STRATFORD, Conn.--One of the world's great studies of what it takes to be a first-rate ruler is Shakespeare's set of four plays comprising Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V. The dramatist here presents and analyses the many reasons for the failure of the first two monarchs and the triumphant success of the third.

In the past few years the American Shakespeare Festival has presented the first, second, and fourth play in the tetralogy. This year it has opened its twelfth season by turning to the third and least often performed. But, despite the highly commendable Falstaff of Jerome Kilty, the gap is not really being filled: there is too much directorial and thespian ineptitude surrounding the fat knight.

A hint of trouble came with the announcement that director Joseph Anthony had retitled the play Falstaff. Now it is true that in Shakespeare's own lifetime the play was occasionally thus designated. And it is just as true that Falstaff is indeed the work's foremost figure. By this criterion we ought to turn Julius Caesar into Brutus, Cymbeline into Imogen, and The Merchant of Venice into Shylock.

Not a Rewrite

If it were mere silliness on Anthony's part, he could be forgiven. But it is misunderstanding and distortion, and that cannot be condoned. He has failed to realize that 2 Henry IV is not an isolated work, but a segment of a carefully wrought continuum. Admittedly, he is not alone. A number of Shakespearean scholars who ought to know better maintain that 2 Henry IV is just a rewrite of 1 Henry IV. The names of the characters do remain the same, but the people themselves undergo change -- and the later play is permeated with physical and spiritual disease. Shakespeare was not writing the usual Hollywood sequel.

Part Two of Henry IV is the fourth-longest play in the canon. Anthony decided on a running time of two-and-a-half hours, and did a good deal of cutting. A sizeable number of characters have been eliminated entirely. Anthony has cut the epilogue, and altered the ending a bit to leave the banished Falstaff all alone repeating over and over to himself, "I shall be sent for tonight . . . tonight . . . tonight."

This conclusion by itself would at least be defensible. But some of the pruning was done in order to insert some of the preceding play, notably the scene (II, iv) where Falstaff and Prince Hal take turns impersonating the king. This is a wonderful scene, but belongs where it was written. Anthony has ruined Shakespeare's line of development.

In 1 Henry IV, Falstaff and Hal spend a lot of time carousing and frolicking together. In the present play, the dramatist has very carefully decreased Hal's participation in the comic scenes in order to prepare the prince -- and us -- for Hal's eventual and necessary rejection of Falstaff and the world of wantonness and waste he represents. Anthony has missed this point completely. What the Bard hath put asunder, let no man join together.

No Newcomer

The current Falstaff, Jerome Kilty, is new to the Festival stage this season. But he is no newcomer to the role. Though still a relatively young man, he has been playing Falstaff off and on for close to twenty years. Even as a Harvard sophomore (see photo) he was highly acclaimed for his portrayal, and W.H. Auden was not the only one to rate it the finest he had even seen.

Kilty brings an extraordinary intelligence to the role and he has long since solved most of its problems. Visually he is just right. The Falstaff of Part Two is older and sicker than the Falstaff of Part One; and Kilty now quite properly brings a touch of the has-been to his portrayal, whether intentionally or not. Shakespeare allowed no flagging of the wits, however; and Falstaff remains, in Farjeon's words, "a mind of mercury in a body of lead."

The way Kilty trills his r's with relish and reluctantly relinquishes his final sibilants shows us how much Falstaff loves the sound of his own voice. But, being old and fat and short of breath, he must speak in spurts. Time and again Kilty will seem to end a sentence, make to move, and then turn back as though to add an afterthought. This is Falstaff exactly, one who loves to spout a comment and then vary it, amend it, augment it, or top it -- and one who, as Milton said of Belial, "could make the worse appear/The better reason, to perplex and dash/Maturest counsels."

(I was surprised, however, to hear Kilty make one error in the celebrated pacan to sherris-sack. He pronounced the word forgetive with a hard g and the accent on the second syllable, as though it meant "forgetful;" a cognate of forge, it means "inventive" and should of course have a soft g and first-syllable accent.)

