TELEVISION

Summer viewing, for eyes that come in from the hot, is pretty well limited to sports, variety shows, twice-shown movies and wintertime reruns. Among the best of a thin crop:

Thursday, July 28

THE AVENGERS (ABC, 10-11 p.m.).* Steed enrolls in a school for gentlemen's gentlemen, and graduates valet-dictorian.

Friday, July 29

WAYNE AND SHUSTER TAKE AN AFFECTIONATE LOOK AT W. C. FIELDS (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). Fields, notable during his life for absentmindedly blowing the heads off ice-cream sodas, will probably be glaring back from somewhere at these old film clips and new comments.

Saturday, July 30

WORLD CUP SOCCER CHAMPIONSHIP (NBC, 12 noon2 p.m.). The final game broadcast via satellite from Wembley Stadium near London.

ABC'S WIDE WORLD OF SPORTS (ABC, 5-6:30 p.m.). The Masters' Water-Ski Championship at Pine Mountain, Ga., and the National Motorcycle Race of Champions at Winchester, Va.

Sunday, July 31

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (CBS, 6-6:30 p.m.). "Jackpot in Libya," a report on the changes in the once-poor North African kingdom since oil was discovered in 1959. Repeat.

LONDON PALLADIUM SHOW (NBC, 10-11 p.m.). Fess Parker is host to some British vaudevillians as well as Dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Svetlana Beriosova of the Royal Ballet.

Tuesday, August 2

CBS REPORT (CBS, 10-11 p.m.). "UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy," a report on unidentified flying objects filmed in Michigan, California, Colorado and England. Repeat.

THEATER

Straw Hat

Shakespeare festivals are still a mainstay of summer theater, but more and more the Bard's works are blended with a touch of contemporary:

BERKSHIRE THEATER FESTIVAL, Stockbridge, Mass. The Merchant of Venice, July 19-30, performed as it was by the inmates of the Theriesenstadt concentration camp in Nazi Germany in 1943—the costumes are stark prison uniforms and the set is a bare hall in the camp. To be followed by Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Aug. 2-13.

CHAMPLAIN SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Burlington, Vt., at the University of Vermont. Comedy of Errors, Hamlet and Henry VI, Part 1 will run through Sept. 3.

AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE THEATER, Stratford, Conn. Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar and Falstaff (Henry IV, Part 2) as counterpoint to T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Through Sept. 11.

NEW YORK SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, New York City. At the Delacorte Theater in Manhattan's Central Park, the company will perform Measure for Measure through July 30, then Richard III, Aug. 3-27. A second, mobile company is touring the city's boroughs doing Macbeth in English and from Aug. 25 through Sept. 5, in Spanish. Presumably the battlements will resound with cries of "Mañana y mañana y mañana . . ."

CROTON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. The season starts with Comedy of Errors, July 28-30, continues with Cymbeline, Aug. 4-6, and ends with George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion, Aug. 11-13.

NEW JERSEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL, Cape May, N.J. Comedy of Errors and Macbeth alternate on the boards with John Whiting's The Devils and the British satirical review Beyond the Fringe. Through Aug. 14.