The role of Hotspur is in the hands and, alas, the voice--of Christopher Walken, winner of an Academy Award for The Deer Hunter. He has done a lot of Shakespeare in the past, though one would never guess it from his current performance. His regional American accent is all too prominent. His line-readings often make no sense. There are guttural sounds, snarls, nasalities, and a tendency to make every third line a climax. He seems to operate on a well-known theory; when in doubt, shout. There are better ways to convey pride, strength, and fearlessness. All this is regrettable, for Hotspur is penned as a virtuoso of language. I kept getting the impression that Walken was rehearsing for Stanley Kowalski and repeatedly wandered onto the wrong set. (The AST's 1962 mounting of this play had similar problems with a Hotspur played by Hal Holbrook.)

The best surprise of the production is Prince Hal, originally to have been played by Richard Thomas, who withdrew to work on a television film. His successor is Chris Sarandon, whose Hal turns out to be just splendid. I had seen him on stage and screen in modern parts, but nothing prepared me for the admirably trained classical actor he proves to be. Sarandon is now 40, but he has no trouble convincing us that he is a young man half his age, right down to the way he lolls on a bench He speaks clearly, clearly, and musically-and he knows what he is saying.

Reports of the historical Hal's fun-loving and riotous youth date from his own time. But Shakespeare gives him just one self-revelatory soliloquy in which Hal claims that his carousing is essentially an act and that he knows full well what will be expected of him as a mature ruler. The notion that he is a pretender as well as the Pretender has upset many critics (Quiller-Couch went so far as to brand the speech Shakespeare's "most damnable piece of workmanship"). But it can make sense of one perceives that there are two Hals. Good OF Hal, and the Prince (it is instructive to compare the off stage and on-stage Mozart).

Sarandon delivers this speech with serious intensity, and makes one believe that he is indeed a kind of proto-Hamlet, putting on a show and maintaining a measure of inner detachment Quite consistently, he retrains from displaying as much love for Falstaff as Falstaff shows to him. And Sarandon's facial expression on finding the "dead" Falstaff alive after all is absolutely wondrous.

Quite shrewdly, Shakespeare brings Hotspur and Hal together only for the climatic personal duel at the play's end Here director Coe has made a serious mistake He bade his fight master. B H Barry, to stage the combat so that Hotspur repeatedly gains the advantage and could dispatch the Prince, but repeatedly chooses through sheer bravado to spare Hal and permit him to rearm Hal's combative skill is thus cheapened, and his eventual victory is made hollow, the result of mere chance. (It is, by the way, not known who slew the historical Hotspur.)

Still, Coe's epilogue is affecting, with Hal all alone, facing front. He plants his sword firmly in the ground, makes the sign of the cross, picks up his weapon, and determinedly and sedately walks off upstage--a man who-unlike his father, has learned from intentionally mixing with all strata of society and is well along in the process of equipping himself for his destiny as the model hero-king, Henry V.

Then of course there are Falstaff and his companions, whom Shakespeare put in the play not for comic relief but as a parallel to, and a commentary on, the main-history plot. In Shakespeare's lifetime, Falstaff was spoken of more than any other character, and the work circulated in a half dozen editions, always with a reference to the "humorous conceits" of Falstaff in the subtitle. Since then the role has been written about more than any other except Hamlet, and so tempting has it been for players that even women have acted the part professionally.

Falstaff is generally regarded the greatest comic figure in English literature, and more will agree with Orson Welles that it is "the best role that Shakespeare ever wrote" than will share Bernard Shaw's narrow view of the man as "a besotted and disgusting old wretch." We find in him features drawn from the miles gloriosus of ancient Roman comedy, from the stage Vice, Devil, Fool, and Lord of Misrule, from Rabelais and Heaven knows what else-all heightened through Shakespeare's astonishing inventiveness into something far greater than the sum of his parts.

The Cambridge community has over the years been treated to some remarkable Falstaffs. Jerome Kilty was an amazing Falstaff already as a Harvard student; and he has often done the role since, even (in the 1966 2 Henry IV) on the AST's own stage. One recalls fondly the portrayal by the late Harvard professor Daniel Seltzer, and the touring 1960 traversal by Eric Berry. Building on his experience, Barry went on to achieve in the AST's 1962 production of I Henry IV an embodiment that was in every way stupendous.

This time around, the AST has the services of that wonderful actor Roy Dotrice, whose portrayal of the aging John Aubrey in Brief Lives has, on four occasions, been a peak in my play going experience. If not yet in a class with Kilty and Berry, Dotrice's Falstaff (his first, I believe) is stunning all the same. He is quite at home in Falstaff's language-whether parodistic, satiric, prevaricatory, or just witty-and has amassed a line repertory of gestures and other movements to go with it.

He captures Falstaff's deep love for Hal, a love that is nothing less than paternal (for Falstaff is as much Hal's father as is King Henry); he is quick to tousle the youth's hair or put his arm around Hal's shoulders And he makes "If to be old and merry be a sin" as touching as Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes" Chalk up another triumph for the doting Dotrice.

The lesser roles are in general better handled than in Coe's Othello last summer. Eight of the players assume two roles apiece (the practice of doubling was of course standard in Shakespeare's day) Edward Atienza is particularly laudable as a cleanly spoken Worcester, though he overacts the Welsh rebel Glendower (who has parody built into him and does not need any more superimposed). And Karen Stott gives pleasure through Lady Mortimer's prescribed song (with a real on-stage harp accompaniment by Sophie Gilmartin), though her Doll Tearsheet, as I indicated, belongs in the sequent play, which I wish Coe would offer us complete before long.

[The AST's production of I Henry IV' continues in Stratford through August 1, to be followed by 'Hamlet' The drive to the AST grounds on the Housatonic River takes about two and three quarters hours at legal speeds, via the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 86 and 91, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Exit 32 to 31. Performances in the air-conditioned theatre tend to start promptly at the designated hour. There are facilities for picnickers on the premises, and four minstrels sing and play on the lawn for half an hour before curtain.]