This season's Stratford Shakespeare Festival will see Ben Carlson essaying the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar, in addition to a starring turn as Jack in Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest.

STRATFORD -- Shakespeare's pithy observations on greatness -- "Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them" -- have a certain resonance in the acting world, too.

Certainly, here in the small little corner of Canada where Shakespeare reigns supreme, some actors seem to have been born for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival stage, while others seem destined to work their way up through the ranks. But some of the best, it seems, make it to these stages simply because they have become so accomplished at their craft that it would be ludicrous for them not to be here. Greatness has not so much been thrust upon them as it has thrust them onto these stages.

Which brings us, quite happily, to Ben Carlson and Yanna McIntosh -- arguably two of Canada's finest actors, coincidentally two of the actors we'll be watching with excitement as the curtain draws tomorrow on the Stratford Festival's opening week.

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As the son of Les Carlson and Patricia Hamilton, Ben Carlson was born to the stage, but it took him a while to find his way home.

"At age 16, I said: 'Well, I'm not going to do that,' " he says of his parents' chosen profession. That explains why he spent a couple of years studying music in Montreal after completing high school.

"Then, in my second year of music school, I started reading Shakespeare. I've always had a great interest in and a desire to play Shakespeare."

After catching his performance here last season in the title role of Hamlet, Canadian audiences suddenly found they had a great interest in and a desire to see him play Shakespeare, which is just what he's going to be doing this season. Carlson is essaying the role of Brutus in Julius Caesar, in addition to a starring turn as Jack in Oscar Wilde's The Importance Of Being Earnest.

Once he switched from music to acting, it took Carlson a few years to find his way to the Stratford stage -- more than a few, actually.

Not that he was wasting his time, as anyone who frequents the Shaw Festival will tell you, for it is there that we watched him turn from just another young leading man into one of the nation's finest actors.

His Shaw resume includes major roles in The Return of the Prodigal, The Seagull, All My Sons and a host of other roles, but it was as John Tanner in the 2004 production of Man And Superman that Carlson moved into his own, taking what is reputed to be the longest part in the English language and making it his own.

Since then, he has done Hamlet -- twice, actually -- thus adding the longest role in Shakespeare to his resume. And now, after playing the title role in Macbeth this winter in Chicago, he's about to tackle Brutus, arguably the most thankless role in Shakespeare.

And, no, he's not trying to get all the really difficult parts in English theatre out of the way before his 40th birthday later this year.

"It hasn't been up to me," he says simply. "These are just the parts you have to play or you aren't an actor."

If all of this seems like a heavy load, Carlson wouldn't have it any other way.

"I like rep(ertory) a lot," he says. "It's good for me. It's good for my muscles to be doing more than one thing at a time.

"I love to be in good plays and play in good parts."

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Yanna McIntosh impressed a lot of people in her first appearances on the Stratford stage back in the mid-'90s -- but then, overnight, she seemed to disappear. Happily, only from the Stratford stages.

In Belle, Valley Song, Mary Stuart and Hedda Gabler and a host of other Toronto performances, the classically trained McIntosh proved she was a stage force with which to conjure.

A triumphant return to Stratford last summer, as Helen of Troy in an acclaimed production of The Trojan Women, earned her an invitation to return -- and when she heard they were auditioning for Lady Macbeth, she set her cap for the part.

Many weren't surprised when she landed it, but she insists she was -- at least initially.

"It seemed like it was impossible, that it was never going to happen," McIntosh says -- and when it did, the reaction of those around her scared her.

"Their exuberance, their excitement about what I was doing would make me kind of ... I was really touched and impressed by how genuine it was," she says. "But it also did scare me."

It's wasn't just the size of the part, but the expectations.

"The equivalent for a man, I suppose, would be Hamlet, in terms of people's ideas of how it should be. The scary thing is separating the baggage from the story you are trying to tell. It's an incredible responsibility and I feel really challenged in a really good way."

Of course, McIntosh's challenges don't stop there. She's also playing Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Calphurnia in Julius Caesar.

But like countless other actresses before her, McIntosh knows that wearing Lady Macbeth's slippers puts one uniquely in the way of history.

"I have a sense of it here," she says seriously. "I feel more strongly connected to this country's theatre history than I do in Toronto.

"My name is going to be in the same book with Maggie Smith and Seana McKenna," she adds, clearly thrilled at the company she's in.

And yet McIntosh is aware, too, that she will be the first actor of colour to play this role on this stage.

It shows how much things have changed since she was here in the '90s playing what she calls "stage parsley," but "I don't think I would go so far as to say that it's changed enough," she says. "I think it will have changed enough when you don't have to ask that question."