Alfred's Academic Calm Shatters As 'Hogan's Goat' Wins Applause

William Alfred, mild-mannered English professor at a great eastern university, slipped into the off-Broadway American Place Theater last Thursday evening. Three hours later, out strode a hit playwright with the best notices of the season for Hogan's Goat.

"I feel like someone in a Thirties movie, the overnight wonder," Alfred said yesterday, as he tried to give a senior tutorial without interruptions.

Alfred glanced at his desk, which was covered with congratulatory telegrams. "I must have received a thousand telephone calls today. It's disrupting my entire academic life," he moaned.

His agent was one of the day's callers telling Alfred about three offers to produce the play on Broadway when its present run ends on Dec. 4. He has granted the book rights to Farrar, Straus, and Ginoux, the publishers of Robert Lowell's The Old Glory.

It was Lowell who persuaded Alfred to submit the play for production last spring. Lowell had borrowed the manuscript to show producers on his own, and then asked Alfred to come to New York and read the first act.

There are two more plays on Alfred's schedule, but his immediate concern in Hogan's transfer to Broadway. He refuses to sell the rights to anyone who changes his hand-picked cast and director.

Despite his new responsibilities to the theater world, Alfred plans no reduction in his Harvard chores. A New York Times interview Saturday said that he would take a six-mouth leave every two years. But he doesn't want to, even though Harvard would let him.