Yet Shakespeare the dramatist has never been more alive than he is at this moment. He not only holds our stage; he dominates it. Never in all their long history have his plays been more often produced, more popular, more widely known or better understood than they are now.

This may seem, at first sight, to be an extravagant statement; but I put it forward as plain fact I make no claim that it is through any transcendent virtues of their own, that the leaders of our present-day stage are able to do better justice to Shakespeare than any of their predecessors. We have some admirable Shakespearean actors, it is true; but I am not suggesting that any of them out­rank the great ones of the past.

What I am suggesting is that we are the lucky generation who live at that precise point in the theatrical history when Shakespeare has been enabled to come into his own again after centuries of enforced exile. It just so happens that in our time – by which I mean the past 25 to 50 years – the mechanics of the stage have been revolutionised. The increasingly bold and imaginative use of electric light and electric power has given our stage a speed and freedom such as it has not enjoyed since the Elizabethan platform stage was put out of use by the Puritans. […continued]