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Bardolatry

Bardolatry is one of the hazards of a life in the theatre, and like all grand perversions it is better to catch it yourself than to risk suffering the disease in another. There is no greater torture than being cornered at some cocktailed soiree by a blowhard who, upon hearing that you have been involved in various dramas, wants to enact his own musty fetish by dragging out the corpse of his theatrical love, one which has been rotting nigh unto four centuries. When buttonholed in such a trap, be wary; you have not been invited to dialog. You get one sentence, and that only to aid the orator in the selection of his homily. Offer any comment framed within reason: that the language is generally striking, the characters are often well-rounded, that Shakespeare stole his plots from some of the most interesting available sources—and you will receive the "Genius" commentary. Criticize the Bard and you'll get Chablis sputtered all over your lapels as the flabbergasted English major tries to remember how one addresses the mentally enfeebled. Lord forbid one suggest the Bard could be limited by the constraints of his time, that his prescience did not allow him to peer through the sexist and racist fog of 16th century London, much less the haze of our own times. You will hear the Taming of the Shrew defended as a love story; a contortion obliged not only to ignore the title of the play, but the majority of the text, and balanced on some unwritten assumption that Kate has winked to Petruchio and is playing along with him. You will hear Titus Andronicus described as an early play, an experiment, and misunderstood, but feet to the fire, you will never hear it called by its name—namely, a bad play. And inevitably you will have to listen to someone willfully misunderstand and misrepresent the Merchant of Venice as everything from a subtle critique of Christianity, to a well-rounded and well-meaning character study of the Jewish identity. All of these maneuvers to...

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