During the 1930s Shakespeare had been performed more frequently in Germany than in Britain. Hitler, who once remarked that ‘in no other country is Shakespeare performed as badly as in England’, intervened personally to have the enemy dramatist unbanned after the outbreak of war. The director of the German Theatre in Berlin, Heinz Hilpert, responded to the bombing of Britain by planning to put on no fewer than three plays by Shaw and another three by Shakespeare in a single
