When Washington D.C.`s Folger Theater, the resident company of the Folger Shakespeare Library, announced last January it would close permanently this summer after years of operating losses, the move was seen as a casualty of major proportions.
The Elizabethan-style theater, modeled roughly after Shakespeare`s own Globe, has been home to a full-time classical theater company, providing a living experience of Shakespeare`s plays as part of the library`s activities. The library itself contains the greatest collection of Shakespeare memorabilia anywhere in the world and a collection of English Renaissance literature second only to the British Museum. The library`s holdings, for example, include 79 copies of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare`s plays.
The theater has sought to present the full canon of 37 Shakespeare plays instead of skimming the cream of the most popular and playable. In fulfillment of founder Henry Clay Folger`s well-endowed wish that Shakespeare be made available to all America, it has attracted an audience of varied geographic background due to its location in the capital and the magnet of the Folger Library name.
But last Jan. 14, the board of trustees of Amherst College, which administers the library, announced a decision to end support for the theater company. Instead, the theater might be used for lectures or readings of Shakespeare by high school troupes, it was decided.
”This year we are looking at what is fairly certain to be a major loss
–in the area of $180,000 to $250,000,” said library director Werner Gundersheimer. ”In a relatively small institution like this, to be exposed to these kinds of risks makes it virtually impossible to plan for the library`s own programs.”
The announcement triggered a firestorm of reaction, bringing calls of support from across the nation, pledges from local philanthropists in a city little given to charity and condemnation of Amherst and Gundersheimer.
Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D., N.Y.), who headed an early effort to save the company, said that the quality theater offered by the Folger was ”an integral and essential part of the cultural life of our national capital.”
In the next several months, the support continued to grow and the criticism of Amherst and Gundersheimer to abate, both actions to the relief of all concerned.
The theater, which has become a semi-independent body, now finds itself with substantial enough means to carry on at least for two more seasons. Amherst has agreed to continue to subsidize the theater with Folger funds in the amount of $200,000 a year for two years, with remaining operating funds to come from the box office and local donors.
Beyond that grace period, the Folger Theater intends to make a nationwide appeal to foundations, corporations and individuals to procure an endowment of several million dollars and commitments for annual donations. It also will seek federal funds.
How this came about is a story similiar to that of Henry Clay Folger:
Both he and the present theater company rose from modest though promising beginnings to found institutions dedicated to Shakespeare.
In the case of the theater, regular productions of classical drama did not begin until 1970, 38 years after the library`s opening in 1932. Its intimate setting, with 253 seats snuggled into an area reminiscent of the yard of an English country inn, and inexpensive tickets (in the early 1970s season tickets could be had for $25) attracted a loyal following. Experimentation with modern plays in the late 1970s drove many away, and in 1981 a new artistic director, John Neville-Andrews, a former actor in the company, established a policy of producing nothing but classical drama.
Also in 1981, the company became full time, employing actors by 10-month contract. Neville-Andrews regards this regular employment as most beneficial for dealing with Shakespeare, which requires immersion. ”It`s like learning French: You can learn it at school but you need to be in France speaking it regularly to do it well,” he says.
”We are aiming to become the nation`s foremost classical theater,”
Neville-Andrews says. ”We expect to tour in the future, letting the nation at large know the Folger Theater exists.”
The fundraising is being directed by Robert Linowes, a civic activist and lawyer who has become chairman of the newly formed entity, called the Shakespeare Theater at the Folger Library, which runs the theater.
Crucial to the revival has been the support of the Eugene amd Agnes Meyer Foundation and the Philip Graham Foundation, money based on the Washington Post communications empire, which together have pledged $70,000 a year.
”The immediate emergency has been solved through local support,”
Linowes says. ”But it is a national theater and we`re going to get support from the nation.” Linowes says that many national groups and individuals have offered support, and a drive will begin in the next three or four months. It has been an accomplishment thus far to put together a five-play season for this fall–Shakespeare`s ”Othello,” ”The Merry Wives of Windsor” and
”Twelfth Night”; Chekhov`s ”The Cherry Orchard”; and Moliere`s ”The Miser.”
Linowes has conducted the touchy negotiations between the theater and Amherst. He also has dealt with such ”key . . . supportive” Congressional backers as Rep. Sidney Yates (D., Ill.), who serves on an important appropriations subcommittee.
The long-term future of the theater company is unlikely to be as stable as the library, however, which, after all, was the main interest of its founder.
Folger, born in 1857 in New York, the son of a milliner of modest means who could trace his Yankee ancestors back for eight generations, showed a literary bent in his student years at Amherst and began his dedication to Shakespeare soon after hearing a lecture at the school by Ralph Waldo Emerson. (The 25-cent ticket to the lecture is a coveted bit of memorabilia at the library.)
Pursuing his interest in Emerson, Folger came upon another speech, ”On the Tercentenary of Shakespeare`s Birth,” delivered in 1864. In his remarks, Emerson praised Shakespeare as ”the consoler of our mortal condition” who
”taught us that the little world of the heart is vaster, deeper, and richer than the spaces of astronomy.”
Folger, inspired by those words, soon set about on his goal of obtaining and continually upgrading his Shakespeare collection.
Folger`s business career took a similarly permanent cast when he left college. A patron who had paid for the final years of his Amherst education offered him a job clerking in the oil business. He accepted, earned a law degree at the same time at Columbia University, and eventually rose to become president of the Standard Oil company of New York.
Eventually, Folger`s Shakespeare collection became so elaborate that he himself never saw it in its entirity. Until completion of the library after Folger`s death, it was kept mainly in crates–about 2,000 of them–at various fireproof warehouses.
In his collecting, Folger was aided considerably by his wife. In fact, the couple accumulated so many First Folios, in part because Mrs. Folger pursued her discovery that important changes had been made in the text during the press run, a finding of significance in deciding the authority of various texts.
Folger`s determination to house his collection in a public library required a choice of location. A modest and shy man by accounts of those who knew him, Folger said little about his choice, except: ”I did think of placing the library at Stratford, near the bones of the great man himself, but I finally concluded I would give it to Washington, for I am an American.”
The theater clearly was meant as a replica of the Old Globe, Shakespeare`s theater at Stratford. But the architect, Philippe Cret, quickly saw the impossibility of that because theaters of Shakespeare`s time were open to the air, much like a stadium, and the area immediately around the stage was used by ”groundlings,” those who bought the cheapest tickets and for whom no seating was provided. The Folger Theater, on the other hand, has a roof and most of its seats are in the groundlings` area.
”The aim ought to be to place the spectators in an atmosphere removed from latter-day theatrical devices and provide for the players a simple Elizabethan stage,” Cret wrote.
Ground was broken for the library two weeks after Folger retired; two weeks later he died. It was completed two years later and dedicated April 23d (Shakespeare`s birthday) in 1932.
