English

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In 1769, David Garrick's Shakespeare Jubilee helped to establish Stratford-upon-Avon as a destination for those wishing to learn more about Shakespeare and celebrate his work. In order to see a Shakespeare play performed, however, audiences had to rely on local theatre companies or touring groups. The practice of travelling outside one's home town to see a Shakespeare play, as opposed to visiting London or New York to see a play as part of a larger experience, would emerge more than a century later with the debut of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford in 1879. Even with this precedent, the idea of establishing a theatre outside of a large metropolitan area, a theatre intended to attract audiences from beyond a day's travel, would not fully materialize in England and America until the twentieth century. 1 In North America, the most prominent and continuously successful Shakespeare festivals include the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (est. 1935), the Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada (est. 1953), and the Utah Shakespearean Festival (est. 1961). These festivals are characterized by their seasonal offerings of Shakespeare and other classical repertory, their use of (largely) repertory companies, and their relative distance (a one-three-hour drive) from major cities. As theatre experiences, these festivals are by necessity travel destinations for the majority of their audiences. Visitors must rely on automobile and/or bus, train and air access. Shakespeare festivals also possess a touristic infrastructure (lodgings,

How does a theater company approach Shakespeare in a city that boasts Walt Disney World, Sea World, Universal Studios, and a raft of additional competitors for leisure dollars? Collaboratively. Since its inception in 1989, the Orlando Shakespeare Theater has successfully presented a variety of plays while relying on the range of resources that the area's exceptional level of theme park (and education) density provides. A partnership with the University of Central Florida has been foundational. In the mid-1970s, faculty from UCF began a series of Shakespeare workshops for local teachers. By 1989, after receiving several National Endowment for the Humanities grants, these workshops evolved into a festival, which presented its debut season in the Walt Disney Bandshell-a venue created with donations from Walt Disney World. The relationship with Disney has continued via the corporation's support of the arts patronage organization, the United Arts of Central Florida, which in turn provides money for the OST and other local cultural groups. The OST's first season featured The Tempest and Taming of the Shrew with costumes rented from the Royal Shakespeare Company (the first time the RSC had allowed such an

a chance opportunity. Perhaps Hirsh becomes rather too confined by a rigorous logical analysis, and a literal reading of the texts he deals with. He tends to brush aside all alternatives with an appeal to a logical certainty that does not really exist. A dramatist like Shakespeare is always interested in the dramatic potential of the moment, and may not always be thinking in terms of plot. (But as I suggest above, the textual evidence from plot is ambiguous in the scene.) Perhaps the sentimentalisation of Hamlet's character (which the author rightly dwells on) is the cause for so many unlikely post-renaissance interpretations of this celebrated soliloquy. But logical rigour can only take us so far, and Hamlet, unlike Brutus, for example, does not think in logical, but emotional terms. 'How all occasions do inform against me / And spur my dull revenge' he remarks.