Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend him your ears. After almost 20 years of yearning to play Shakespeare, Richard Dreyfuss got his big chance in The Goodbye Girl, portraying an outlandishly gay Richard III --the King as a queen. This time, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Drey fuss is playing Shakespeare straight: he is Cassius to George Rose's Julius Caesar. Dreyfuss, who has a hankering to be a history teacher, has thought a lot about his roles. Richard III, he feels, was one of the most wonderful of English Kings and needs rehabilitating. As for Cassius, "he is an absolutely sympathetic character. He did not hate Caesar. Rather he wanted to re-establish the republic." One reason Dreyfuss has always wanted to play Cassius: "He is the smartest man in the play."

Speed: average. Throwing arm: mediocre. Potential: may have started too late to make it. Such a rating from a major-league batting instructor might cause some ballplayers to hang up their gloves. But in this case the instructor was Mickey Mantle and the player, Mickey Mantle Jr., who at 23 wants to give baseball "my best shot." Mickey Jr. played for a Florida military academy in his teens, but feeling that he was "too immature to cope with the pressures of being Mickey Mantle's son," went off to sell insurance in Dallas. Now trying out for a Yankee farmclub team in Hollywood, Fla., he hopes to make up for lost time. So does his dad. "I was never around to work with him. I was always away," says Mantle Sr., 46. "But if he had had my dad teaching him and working him like he did me, he would be good."

Reporter: "I hear you don't give interviews." Subject: "I don't. You have an exception."

End of conversation. America's last known billionaire, the reclusive Daniel K. Ludwig, 80, who scraped together $25 at the age of nine to buy a sunken boat and now operates one of the world's largest shipping fleets, made a rare public appearance last week in Richmond, Va. The occasion was the transfer to the state of Virginia of Leesylvania, a 485-acre tract once in the hands of the Robert E. Lee family and later purchased by the Ludwig-controlled American-Hawaiian Steamship Co. Said Ludwig at the ceremony: "I think the people of Virginia are entitled to one of the nicest possible parks in the United States. It is close to the Potomac, and it is close to the seat of some of our troubles and some of the action." End of speech.

"When they told me I was going to make a screen test, I asked if the test would be true-false or multiple choice," recalls the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion Bruce Jenner. So far, Jenner hasn't made it to the movie screen, but he is still high on show business. Lacing on skates instead of running shoes, he sings and cavorts with fellow Olympic Star Dorothy Hamill on her April 28 ABC special. In one sequence he does a James Bond routine and brandishes a smoking umbrella. "He was really a lot of fun to work with. He made me feel relaxed," says Hamill. Which helped during a mishap. Instead of being lifted straight up on harnesses for a "flying" number, Jenner and Hamill tipped over once they were airborne, becoming ungainly free-floating mobiles. Both preferred their ice capades.

No 21-gun salutes or state dinners at the White House. Oh, there was a private talk with President Carter and Vice President Mondale and a party at the British Embassy. But then Prime Minister James Callaghan was free to indulge himself: playing grandfather to Tamsin, 12, Alice, 9, and Patrick, 6. The P.M. with Wife Audrey had slipped quietly into Washington for their first visit with the children, their daughter Margaret and son-in-law Peter Jay since Jay became Britain's Ambassador to the U.S. last July. The family trooped off to see the Air and Space Museum, went sailing on Chesapeake Bay, and picnicked on the grass at Monticello. Said Margaret: "We were having a very jolly time. I don't think people recognized my father, which was rather nice."

His father Gene was a world heavyweight champion and his wife Kathinka a Swedish skier in the 1962 world championships. No wonder former California Senator John Tunney has a special love of sports. He also has a law degree and a friend who asked his help in getting the U.S. license for the 1980 Moscow Olympics logo--a Russian bear named Misha. After months of telexing messages to Moscow, Tunney got the license, and presto, he and his friend have exclusive rights in the Western Hemisphere to promote the Olympics. On the drawing board: Olympic T shirts, buckles, decals and posters, as well as special lotteries, sweepstakes and shopping-center tours by a dwarf dressed to look like Misha. Will Tunney, 43, use the big bucks from the project to finance a political comeback? Flashing what has been called the second best set of teeth in politics, he declares: "I'm keeping that option open."

Maria Shriver has stumped for Uncle Ted Kennedy and Father Sargent Shriver, but these days she is wooing viewers, not voters. Maria, 22, is the assistant producer for a feature segment of the nightly news show on Philadelphia's KYW-TV. "I've tried to keep a low profile. I wanted to be accepted by my colleagues, to show them I could in fact work," says Maria, who graduated last spring from Washington's Georgetown University. She sees TV as a way of bringing social problems, like those in Appalachia and Watts, to public attention, and she thinks she can do this better as a producer than an on-air personality. "I don't think of myself as the next Barbara Walters," Maria explains. "I'd prefer to be the next Roone Arledge."

On the Record

Rosalynn Carter on her husband's buying habits: "Unless someone tells him, he has no idea about prices. He told me the other day he needed some shirts ... and he got out the Sears catalogue to look at them and see how much they cost."

Irving Wallace, whose wife, son and daughter are also published authors: "The housekeeper is writing a book, and now my secretary is working on a novel."

Edward Gorey, illustrator and set designer (Dracula): "I think style chooses you. If I could choose, I would draw like Rembrandt. He could turn a splotch into a landscape."

Willie Hamilton, British Labor Party M.P., on Princess Margaret and her involvement with Pop Singer Roddy Llewellyn: "It has turned her into a punk royal."

SJ. Perelman, humorist, on the feminist novel: "The ladies all seem intent on trying to outdo Fanny Hill."

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