Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company ignited the new Broadway season with two blazingly beautiful productions last week. And Derek Jacobi, who stars in both of them, Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" and Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac", has already given Broadway what it loves and needs,...a British comet soaring in the wake of such shooting stars as Jeremy Irons and Ian McKellen. Jacobi and the luminous Sinead Cusack (Iron's wife) are entrancing as Benedick and Beatrice, Shakespeare's lovers who are so abashed by their passion that they conceal it behind a relentless ritual of needling wisecracks, the funniest and most perversely eloquent expression of love in English theater. And Jacobi's Cyrano is a triumph---romantic, hardheaded, drawing blood with his sword and his wit, yearning for Roxane (Cusack), who can't see past his potato nose to his gallant heart.

Jacobi's feat of double virtuosity is one of the most memorable in many Broadway seasons. And in fact it represents the export of only half his season with the RSC, which also included Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" and Shakespeare's "The Tempest," a four-bagger which earned him Best Actor honors in Britain. The 46-year-old with the 26-year-old face seems an unlikely type for such heroic effort. He's a man of almost painful modesty whose artistic ideals feature "anonymity and versatility," qualities that he sees in his generation of actors. These anti-star stars include Ben Kingsley, McKellen, Irons, Jonathan Price and Tom Courtenay. Heirs to the great generation of Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson, they see themselves as bringing a new realism to the classic tradition of English acting.

"There's no doubt about the greatness of the older generation," says Jacobi. "But we still haven't totally cracked the problem of making Shakespeare accessible to contemporary audiences. So many actors come to Shakespeare and suddenly put on the Voice Beautiful, stiffen their spines and do things they wouldn't dream of doing with a modern play. But now we're beginning to do Shakespeare the way we do new plays, and I think it has to do with a healthy disrespect for scholars." Some of those scholars scolded Jacobi for getting laughs in "Much Ado" with the technique of English comics like Frankie Howerd. "They accused me of making funny noises when I had to say 'Ah'," recalls Jacobi. "I said, 'Sir, I contend that one way of saying "Ah" is "Ahhhhhhhhh.' Shakespeare's comic actors were the Frankie Howerds of their day."

This "unreverential Shakespeare," as Jacobi calls it, is helped mightily by Terry Hands, who staged both of the RSC productions. "Terry helped me by putting obstacles in my way," says Jacobi. "When Cyrano starts his speech about all the different kinds of noses, he made me stand with my back to the audience. It was hard but it made me work." Hands uses fear tactics on the mild-mannered Jacobi, terrorizing this Clark Kent of actors into Superstar. "Terry told me to forget all that success I had with Peer Gynt, Prospero and Benedick," says Jacobi. "He said, 'If you blow Cyrano, your career goes back five years'."

Jacobi's career started at Cambridge University, where his classmates included Ian McKellen and Trevor Nunn, now co-artistic director of the RSC along with Hands. From there he went on to the Birmingham Rep and eventually to the Old Vic, where he worked with Olivier. So modest was Jacobi that Olivier chewed him out for being too humble at curtain calls. "He told me to take my applause with more pizzazz," says Jacobi. Such diffidence masks a certain insecurity in the actor, who went into a cold sweat when his bank statement showed less money than he expected. "I can cope with the unreality of the stage much better than the reality of life," he says.

"Whatever success I've had frightens me. I much prefer to be a young promising actor. That's a lovely position to be in---you've got nothing to lose and you can go for broke. But when you've made it, they come to you and say, 'OK, we know you're good--so be good. And be a different good than you were yesterday'." Jacobi broke through to international recognition when he was picked to play the Roman emperor in "I, Claudius." "The producer wanted a name like Charlton Heston," says Jacobi, "but I charmed the pants off him. It was the greatest performance of my life. Suddenly millions of people knew the guy who played Claudius." But stardom, he says, is a word that doesn't seduce him.

His first inspiration was Richard Burton, whom he saw in Burton's glorious youth at the Old Vic. "He was a colossus---magnificent looks, voice, stature. Years later he came to see me as Hamlet and came to my dressing room. As we were leaving he asked, 'Do you mind if we walk out onstage?' He hadn't stood on that stage for 20 years. He had lived the life he wanted, but all the acting in him never got a chance to come out. That night he got high, not on booze but on Shakespeare and the theater."

Still, Jacobi admits that "if I have one ambition, it's to make a Hollywood movie. Just to say I know what it feels like. But I want it to be like when 'The Graduate' first hit---no hype, and suddenly there's a great movie." Not so suddenly, a great actor is in our midst. Until Hollywood calls, there's a new play next season ("I like to do new plays because then they can't compare you with anyone"). Jacobi likes TV, with its movies, series and commercials that have made actors a pervasive presence in out lives. "It makes actors less exclusive. You're no longer the airy-fairy people who do all those extraordinary things."