat. The ex- hibition re-creates the stages of Shakespeare's life, and takes one imaginatively through the complete folio, to end up in the Globe, lit in perspective, where a recording of theatrical knights and dames provides a suitable envoi. Scores of artists have contributed in almost every medium—Kokoschka, Nolan, Hockney, Jean Hugo—one might be reading a Bond Street catalogue. A likely favourite is the Tudor Cele- brities Gallery, with portraits of the full Eliza- bethan establishment. But it has something for everyone, as they say at the fairs, and what could be more suitable for Shakespeare?
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