What better way to mock or deride than to attach "immortal" to somebody's name? Such has been the fate of eponymous William Shakespeare, who lent his name to the Shakespearean Age, rather than selling the rights as we would probably do. He was also burdened with "The Swan of Avon," courtesy of his playwriting contemporary, the sometime generous Ben Jonson. Yet Shakespeare rose above the praise (and gleefully sank below it) with plays that insist on remaining alive no matter what anybody calls him. The Swan or the Bard - or, much to be preferred, the Mermaid Tavern's resident poet and quaffer-in-chief - is where the Stratford Shakespeare Festival begins and ends its 57th season, with the most audacious writer ever to set quill to foolscap.

That said, Stratford starts with its personal bugaboo, a play that should have been the source of triumph over the decades but which has led instead to too many misguided efforts. I'm even reluctant to type "Macbeth," thereby invoking the theater's most capricious gremlins; maybe it's better to call it simply the Scottish Play and hope for the best. But this may be the year that the gifted Colm Feore as Macbeth does for Stratford what the 2004 Red Sox did for Boston. Feore plays the brave and loyal Thane of Cawdor, who soon forsakes all decency and restraint to rise to king and then to fall. The play is Shakespeare's briefest tragedy and most horrific nightmare, repellent and compelling in equal measure.

The bill's other two plays by Shakespeare are equally well known (no "Cymbeline" or "Henry VI" this summer): the historical tragedy of "Julius Caesar" with Ben Carlson as Brutus, and the very funny yet surprisingly troubling romantic comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." On a world stage - the panoply of Rome in the aftermath of its greatest general's sudden rise and more sudden fall - "Caesar" illuminates the crosscurrents of loyalty, betrayal, politics, and power. Sound familiar? Similarly, even though "Dream" is a comedy, the great challenge for director David Grindley is to balance the claims of gaudy slapstick and giddy confusion, dangerous temptation and ultimate celebration, without making the play too frivolous on one hand or too melancholy or despairing on the other. Shakespeare provides clarity and play-ending solutions, but no final answers, not even for Puck.

The rest of Stratford's season leaps back and forth through time, but not before trying two more plays from the 17th century. Shakespeare's only true contemporary rival, Ben Jonson, rollicks and roars with satiric laughter at the vulgarity and variety of life in London in "Bartholemew Fair," while in "Phedre," Jean Racine provides a verse tragedy taken from Greek mythology, the story of a queen who develops an unquenchable passion for her stepson. This version is a world premiere translated and adapted by British playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker, known for her translations of Anouilh, Sophocles, and Euripedes. One last crack at the same century arrives in Edmond Rostand's 1897 classic, "Cyrano de Bergerac," based very loosely on the French playwright and duelist who lived 1619-1655. Fifteen years after his memorable portrayal of Cyrano in 1994, Colm Feore returns to Stratford to reprise the role.

Because there are virtually no limits to what Stratford can tackle, the company has occasionally mounted a play more likely to show up at the Shaw Festival, including an unforgettable production of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night" in 1994. In recent years, there have been enough of these plays to make you wonder if some poaching isn't going on: last year's "Caesar and Cleopatra," for instance, and "Of Mice and Men," "To Kill a Mockingbird," "My One and Only," and "Oklahoma!" in 2007, and now Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters" and Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

What makes the encroaching a little less worrisome is the thought of seeing the great Brian Bedford as Lady Bracknell and the hilarious Stephen Ouimette as Canon Chasuble. Bedford also appears in a one-man show based on Wilde's letters, "Ever Yours, Oscar," and Ouimette shows up as Hysterium in Stephen Sondheim's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," inspired by the farces of the ancient Roman playwright, Plautus. Much of the score for this 1962 musical is mediocre, but its two big numbers demonstrated that young Stephen Sondheim was the real McCoy. Writing music and lyrics for the first time, he defined the show with the brilliant "Comedy Tonight" and the naughty, bawdy "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid."

The season's second musical is also by Sondheim - at least the lyrics are. "West Side Story" was his very first show and, with music by Leonard Bernstein, one of the greatest musicals in Broadway history.

The small but steeply raked Studio Theatre, where more cutting-edge plays are likely to appear, includes a chance to see one of Canada's better known playwrights, George F. Walker, represented by "Zastrozzi: Master of Discipline," written in 1977, but set in a more distant romantic past. The final two plays in the Studio are Sunil Kuruvilla's "Rice Boy," about Indian immigrants to Canada, and the world premiere of Morris Panych's "The Trespassers."

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival

Through November 1

Stratford, Ontario, Canada

Stratfordfestival.ca, 800-567-1600