Chris Powell: Mourn literacy, not Shakespeare theater

The American Shakespeare Theater building, in Stratford, Conn., in 1955, in its heyday. The building burned to the ground last weekend.

Mark Twain famously said that a "classic" is a book that everybody praises but nobody reads. That may help explain the fiery demise of the American Shakespeare Theater building, in Stratford, Conn. , on Jan. 13.

Thousands of older Connecticut residents may remember getting a day off from junior high or high school in the 1950s, ‘60s and '70s to ride a bus to Stratford to sit through a matinee of a Shakespearian drama they couldn't quite follow or a comedy whose humor had dissipated a couple of centuries ago. The theater was a lovely idea, painstakingly fulfilled by civic and charitable work, modeled on Shakespeare's own Globe Theater in London in the early 1600s. But the theater was never profitable and operated for less than three decades before exhausting its benefactors.

In 1983 state government bought the theater and its adjoining 14 acres along the Housatonic River, declaring the area a state park. But the state couldn't figure out how to get the theater operating regularly. In 2005 Stratford took the property on the premise that it could do better with it but still nothing happened. Amid government's puzzlement and indifference the theater fell into disrepair. After decades of neglect, this week's fire was inevitable.

But it's unlikely that anyone ever could have made the theater work, for it probably was doomed first by its location -- chosen in part because the town shared the name of Shakespeare's hometown -- and then by the decline of interest in Shakespeare and the decline of literacy itself. The site along the river is lovely and should be preserved for public use, but it is the wrong place for a theater, far from any lively downtown filled with restaurants, taverns and hotels and served by mass transit. Stratford's virtues are different.

With the help of Yale University, New Haven might have been able to sustain the theater, keeping its Shakespearian orientation while incorporating other theatrical, musical, and comedy events -- maybe even some wrestling. (People are entitled to like what they like.) After all, Yale somehow sustains its Center for British Art, which can be almost as musty as Pericles, Prince of Tyre, and these days in New Haven nearly any screamer with an electric guitar and a reputation for drug abuse can fill a hall on a Saturday night.

Connecticut may remain more intellectual and literate than most states, but the Bard just doesn't pack them in as he used to. If he did, the theater wouldn't have burned down. For 30 years Connecticut had no use for it and pretty much forgot about it. Mourning for it is just a polite pose. Mourn for literacy and literature instead.

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Hartford HealthCare, which operates eight Connecticut hospitals as well as a dozen other medical facilities in the state, is thumping its chest about its decision to raise its minimum wage to the fabled level of $15 per hour, which will benefit about 12 percent its 20,000 employees.

This should not be mistaken as an easy maneuver for Connecticut's private sector. For the hospital business is consolidating as much as the medical-insurance business is, and together they are destroying competition even as the income for both increasingly comes from government, which seldom cares much about costs.

As a result medical costs are much more easily passed along to customers than costs in the rest of the private sector. So hold your applause for the raises at Hartford HealthCare until you see your next hospital or insurance bill.


Hartford HealthCare, which operates eight Connecticut hospitals as well as a dozen other medical facilities in the state, is thumping its chest about its decision to raise its minimum wage to the fabled level of $15 per hour, which will benefit about 12 percent its 20,000 employees.

This should not be mistaken as an easy maneuver for Connecticut's private sector. For the hospital business is consolidating as much as the medical insurance business is, and together they are destroying competition even as the income for both increasingly comes from government, which seldom cares much about costs.

As a result medical costs are much more easily passed along to customers than costs in the rest of the private sector. So hold your applause for the raises at Hartford HealthCare until you see your next hospital or medical insurance bill.

Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.