It seems probable that, within the period of one year, Shakespeare wrote in order the three comedies Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. These plays got progressively better. Significantly, the strength of Much Ado lies in the characters the playwright did not get from his source: Beatrice, Benedick, Dogberry and his watch. The derived matter is still a bore.

In As You Like It, he decided to lay aside boisterous elements (such as Dogberry) and work at the problem of the swift, witty female (like Beatrice). What resulted was Rosalind, who spends much of her time, however, disguised as a boy. (But one must recall that, in Elizabethan times, such an idea was more plausible, for the interdict against women on the stage meant that female roles were played by boys anyway.) Shakespeare also tossed in court Fool (Touchstone) and misfit (Jaques)--both only partially successful.

Drawing on the experience of both plays, Shakespeare was then able to fashion a masterpiece, Twelfth Night, whose characters surpassed those in the two earlier works. Beatrice and the self-disguising Rosalind yielded the similarly self-disguising Viola; Dogberry and Co. led to Sir Toby and Co.; Jaques grew into Malvolio, and Touchstone (plus Amiens) into Feste; and so on.

If As You Like It is really a flawed and uneven exercise for Twelfth Night, it still has its own individual merits. Clearly, Shakespeare was little interested in the early court scenes; and just as clearly, the sudden and unmotivated ending, with its quadruple marriage and reported reform of the villain, comes simply because it's time for the audience to go home.

What Shakespeare did work at creating is the romantic, sunny gaeity that pervades the fairy-tale forest of Arden (which is only one phoneme away from both Eden and ardor). At Stratford, currently, the idyllic glow is enhanced by Robert O'Hearn's scenery, Tharon Musser's lighting, and some of David Amram's music.

Guest director for this American Shakespeare Festival production is Word Baker. Aurally, the result is almost consistently delightful. But Baker is evidently afraid to let the play pull its own oar; and he has done his best to scuttle the script by piling on a lot of irrelevant and irreverent stage gimmicks and by juxtaposing costumes that clash in both style and period.

The wardrobe he bade Motley create is motley indeed. Orlando spends his time in overalls (who ever heard of a fairy-tale hero's heading for the altar in overalls?). His brother Oliver wears riding habit, carries cigars, and flourishes a cigarette lighter. The usurping Duke Frederick is decked out entirely in white, except for a diplomat's baldric-like red sash, and, with his beard, is a double for Peter Ustinov. For him Baker has invented (taking a cue from Violenta in All's Well?) a silent female companion who slinks about in a black gown and ling cigarette-holder, a refugee from a Charles Addams cartoon. The Duke's wrestler sports a checkered jacket and straw hat. Le Beau, complete with pseudo-French accent, wears white shoes and a monocle, a tie pin and boutonniere. the first lord is in a batik-jacketed tuxedo, and wears a black eye-patch out of a Hathaway shirt ad. And Touchstone has a patchwork jacket and pink shirt.

In the Forest

In the forest, the banished Duke wears rimless spectacles and lets his shirt hang out all the time. Jaques is in sandals. Sir Oliver Martext, garbed as a Victorian vicar, periodically bicycles on and off stage blowing a hideous horn. Rosalind, in disguise, sports a hunter's red cap; while her companion Celia appears with a white boa, hatbox, and birdcage, and even paints her eyelashes using a pool for a mirror.

At one point, Baker has some set-pieces carried on backwards "by mistake" so that the audience can read the stagehands' identifying labels on the reverse before they are coyly righted. And at the final wedding in the heart of the forest, the group is immortalized a photographer with a camera and appears out of nowhere to snap picture.

One scene is accompanied by an din on rival Fibber McGee's , the percussion including drums, cymbals, xylophone, woodblocks, ratchet, and everything but the kitchen . But Amram's songs are fine, including one that he had turned into 9 three-voice canzonet.

Baker is fond of having his performers constantly moving around the stage in circles, as though all his previous experience had been in arena theatre. On the whole, his contributions are so distracting that it is hard to keep one's mind on the play.

Still, there are two over-riding reason for visiting this production. One is the wholly captivating portrayal of the Jove smitten Orlando by Donald Harron. A Critic should be wary of the work "perfect"; but, at the performance I attended, Harron had nary a flaw, and no other word will suffice. the second reason is the attractive young lady named Carrie Nye. As Celia, she is an unflaggingly buoyant and zestful confidante to her mistress Rosalind, and her words fall on the car.

Kim Hunter's Rosalind marks her Shakespearean debut, and is a remarkably good first try even though not likely to be long remembered. Her voice is a bit edgy and narrow in range, but the role's spirit is there. And she handles the solo epilogue most appealingly.

Rosalind is of course of heroine of the play. Yet in this production she comes off second-best to her companion Celia. Ideally, the Misses Hunter and Nye ought to exchange parts; and this would put the play into better balance.

Hiram Sherman is a colloquially humorous Touchstone; and Alek Primrose makes a memorable character of the octogenarian servant Adam. Donald Davis has effective moments as Jaques, but his famous "seven ages" speech is not yet acidulous enough and he often substitutes h's for r's in words like "part." Will Geer brings warmth and