Kilty is marvelous at conveying Falstaff's weight; and when he drops his walking stick in the first tavern scene, he has trouble picking it up -- with hilarious effect. This stick, by the way, is his chief prop -- a little too short, and comically bent. It looks all the funnier when juxtaposed with the long straight staff carried by the prim and proper Chief Justice (Alexander Clark). When Kilty tries to use his stick as a sword, the result is worthy of W.C. Fields' famous attempt to play pool with a crooked cue. In the

(Ed. Note: Henry IV, Part Two will run in repertory with Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, and T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral through September 11. Reviews of the Festival's other three productions will appear in the next issues. The drive to the picturesque Stratford grounds by the Housatonic takes under three hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike, the Route 91 bypass and either Exit 53 from the Merritt Parkway or Exit 32 from the Connecticut Turnpike. Performances tend to begin promptly at the designated hour. There are free outdoor facilities for picnickers.) final scene, when Falstaff appears with a saffron cloth tied on his stick to hail and cheer the prince-becomeking, only to be banished in return by the just-crowned Henry V, Kilty's facial expression and slow lowering of the stick and hands are deeply touching.

I have to say that, at the opening performance, the physical largeness and roundness of Falstaff were fully conveyed but his largeness and roundness of personality were not entirely captured. Memory may be playing me false, but I have the impression that Kilty did manage to embody the latter completely in past years. Nonetheless, of all those who currently have the role in their repertories, Jerome Kilty and Eric Berry are pre-eminent.

Hopes Are Dashed

With the brilliant Hotspur dead, the scenes of military rebellion can't begin to match those of 1 Henry IV, but they need not be such a trial as they are in this production. Northumberland (Stephen Pearlman) comes on looking like Basil Rathbone, but our hopes are dashed when that hoarse, ugly voice begins to speak, And so it goes with the rest, whom I shall not bother to name. The sole exception is David Little's Lancaster, which has youth, vigor and vocal clarity; he brings much-needed life to the scenes he is in.

The ailing Henry IV (Joseph Sommer) first enters clothed in rich blue, accompanied by monks singing a Kyrie (sloppily). He kneels at a priodieu and delivers his great Sleep soliloquy competently enough to make us look forward to his scene with Prince Hal. When that comes, Hal (John Cunningham) takes the hand of the sleeping king and kisses it -- a good touch. But then the director has turned the confrontation into a screaming nightmare. The king, who will be dead in a few minutes, gets out of bed, yells and lurches about like a Hercules; and Hal responds with a torrent of extreme anger that is utterly out of place.

At the Boar's-Head Tavern, Mistress Quickly (Jan Miner), in an orange and yellow-green costume, sports an appropriately fiery head of red hair, but is otherwise forgettable. The tart-tongued tart Doll Tearsheet (Alix Elias), dark-haired and rouge-cheeked, has only her low neckline to recommend her; the monotonous and whining voice with which she delivers all her lines is painful beyond belief.

Puns and Bawdry

Douglas Watson is right to ham up the part of Pistol, since it was written as a satire on the bombastic acting style of a rival theatre troupe from which Shakespeare had seceded. Watson's gestures often clarify the bawdy puns; and, after striding a barrel as though it were a horse, he engages in a duel so vigorously that he discovers at the end that his groin flap has fallen down.

Young Alan Howard is appealing as Falstaff's page, especially when he vainly tries to conceal his master behind his tiny slip of a body. Paul Sparer brings a comically expressive face and drawn-out speech ("Jee-ee-su [long pause], dead!") to the senile Justice Shallow, but Patrick Hines overdoes his trembling and doddering companion Justice Silence.

Ed Wittstein has designed sets based on four vertical beams that function as an elevator shaft for a rising and falling structure, with two other second-storey platforms that roll in from the sides. These make some of the entrances and exits needlessly awkward. Domingo Rodriguez' costumes are, some details aside, generally apposite, and Tharon Musser's lighting is somewhat too active. John Duffy's opening A-minor music for brass, cymbals and kettledrums smacks too much of a Near East movie spectacular, but the later rustic music, in the traditional rustic key of F-major, is much better. When a lutenist appears on stage, though, we hear a harp; couldn't it at least be a guitar?

What we have, in sum, is a director who is trying to put on a show called Falstaff, a star who is playing in a different work (the one actually written by Shakespeare), and a surrounding cast that is deficient for either. We deserve better