SOURCE: "Morally Superior," in New Statesman, Vol. 78, No. 2007, August 29, 1969, pp. 285-86.

Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek sit collapsed, their eyes rheumy with retrospection, while Feste, as he sings 'What is love?' Tis not hereafter', watches them with tender irony. Later the three of them, spurred on by a Maria of real feeling, are baiting Malvolio when suddenly, as if overcome by shame, they pause to stare at each other aghast. Finally, at the end of his performance as Sir Topas, Feste takes off his beard with a weary disgust, and so permits the audience to be completely charmed by him once more. In other words John Barton, who has achieved at Stratford an intelligent and sensitive account of this notoriously difficult play, has done so by filtering into its darkest corners some of the spirit that moves his fool, a fool so touching in his...