False Economy
way in which the Royal Shakespeare Com- pany is being forced to abandon its London expansion after hardly two years is a striking monument to all official bumbledom, and par- ticularly to Whitehall control over the financing of the arts. The promised National Theatre re- mains a pipe-dream, a hasty if tardy conces- sion wheedled out of an unwilling Chancellor. Yet long before any definite .work is begun on the South Bank, the Royal Shakespeare Com- pany, doing the work of one and a half National Theatres, has found itself unable to continue in London for want of an adequate grant. The governors of the Stratford Company originally gave £80,000 on the dear understanding that an official subsidy would be given when required. This has not materialised. Sir Edward Boyle, in the Commons on July 12, advised the Company to contact the Arts Council, which it did, to be told it would learn the result of its applica- tion next January: this leaves the Company in the impossible position of being unable to plan beyond next April. The National Theatre —if it is ever built—would have to be subsidised anyway by some £350,000 per annum. For one- tenth of that the Royal Shakespeare Company is doing a far more practical job. The Treasury, which is to fork out £350,000 for the Leonardo cartoon, should realise when it is well off.
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