In 1965, when he was 20, an unknown actor named Richard Monette uttered his first line on the Stratford Festival's main stage: "What, I, my lord?" Not an especially auspicious beginning. Forty-two years later, at the start of the Festival's 55th year, Monette begins the last of his 14 seasons as Stratford's artistic director. He's chosen 14 plays to run in repertory between mid-April and early November.

As always, he gives us Shakespeare, whose gifts of characterization, language, and the most extraordinary audacity make for plays of soaring yet bloody tragedy, high and low comedy, and stirring history (of questionable accuracy but unequaled theatricality) in plays populated by monarchs and merchants, dreamers and villains, fools (both foolish and wise), and lovers (also both foolish and wise).

After Shakespeare, Monette tosses in musicals to pay for everything else, along with plays from a variety of countries and centuries. But something else is also at work here. One of the plays is Edward Albee's "A Delicate Balance,"about a family in danger of unraveling. One form of "delicate balance" or another is at work in most the plays Monette chose. (Note: William Hutt, 86, Canada's most esteemed actor and a longtime member of the Stratford company, has had to withdraw from the cast of "A Delicate Balance" for unspecified health reasons. The Festival announced that David Fox will replace him.)

The bravura selection is undoubtedly Brian Bedford as the king in "King Lear," Shakespeare's greatest and most daunting play. Bedford's challenge is Christopher Plummer's memorable Lear only five years ago. The challenge within the play is to make Lear lucid yet at the edge of madness in his rage at the betrayals, real and imagined, that haunt him.

"Othello," another Shakespearian tragedy, offers unalloyed evil in Iago, but also a love story between a young woman and an older suitor, complicated by the matter of Othello's race. Only a spasm of violence can restore the necessary balance. "The Merchant of Venice" is for some a comedy because it ends happily. For others it is a "problem play" because its ending is deceptive. Shylock, the ostensible villain of the piece, is actually the play's tragic figure.

Finally, for balance between the plays, Monette has selected"The Comedy of Errors," defined by comic confusion, comic consternation, and two sets of twins in the bargain. It's a romp that everyone who ever thought Shakespeare was boring should be required to see.

The delicacy of balance in human affairs persists in such familiar works as Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband" and theatrical adaptations of James Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" and Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." The most complex of Wilde's four plays, "Husband" wittily educates its characters in the limits of integrity and the uses of compassion, but you have to wonder why the other two plays need doing yet again.

Then there are two musicals, "My One and Only," which uses songs by George and Ira Gershwin to hearken back to the days when adults knew how to wear formal clothes without looking ill at ease, and "Oklahoma!" which made the American musical less funny and urbane, but more melodic, romantic, and psychologically complex than it had ever been. "My One and Only" is a latter-day 1920s musical comedy, but "Oklahoma!" is a "musical play" whose freshness rests on Rodgers and Hammerstein's lilting score and its dancing.

The list concludes with four recent plays in the Studio Theatre. One of them, "Shakespeare's Will" (with its famous reference to his "second best bed") has only one character, his widow, Anne Hathaway, who has held her tongue for four centuries. You have to assume she has a lot on her mind.

The drive to Stratford takes at least four hours, so plan to stay at least one night. The countryside can be pretty when the cows are out, the corn is ripening, and the antique shops in nearby Shakespeare are open.

Stratford is a small city of more than 30,000 people. It can be very hot in the summer, but Ontario Street, the main drag, offers numerous opportunities for libations, and there are shady benches for swan watching along the Avon River.

The haute restaurants include The Old Prune, Keystone Alley Café, and Rundle's, but the York Street Kitchen piles unlikely combinations on coarse breads to eat there or take out. They make the kind of sandwich that runs down your arm halfway through eating it, an uncommon pleasure. For the fancy places, reservations are essential, but not neckties. After dinner, give yourself at least 25 minutes to get to your seat in the theater.

My favorite bookstore in town is Callan's, a tiny place also on York. For the last decade, amiable John Callan has been instructing my wife and me in good Canadian novelists you can't find in the States.

For tickets, or for a brochure with information about plays, schedules, lodging, dining, and other area attractions, call 1-800-567-1600or use the Festival's website, www.stratford-festival.on.ca.