Bitef

These arguments and alike had become very bothersome, when, all of a sudden, we were given a new and authentic portrait of Shakespeare. It had been discovered several weeks ago and it has been authenticated as the only genuine portrait of Shakespeare. All of the others are either of dubious origin or come from a later period. The new portrait was found in South Africa in the collection of D. Meredaz. The portrait is the work of Paul van Somer, King James' court painter. It displays Shakespeare the actor, Shakespeare's eyes are "shiny, gleaming and inquisitive" (which they are not on other old portraits, to that extent), and in his ear Shakespeare sports a bulky round earring! And so, that bulky golden earring has been harrying me for days on end! That bulky golden earring is a extraordinary omen to me. It proves that Shakespeare was indeed what he was. He loved to decorate, ornate, dress himself up, theatrically, and even in a way perversely. In that earring I find his, Shakespeare's soul! I have spent my days in theatre and with actors. I know that actors love above anything else to entertain themselves and others (as our own Laza Kostić, nomad, genius, actor). That altruistic complex is not egotistical narcissism: even though, surely, it is close. Beyond every message, beyond all theories and moral purposes - the actor loves, adores and yearns: to entertain himself and his audience. I find this unbridled, altruistic yearning for entertainment in the entire Shakespeare. The actor loves people and breaks the tedium. That need for fun everywhere, and at any cost, I do find in all of Shakespeare. It is especially irresistible in my favourite Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida. There, the gory war itself is entertainment and farce, pure diversion. The psychological need for amusement, noise, fooling about, plots, constantly dispelling all boredom and monotony had finally found its ultimate expression in the baroque words of Shakespeare: the entire universe is but a theatre and no more. It could have been said solely by an actor whose chief aim is to irreconcilably fight the ennui of survival and thus enable further survival in itself. It was written and concocted by this restless, curious, perverse and sensual man, with inquisitive eyes and a bulky golden earring in his ear! He was pervaded with the need to entertain himself and others, with neither end nor beginning, whichever way it could and would be done: in verse, by conflict, music, scenery, fateful turns, racket; by messing about and by genius. The actor's complex is altruistic, even with a pinch of perversion and natural selfabsorption. How do we, first and foremost, entertain ourselves? By discovering what remains hidden from us and foremost by exposing a man who would, by chance, baffle us and present himself to us as a different man ("playing" and "acting" a completely different person). Acting forbears no secret, as it is, it is not "feminine" (that is why there are few women-dramatists), it is not even a matter of class (there are few aristocrats amongst the great playwrights: they are more discrete, they keep all the genealogical, courtly, state, trade and other secrets). The map with the earring was no Faulkner's gentleman. A count, a duke from Queen Elisabeth's court would know matters of the Danish court far better! But that count and that duke could utter the complete and final truth about the said court to no one, not even himself. Shakespeare told that truth. He said ail that he knew, even what he might have purely conjectured, on the tragedy of Denmark. The count or duke couldn't even reach the secret - but Shakespeare, an actor, even surpassed it: he exposed of Denmark and of Hamlet things he himself hadn't known of them. He did that in his unbridled desire to entertain both him and us, by unveiling all the secrets of that age. Without it there is no true theatre. But even the worst kind of theatre, even the weakest, always contains but a morsel of the psychological exposure.

The playwright has taken upon himself the very role of destiny; he wishes to show things for what they really are, as well as what they seem to be when veiled. That is, deep down, the only matter of true interest: the deep, the deepest truth and lie; the battle for truth, which shall be told by the fanatic and masks, and taking off the mask. Stanislav Vinaver EGON SAVIN Graduated at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade. Soon after graduation he became professor Dejan Mijacs assistant. Currently a professor of directing at The Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade and the FDA in Cetinje. He has directed in almost all theatres of any significance throughout the former Yugoslavia, and his plays were performed in Nancy, Paris, Warsaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York... He received numerous awards for staging works of local and foreign authors, several Sterija prizes as well as the "Bojan Stupica" prize. He has worked with success in all production models featured in our country: from the play Goodbye Judas, that gathered a group of young actors/conspirers in the mid-seventies and formed one of the possible models of an off-stage theatre, to performances in institutions of national consequence: the National Theatre in Belgrade, the Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, the Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica. He has staged with great success works by local and world classics: Dostoyevsky, Rostan, Gončarov, Singer, Kiš, Aleksandar Popović, Watslaw Havel, Ljubomir Simović, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Dušan Kovačević, Sam Sheppard, and Edward 80nd... in which he found factual tracks that reveal the essential power of theatre in our time, bind the works and their authors to a specific time and space in which the play is created, avoiding the dailypolitical dimension, banality and political vulgarisation. At the, Yugoslav Drama Theatre he has directed Passion by Zivojin [Muke po Živojinu) by Radoslav Pavlović and On a Summer vacation (Na letovanj'u) by Maxim Gorky.