If the distinction can be made (and, in a sense, it cannot), the main interest of Twelfth Night is poetic rather than human. The characters lack the idiosyncratic vigor of Shakespeare's best comic characters, and very little that they say or do is very funny. Their emotions are never intense; the lovers, with all their pleading and scorning, their smiling and sighing and blinking back tears, are, as has been pointed out before, less in love with each other than with love itself. The play's charm derives very largely from its rather limp-wristed, but very pretty, love poetry.

In the gentle, mildly charming production that Michael Benthall has directed for the Old Vic, the love poetry and the subtly melancholy atmosphere it distills form the pervading element, and the contrasting comic elements are very much played down. There is a distinct lack of any sort of vitality, but in Twelth Night vitality can be ruinous if not restrained, and its absence can be borne. The most basic need is for technique and taste in the production rather than energy and passion, and the former are the qualities that the Vic is best equipped to provide.

Actually as well as metaphorically, this Twelfth Night is a composition in warm colors rather than bright ones. Desmond Heeley's permanent set, which does a great deal to determine the mood of the play, is done in browns and golds, never drab but always subdued.

In its current incarnation, Twelfth Night takes place on and in front of an airy outdoor platform, half ruin and half arbor, with stone pillars in the center and wooden frames trimmed with leaves on the sides. Though there is no scene which does not seem entirely at home in this environment, its air of almost-sombreness has the effect of bringing the low comedy scenes into closer accord with the rest of the play than Shakespeare probably intended.

The comic scenes, full of bawling, bibulation, and bawdry, appear to have been written as noisy relief from the prevailing mood of quiet delicacy. But this mood is enunciated with such graceful strength in the set, that although Mr. Benthall puts his actors through all the burps and stumbles common in Shakespearean slapstick (or at least allows them a free hand in this respect), they never seem coarse or even very vigorous. The basis of the comic subplot is the duping of Malvolio, the puritanical steward, by a group of cheerful tosspots--a little joke which has occasionally struck critics as cruel, since Malvolio is at one point chained in a dungeon as a madman. Before Mr. Heeley's backcloth, under Mr. Benthall's guidance, it appears a mild, if merry, escapade, instinct with finesse.

Perhaps these comic scenes are really hilarious; they did not strike me that way, but everyone around me at the theatre was laughing fit to kill. At any rate, Mr. Benthall has certainly made them pleasant enough, with not much help from Shakespeare except for Sir Toby's great line to Malvolio: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"

The best of the low comic performances is also the most delicate: John Neville's pathetic, feeble-minded, utterly out-of-it Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Dudley Jones plays Feste as a sad, second-rate jester who has a hard time making a living, and his fine performance helps to keep the plaintive note running through the comic scenes (though it points up the fact that William S. Gilbert's Jack Point, constructed on the same basis, is a more interesting character than Feste). Richard Wordsworth (Malvolio), Joss Ackland (Sir Toby Belch), and the other comics play conventionally, with the down-the-line competence that distinguishes the Old Vic from American Shakespearean companies.

It would probably be disastrous if the romantic parts were not played conventionally; for the most part, the only sensible thing to do with love poetry, especially when the playwright has not used it to individualize the character who speaks it, is to say it as clearly and prettily as possible while still maintaining a reasonable degree of intensity. The Old Vic actors take this tack, and here again competence is the order of the evening, although Barbara Jefford is too solid and self-assured to be right for Viola. Half the pathos of the lorn and lonely girl, washed up on a strange and almost friendless coast, is lost when the actress gives the impression that she is perfectly capable of taking care of herself.

The ideal Viola would have all the male members of the audience in love with her. I personally would not go to the ends of the earth for Miss Jefford, though others may; beyond doubt she is young, good-looking, and talented.

Miss Jefford knows what she is doing; she has been well-trained in doing it; and she does it, on the whole, quite well. The extent to which this--and little more--can be said about nearly the whole company is an indication of the extent to which this Twelfth Night is a group effort. Set, costumes (also by Mr. Heeley), and music are more important to the success of the production than is usually the case. This success rests finally on the subtlety with which these elements, and the acting, were made to combine and to complement each other and the text; probably, therefore, (though no one can be sure who is finally responsible for what) this Twelfth Night is a directorial success. Mr. Benthall's work lacks variety of mood and interest, and overstresses the play's quality of Keatsian languor and softness; yet, in its way, like Olivia's face, "'tis beauty truly blent."

Henry V, which last night opened and closed its sold-out Boston engagement, emerged in Michael Benthall's production as a great big simple-minded heroic-comic pageant. Shakespeare is actually the least simpleminded of dramatists, and even this frankly jingoistic exercise in banner-waving is also a subtle, even ambiguous, study of kingship and the attributes required for it. The pep-rally ambience, however, is much more vividly dramatized, and probably tends by its nature to overshadow the "deeper" element. At any rate, the wooing scene was delightful in the Vic version, and the rest was at least pretty good fun.

It failed to be stirring largely because Laurence Harvey as Henry, given some of Shakespeare's best writing for trumpet, could not make the climaxes. (When asked if Harvey had a cold, someone who ought to know said, "No, he's a film actor.") And his clipped, fastidious diction sounds like a mannerism picked up from overindulgence in Restoration comedy.

Fortunately, the role (and the play) is almost actorproof, and anyway Mr. Harvey was frequently satisfactory in quieter moments. In the supporting cast, Joseph O'Connor was an excellent Chorus, and Richard Wordsworth and Dudley Jones made more of Pistol and Fluellen than anybody, including Shakespeare, could have expected.