Iline up at the box office hoping to get a good last minute seat. It is a bright sunny day, the kind I always choose for a drive down through Dorking, Hesson, Millbank. Poole and Gadshill to Stratford. Occasionally I find myself sitting in the theatre beside someone who says, "You are sitting in my daughter's seat. She had to cancel just this morning". Did I need to know that? No, but my neighbour seemed to need to tell me, so I express interest. By cancelling, the woman got a tax credit rather than a refund, I was lucky to get the seat and my further payment for it was a bonus for the theatre. It was a win-winwin situation.

One meets some interesting people that way. Conversation is necessarily brief but it can be resumed during the interval. Saying so reminds me that there is seldom an 'intermission' in Canadian theatres. An intermission is, by definition, something 'sent in' between acts. An interval is simply free time until the play resumes.

One wishes that those who prepare theatre play bills would use the correct term.

As to theatre-going last summer, I had already seen "My One and Only" at the Avon Theatre in July. It is a beautifully staged 1920s George and Ira Gershwin confection in which the music and dancing are a delight. The scene in which an illegal speakeasy is suddenly turned into a Gospel hall at the cry "Police!" was a masterful bit of staging.

This time, I stand in a queue hoping for a ticket for "Othello". The young woman there probably had a selection of stock greetings with which to open the sales dialogue.

She said "And how did you hear about "Othello"?". There were better responses but on the spur of the moment I replied "Hasn't everybody heard about "Othello" ?". The person of whom I hade not heard before was Philip Akin who played the title role with dignified rage. His 'café au lait' complexion was, I thought, more typical of a Moor than that of some blacker actors.

My top-of-the-head "Hasn't everybody?" reply seemed to bemuse the girl at the window as her fingers danced over the computer keys to establish by my telephone number who I was and, I suspect, my whole Stratford ticket purchasing history. That goes back to attendance in the big tent in 1953.

Let the record show that I was there. As the years rolled on have I been being monitored? Do they know, for example, that I left during the interval at the 2002 "Three-Penny Opera"? or remember that I complained that the great Christopher Plummer was inaudible in section 3 of the balcony, aisles 1 and 2, the last time "Lear" was played there? Never sit in that area except, perhaps, at a musical.

One realises that the expectation that everyone knows the Desdemona and Othello story suggests a range of interest that is not common in an increasingly multicultural Canada.

Although Shakespeare has been widely translated and there are also Rossini's 1860 opera "Otello" and Verdi's 1887 work of the same name, none of them, despite the late Richard Bradshaw's efforts, commands a wide interest.

Just in passing, one notes that Rossini distanced himself from Shakespeare's text and Verdi cut his 3500 lines to a mere 800. Even so, those may be in the majority who know not Othello.

One does understand the difficulties that the classical theatre poses for many people in the 21st Century.

Shakespeare's work can be imposed unimaginatively on secondary school children. They do not recognise that much of it is blank verse rather than prose. Happy are the ones who are encouraged to memorise passages that will mean more to them as they mature. No one should leave Grade 12 without being able to recite some of them.

The 2007 "Othello" is played on the long, projecting stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre

which is something like the one on which fashion models strut and pose for Parisian couturiers. I sat in the second row of 'A' section, aisle 3. but did not on that occasion learn for what reason it was vacant at the last moment.

Of the 480 seats in the second smallest of Stratford's playhouses I counted only six vacant ones. Most places were occupied by seniors. That should be of concern to the theatrical powers that be.

Have they considered annual winter and spring seminars, perhaps employing local teachers of English, to introduce the coming season's offerings to people in towns and cities within 150 kilometres of Stratford? Jack Schofield's attractively published, introduction to and commentary on each season's plays should be available early in bookshops everywhere.

When visiting historic places I like to peruse a guidebook first, then tour the town and return to reading the book. Those unfamiliar with Shakespeare's plots or language are wise to do something similar.

There is seldom either time or adequate light in which to read the playbill in the theatre before the performance. Some groups get together to read at least the major passages of a play before they see it.

Even in the 16th Century many did not either understand or hear every word spoken on stage. It was (and is) the acting and the staging that make the play.

At "Othello" it was a delight to hear again such lines as "Beware of jealousy.

It is a green-eyed monster" or "Who steals my purse steals trash but he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed".

Sir Edward Elgar owed to Othello the title of his Pomp and Circumstance marches, the first of which contains the stirring "Land of Hope and glory" tune. Check out "Othello" III:3:335. The play's exploration of jealousy, power-tripping and the "interfacing" of a villain, the easily led and the innocent with one who "thinks men honest that but seem to be so" deserves much reflection and discussion.

A Freudian friend of mine insists that Iago is really in love with Othello, wishing both closer relationship with him and to destroy his marriage. What will they think of next?